What is the rationale of this project, in terms of objectives pursued and needs to be addressed?
The main needs we follow and the rationale for carrying out the project are focused on three aspects:
1. The social circumstances of our schools. Some partners provide education to students in a working-class neighbourhood which are suffering from the crisis with high unemployment. Radical policy ,supported by common issues such as totalitarianisms, xenophobia, fundamentalism and others come to life under extreme conditions. Very often these movements try to manipulate,deny and distort the History order to give a demagogic response to the people who suffer the economic crisis. In this sense, these ideologies are focused on youngsters and we would like to prepare a set of European/International Teaching Units about the consequences of the totalitarianism in the XX Century, in the WWII and in the Spanish Civil War, with emphasis on the Human Rights like the concentration camps during the Holocaust (Shoah) and the current consequences of the Spanish Civil War (Law of Historical Memory), and the resistance movement of people who thought other world and reality was possible. It means our main purpose is to make our students aware of the importance of critical thinking and political and social activism in the construction of the EU through the European History and the development of Human Rights against intolerance and totalitarianism in order to create pedagogical materials to offer a new perspective on the extermination: from Collaboration, Indifference and Resistance. In this sense our students will understand better what is the totalitarianisms and the new ways of radicalism. While learning about the consequences of WWII, the extermination, we want pupils to make presentations about the people who lived and suffered the totalitarian ideas focusing on the people who resisted and rebelled, people who were indifferent, people who collaborated. They will present works on these topics related to their countries. Additionally, they will prepare a work about the current messages of radical parties and how these parties deal with this topic. Finally, we want our students to understand the real consequences of similar ideas by visiting Auschwitz.
2.Apart from that, our objective is to improve the social, foreign languages and ICT skills of our students to promote the social inclusion and to make the incorporation into the global market easier by communicating in English, doing exchanges on family level, working in workshops made by students from partner schools, preparing materials and presentations in other countries facing new challenges for them. We would like to create a teaching programme which takes the English and foreign languages skills into account to offer as soon as we can, multilingual education. We would like to receive guest teacher to give our students the opportunity to attend different subjects in English for a short periods with a European teacher (job shadowing).
3. A great deal of students of some partners suffer from dauting social circumstancies. We have different programmes to fight the leaving school early like PRA and the school failure (Programme to reduce the leaving school early LSE) and PCPI Early Qualification Programme) and we hope to improve these programmes and reduce our LSE percentage thanks to this project. That is why it is so important to offer foreign languages and new technologies skills to open the students minds, to help them understand the European dimension of labor market. In addition, this project is addressed to all students, all levels, through the didactic units and extra curricula activities provided by all departments during three years on the following topic: The fight for the Human Rights.
4. The social circumstances of the families (Parents Association). We expect to involve the families in the project and to improve the contact between families, teachers and students and to encourage the implication at our school by taking part in the student exchange, activities and in the management of the project. We want to make a documentary about the progress of the project from the beginning to the end, showing how students, families, teachers change their opinion and their feelings about the History as soon as they comprehend, study, visit and become aware of what has happened. The photo exhibitions on the events of the project, reflections on school sites , relevant information in local media will be produced as well. In what way is the project innovative
