Each day includes one or two debrief seminars to connect critical questions and curriculum materials to the issues, terrain and commemorative sites visited. Each participant will act as discussion leader/facilitator for one of these seminars, and must be prepared to adapt their understanding of the problem to what they see on the ground, as well as consider the latest scholarly research.
In addition to tackling the specific question posed, participants also consider these themes/questions:
Daily de-brief seminars are intended to help participants process knowledge and experience from each day’s ‘campaigning’ and to think about ways to apply new knowledge and methods in the classroom. One goal is to avoid transmissive content or factoids and focus on possible approaches to topics.
In addition to tackling the specific question posed, participants also consider these themes/questions:
- Are the issues and events covered that day historically significant? “What is worth remembering” about the day?
- Does the day’s experience reveal new classroom possibilities?
- Which historical thinking concepts connect to the day?
- Does this issue form part of Canada’s ‘collective memory’ of the 20th century?
- How do we separate history from nationa building/national identity?
- How can we expose students to the messiness of the past?
Daily de-brief seminars are intended to help participants process knowledge and experience from each day’s ‘campaigning’ and to think about ways to apply new knowledge and methods in the classroom. One goal is to avoid transmissive content or factoids and focus on possible approaches to topics.
Days 1 & 2: How does Canada’s choice to enter the Second World War compare to the Netherlands? Should questions surrounding defeat, subjugation and collaboration be part of student inquiry into the Second World War? Why might the Dutch be willing to “accommodate” the fact of the German occupation in 1940-1941?
Day 3: How can the 1944 conscription crisis connect the home front to the battle front in the classroom? How significant is Canada’s effort in the Bresken’s pocket compared to other military events in the nation’s past – like Vimy or Dieppe? Day 4: When should military necessity override humanitarian concerns? Are the wartime contributions of Canada’s allies relevant to Canadian students? Day 5: Historians hotly debate whether the war was winnable in 1944? Why could this possibly matter to Canadian students? What might NOT have happened in Europe had the Germans suddenly capitulated in the fall of 1944 – as they had done in the fall of 1918? How can history combine with geography or any other subject in the classroom? Day 6: Soldiers interact more with civilian populations behind the front than the enemy at the front. Should “living” around Nijmegen feature more in Canada’s wartime history? Is the ‘conquering’ Canadian Army in Germany different from the ‘liberating’ army in the Netherlands? |
Day 7: How should history judge Canada’s participation the Combined Bomber Offensive? What messages are communicated by war cemeteries and war memorials? How do nations differ in their approach to memorialization?
Day 8: How does Canada’s April Liberation drive in the Netherlands compare to other significant events in Canada’s past? Is there a place for Europe’s resistance forces and collaborators in Canadian classrooms? Day 9: In many provinces the vast subject of the Holocaust and genocide are treated as separate topics from Canada’s Second World War experience. What other approaches are possible? Day 10: Should commanders risk their soldiers’ lives to minimize civilian damage? Given the critical role of both French paratroopers and the Dutch resistance in “paving the way” for the rapid Canadian advance, is it right to talk about a “Canadian Liberation” of the northern Netherlands? Day 11: Should Canadian soldiers have been put at risk to check the reach of the Soviet Union? How does the Second World War in the classroom connect to Canada and the world after 1945? Day 12: Is the liberator an occupier? Do these terms mean the same today as they did in 1945? What will you change about your classroom practice after these last two weeks? |