How to teach about sensitive issues

an example from Spain

Dña. Cristina del Moral ItuarteMinisterio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación

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Sensitive issues

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sensitive issues:those topics that can wound the sensitivity of some students

or risk with becoming the source of emotive-intellectual conflict

for some of them.

To encourage among students a sense of their own personal identity , helping the world both as individuals and as members of different

communities.

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SENSITIVE ISSUES : a dificult taskBut ...... taching sensitive issues

To encourage Students to have a sense of his/her own personal identity and find his/her place in the world as individual and member of a community .

To recognise the identity of othersTo develop democartic awareness

To help them become actif citicens of a multicultural world. To foster growing emotional inteligence in relating to oneself and the others

To encrease the capacities of problem solving .To encrease the capacity of imagine issues from different perspectives and viewpoints

Why sensitive issues ?

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• Lack of knowledges.

• Lack of awareness.

Didactic Methods

• The narration of the every day life trough pictures and photographs and films.

• The use of oral sources

• The History of those people who has been until now “the silent protagonist of History”: women, workers and peasants.

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Contents

• To make clear that these special situations are not unique.

• To place the sensitive issue in a chronological articulation.

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Dictators

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• Synchronically: in relation to the world History, especially European movements and historic events.

For example in the case of Spain the dictatorship of Franco and the political transition to the democratic regime should be put in relation to at least:

• European Dictatorship- German and Italian fascism- The Second World War.- The Cold War- Contemporary Dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, URSS, China

• Other transitions- The movements of democratic liberation in Portugal and Greece. - Glasnost and Perestroika.- Independence of the Baltic and Central Europe Republics.

• Diachronically, the teacher has to examine previous or subsequent historical periods that can be compared with the one we are considering.

Transition

The Spanish Transition itself is a sensitive historical issue that has to be thaught in secondary schools. Indudability it is a challenge for teachers because any Transitions from a dictatorial regime to a democratic regime presents many problems of interpretation.

The etimology of the word “Transition” come from the latin “Transcendere”, wich refers to passing from one place to another. In academic lenguage related to politics, it refers to processes involving a change of regime, that is, changes in the set of rules, practices and procedures that gobern how a political system works.

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Transition in Spain

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Singing Revolution

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Transition in Portugal

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Didactic Methods

• The teacher should approach these topics with impartiality and distance from political implications:– Aim: to engage the students in the key ideas and

feelings related to.– Similarity and difference : Emphasising more the

similarities than the differences among people and societies; and insisting than, even when there are differences, much have to be celebrated rather than condemned

– .– Empathy teaching respect and critical admiration for

past societies and for the diversity of civilisations and cultures

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Different Interpretations. Sharing the idea that there is no one universal version of history.

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Demostration against terrorism

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–Empathy teaching – for the diversity of teaching respect for other civilisations –and situations for the past .

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History textbooks during Franco Dictatorship

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Change and continuity. Indicating that every society is in a continuous state of flux and that students are part of a

changing scene, and the world in which they grow up is not one of absolutes.

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Political position

parents Grand parents

Sisters and Brohers

What do you think about the dictatorship period?

How did you live the transition period?

What do you appreciate most about the democratic regime?

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ESTONIA

Area 45,227 km2 (132nd2)17,413 sq mi  -  Water (%)4.45%Population -  2010 estimate1,340,021[2] (151st) -  2000 census1,370,052[3]  -  Density 29/km2 (181st)75/sq mi

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