Freedom Writers 4 ESO. ETHICS

Set in Los Angeles during the years following the 1992 riots. Freedom Writers tells the true story of a young English teacher and her influence in the classroom. Erin Gruwell begins the school year as an English teacher for the "at risk " students at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California.
 She soon realizes that her diverse group of students is embroiled in the racial gang war culture of the time. Without the positive support of family members or teachers, these students have no expectations of academic success. Each day is a struggle to survive on the streets.

The movie presents some issues as tolerance, finding success, inequality of education, earning respect and trust, overcoming adversity, family relationships...Moreover it has a relation with the Holocaust topic (Ann Frank Story) studied during the first term.

PORTFOLIO
Questions:
1 At the beginning of the school year, Erin is deeply disturbed by a racial caricature of one of her students that she finds being passed around the room. Why does Erin compare this drawing to the drawings of Jewish men during the Holacaust?
2 Why do you think Erin refers to the Nazis as the most famous gaing in history? Why does this comparison make the students begin to listen to her?
3 How do the classmates learn to trust one another? How does reading and writing initiate this change?
4 Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank, is a hero to Ms. Gruwell´s students. Why?
5 What makes Eva choose to "go against her people" in the courtroom?Do you think this was a good decision? How do her family and friends react?
6 Explain the influence of  Miep Gies¨words on Eva´decision?
7 Why is Eva so affected by the ending of Anne Frank´s diary?
8 Put yourself in Eva´s shoes. would you tell the truth in the witness stand or protect your friend?

OPTIONAL ACTIVITY:
   Research: look for information about gang activity in the mid-1990 in Los Angeles.

The Book Thief. Portfolio

 

 GUIDELINES

·         Handwritten.

·         Explain the ideas as much as you can by using links, the passive voice and a wide range of vocabulary… While answering the questions, include some examples from the movie.

·         Be careful with your layout. You can improve your work with pictures, drawings…

Summary:

Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to live with a foster family, the Hubermanns, on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the late 1930s. She arrives with few possessions, but among them is The Grave Digger’s Handbook-a book that she stole from her brother’s burial place. During the years that Liesel lives with the Hubermanns, Hitler becomes more powerful, life on Himmel Street becomes more fearful, and Liesel becomes a full-fledged book thief. She rescues books from Nazi book-burnings and steals from the library of the mayor. Liesel is illiterate when she steals her first book, but Hans Hubermann uses her prized books to teach her to read. This is a story of courage, friendship, love, survival, death, and grief. This is Liesel’s life on Himmel Street, told from Death’s point of view.

QUESTIONS:

1- Write a one paragraph description of one of the following characters in this movie: Liesel, Hans, Rosa and Rudy.

2- The central question asked here (which has been asked in countless other great works of literature) is how human beings have been capable of such brutality and also have

transcended suffering with acts of extraordinary love and courage.  The film presents the issue of how humans can do the most appalling and beautiful things. Write a paragraph explaining how this point is presented in the story. Give some examples.

 3- The Nazy party used propaganda, including Hitler´s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), to acquire and maintain control over German society. How is this point shown in the film?

4- What does Hans (Papa) encourage her to read? What role does his unusual dictionary play in Liesel’s learning?

5- Liesel comes to realize that words can be used for good as well as for evil. How have words been used these opposite ways in the film?

6- How do we find beauty during hard times? How does Liesel find beauty? How does this affect her happiness despite such hard times? Can beauty and happiness always be found?

OPTIONAL

 -Liesel´s love of books transform her life and the lives of those around her. What books or films have inspired you- or at least impacted your life in a significant way? Give some examples.

Optional Activity Ethics 4º ESO.

Regarding The Holocaust, we can read the following words:

"The things I saw beggar description...The visual evidence and the verbal testimonyof starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering...I  made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda." D. Eisenhower.

These words are carved into the wall at the entrance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washinton. D.C.

Activity:
- look for the meaning of the words you don´t know.
- visit the  Memorial Museum web site and choose one of the personal stories. Write down the story and give it to me in a separate piece of paper.

Schindler´s List: optional activity (4º ESO)

 We were watching some parts of this movie to complete unit 1. As an optional activity you must look for information about the film and write all the technical specifications down (plot, director, main characters...). You can do a chart to hand in to me during this month.

There are far too many places where hate, intolerance, and genocide still exist. Thus Schindler's List is no less a "Jewish story" or a "German story" than it is a human story. And its subject matter applies to every nation. Schindler's List is simply about racial hatred--which is the state of mind that attacks not what makes us people but what makes us different from each other. It is my hope that Schindler's Listwill awaken and sustain an awareness of such evil and inspire this generation and future generations to seek an end to racial hatred. S. Spielberg

Ethics 4º ESO Optional task

We are working on the first unit which is focused on human beings. What are human beings? To introduce the topic, we are reading about the Second World War.
This is an optional activity about The Holocaust.


Speaking of his arrrival at Auschwitz, P. Levi said:

"It was bleak, at night, after travelling five days on a disastrous journey, during which the people in the car had died, arriving in a place where one did¨nt  Know the language or understand the purpose. There were sings that made no sense: a shower, a clean side...a dirty side and a clean side. No one explained anything. They spoke to us either in Yiddish or in Polish... and we didn´t understand. It was truly an alienating experience, there was an impression of complete madness, of having abandoned all posibility of reason. There was no reasoning anymore."

