I am doing quite a lot of reading at the moment about the controversy surrounding the establishment of war memorials. Most had a local committee and these had to think very carefully about how they wanted their fallen soldiers remembered. There was a lot of debate and careful consideration with many groups in society voicing their opinions on what the final sculpture should look like.
The reason many of my students found it so hard to do this exercise are varied, but I think the main thing that needs to be simulated is that "committee" process. Next time I am going to put students into groups and allocate them a perspective, defined in New Zealand social sciences curriculum documents as a worldview or ideology. I could give one group a nationalist perspective, one a non-violent perspective, one a trade unionist perspective etc and have them discuss what a war memorial might look like when designed by a group with this political leaning. Our faculty uses "perspective cards" which name the perspective and then have 3-4 bullet points which summarise what sort of questions a group or person might ask of a social issue. These will provide the necessary scaffolding for this exercise I think.
I am presenting at a teacher's conference in October and might try running this exercise with them. At least that would use up the left over clay. I still like the idea of students sculpting a memorial of the person or event they have researched but this might get more students on board with the idea that memorials are always selective reminders of the past.
1 comment:
Hey Michael, interesting idea (and one that could work in some meetings, too). It has a touch of de Bono about it but with a really tight focus on social sciences. Glad I found your blog:-)
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