The main purpose in writing this unit is that of making students aware that every story and thus history has a point of view, which often is not acknowledged. It is imperative to know and understand why and how the story is being told. To a stated degree or extent of this unit, I hope that students will be able to question the account of an event at the same time they study the consequences of war and ethnic conflict.
It is not the intention of this unit to be an exhaustive study of war, its consequences and on how to teach young children about it. Instead, like a good and reasonably objective historian, I focus the unit on the importance of checking the veracity of historical accounts by asking questions as to the sources of the information, while at the same time we look at some of the consequences of these conflicts. This last reason now is more important than ever, given the flood of information we receive via television, radio, newspapers, and the internet.
This series of lessons meets New Haven Public School's performance standards regarding social studies for the second grade although it can be also implemented at lower and higher grades with some modifications. I will focus on the objectives of gathering historical data from multiple sources, identifying the main idea in a source of historical information, and writing short narratives and statements presenting historical ideas. This unit will follow a three-week study on immigration (Mendia-Landa, 1996) where students gather information regarding their families' migration journey. I will model this process as I write about my people the Basque, and of the effects of war on a nation and its people; especially the effects that wars have on children. I want to offer students a variety of primary and secondary sources so they can directly observe the nature of war atrocities and the effects in the civilian population. This is accomplished by presenting the case of refugees, Basque and Chechnyan children. The emphasis is not on learning facts of who did what, when and why. Instead I would like students to begin to understand that history is an "informed debate based on evidence and reason." (Loewen, 1996, p. 16 ) as they relate to the victims of war and ethnic conflicts.
In order to make this unit meaningful to younger students, the role of children in times of war is explored. Children as refugees, child soldiers, and famine are described and studied. The main concept to explore is that peace between two nations, or warring parties, that have faced each other in an opened armed conflict, allows extra resources for other areas of need such as infrastructure and social services instead of weapons and military salaries. In the case of the Basques during the Spanish Civil War and after the bombing of Guernica in 1937, where did the children who survived go? Did refugees ever return to the Basque country? Who in the international community got involved? What did the Spanish Civil War represent in the events that followed in Europe? How do the experiences compare to children in other parts of the world?
The side of the story that is being told, one day might look different once the objectivity of time allows historians and scholars to discern what was from what was not when those who are now oppressed come to power and are able to re-write their own stories. The case of South Africa comes to mind in thinking about how historical events can turn over in unexpected ways so that years later a new history is rewritten to reflect the story from the point of view of the victorious as the "truth" of what once happened. It is particularly the civilian populations who feel the brunt of the results of covert or overt aggression. What qualifies a conflict as a war? We hear the expressions "war on poverty", "war on drugs", etc, which although a joint and concerted effort to eradicate something considered harmful does not qualify as a war. This unit uses the definition of
The American Heritage Dictionary
.
"A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties."
This definition of war meets the struggle of the Basques to become free if we look at Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basqueland and Freedom) as the armed forces of a Basque liberation movement. It is considered by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In their fight for an independent Basque nation, they have killed over 2000 people in the last 43 years since its foundation in 1959.
Was it not Benjamin Franklin who stated that revolution was legal in the first person, as in "our revolution", and illegal in the third person, as in "their revolution"? Thus, the relativity of many of the struggles for liberation from oppressive regimes in that depending on who is talking, a war can be seen as just or unjust.