        Evening on Karl Joham Street. E. Munch


1  Read  Levis arrival description carefully and write down ten words to describe the way Levi might have felt stepping out onto the train platform that night.
2 What does "an alienating" experience mean?
You can leave me a comment with your answers.

This is England

This Is England: a portray of the transition between childhood and adulthood.

This is England is the story of a summertime school holiday.Those long weeks between terms where life-changing events can take place. It’s 1983 and school is out. Twelve-year-old Shaun is an isolated boy growing up in a grim coastal town, whose father has died fighting in the Falklands War.

Over the course of the summer holiday he finds male role models when those in the local skinhead scene take him in. With his new friends Shaun discovers a world of parties, first love and the joys of Dr Marten boots. Here he meets Combo, an older racist skinhead who has recently got out of prison. As Combo’s gang harass the local ethnic minorities, the course is set for a rite of passage that will hurl Shaun from innocence to experience.

(Filmeducation.org)



To understand the social background of the story you must pay attention to the opening sequence. It is important in representing the social, historical and cultural context of the film (the early 80's).

The sequence moves from trivial clips of Roland rat, Space Invaders -the first computer game- hairs styles of the the ‘new romantic’ group Duran Duran, the wedding of Charles and Diana, then this becomes increasingly serious with anti US air base protests, the miners strike, a National Front March, and race riots. The sequence ends with news clips from the Falklands/Malvinas war showing injured soldiers. Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is a constant presence throughout.

Words that are underlined are relevant for the vocabulary of our last term.
Leave me your comments about the movie!

Ethics Unit 3 Activities. Our life path

 In this unit we are learning what ethics is.  One of the  ideas is the fact that we must always choose and, sometimes, we should cope with  hard situations called moral dilemmas.

We have read that even every little decision builds our life path.

Here, we have a speech by Steve Jobs in Stanford University. Listen to it carefully, copy and answer the questions below.

1 When did his life begin?

2 What does the first story teach us about our life?

3 The second story is about love and loss. What did he find and what did he lose?

4  What does "don't lose faith" mean? How can we be satisfied with our jobs?

6 Explain this expression using your own words : "Don't settle"

7 Regarding the last story, why does he say that Death is the single best invention on life?

8 What does he want to mean with the final sentence: Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Here is the same video with Spanish subtitles.

The unexamined life is not worth living. 4º ESO

 Now we are learning what ethics is by  using Socrates life as an introduction to unit 3. For those who want to do an extra or optional actvity, I suggest this one:

 "The unexamined life is not worth living" is a Socrates famous sentence. Write eight questions that you use to examine your life like:
- What kind of person I would like to be?
- What are my ethical values?
- What is the purpose of my entire life?

 You can give me the task in a separate piece of paper.

Ethics 4º ESO: the story of Genie.

 Our first unit is aimed to study human beings and, for that purpose, some relevant cases of  feral children -the story of Genie- will help us understand the necessity of living in society. This feature and,obviously, rational thought  can define humans beings, as Aristotle pointed out many years ago.

                       

Therefore, we are reading these cases and watching a video about the issue. Here you have some excerpts and the whole video we have seen in class.

" On  november 4, 1970 a girl was discovered. She had been locked in a room alone for over ten years. She was tied to a potty chair and left to sit alone day after day. At night she was tied into a sleeping bag which restrained her arms(...) Genie was rescued and put in Children,s Hospital in Los Angeles..."
"A team of scientists began working with Genie. They wanted to find out what they could about how humans learn. Did Genie have a normal learning capacity? Could a nurturing, enriched environment make up for Genie´s horrible past? Would it be possible for Genie to recover completely?

Pictures: covers of two books. The first one  about feral children in general, the second one focused on Genie and written by S. Curtiss-a foremost member of "Genie Team".

Optional task: Look for information about the film "The Wild Child" (director, themes, awards...). Use a chart to present your information.

What are human beings?

This week we are studying the first unit called What are human beings?
As an introduction to it, we will read the poem If is this a man written by Primo Levi  after the Second World War. Within a few months of liberation from Monowitz, one of the many smaller camps attached to Auschwitz, P. Levi produced his first collection of writtings. This poem was published in 1947. Levi´s text became overwhelmingly successful and was translated into eight languages and adapted for radio and theatre.


If This Is a Man

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud,
Who does not know peace,
Who fights for a scrap of bread,
Who dies because of a yes or a no
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair and without name,
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

OPTIONAL TASK

Read this P. Levi´s text and answer the questions in a separate piece of paper.

"At that time (1947) people had other things to get on with: buildings houses, looking for jobs. There was still rationing, cities were in ruins, the Allies were still occupying Italy. People didn´t want to  hear (about the camps), they wanted other things, to dance, to party, to bring children into the world. A book like mine and many others that came after were almost like a discourtesy, like spoiling a party."

1 Why does the author use the expresion "like spoiling a party"? Review the information that we have read in class to answer this question.
2 Why didnt people want to hear about the camps? Was Levi right to dwell on the past?