Comenius 1-1: School Project

"Freedom and Limits - Conditions and contradictions for young people in Europe"

Hamburg Conference 21st - 25th April 2009

Kurt-Tucholsky-Gymnasium – Hamburg
Tørring Gymnasium - Tørring
IES Jorge Manrique – Palencia

Index
Introduction
   Work on the theme Time
   Technical work
   Routines
   Questionnaires
   Literature
   Proverbs

Final report
Comenius News          
Future            
Cultural programme
Comenius Project: A Real Utopia (by Arturo Polanco)

Introduction

We met for this final conference in the project “Freedom and Limits” a little sad that it was over now, but also with the usual enthusiasm and curiosity to see the results of the last work. Our hosts had prepared the programme so wisely that the evaluation of the theme work and exchange of material was managed in the mornings and the rest of the time was spent on an interesting cultural programme.

In the first session headmaster Ulrich Becker from Kurt-Tucholsky-Gymnasium informed us about the present situation as regards the Hamburg school reforms. It seems settled now that Kurt-Tucholsky-Gymnasium will become a so-called “Stadtteilschule”, which means that they will have a different kind of students, both a higher number of younger students and more local. The school reform is a result of the Green/black coalition in the Hamburg Parliament, and two ideas are clashing: the idea of the Green Party to make a unified school system, which is confronted with some Conservative fears that the academic level of the traditional Gymnasium will be lowered.

In the future the common primary school will be prolonged from four to six years, after that the children will be separated into those who can go to the traditional Gymnasium with the aim of finishing it with an exam after 12 school years and those who are attendingthe common “Stadtteilschule” for all other qualification levels (among others the possibility of taking "Abitur" after the 13th grade). It is the biggest reform in Hamburg since 1945 and so it is clear that there are still many open questions concerning distribution of locations and teachers.
After the school talks there was a tour of the school, especially for those who hadn’t seen it before.

Evaluation of the theme Time

At the conference last November we developed different aspects of the theme (see the Palencia report) and the following work had been carried out in the meantime:

Technical work
Nobody made any technical work; however, a study on the history of how to measure time had been carried out in Spain in a history class of 19 students, 2nd year of bachillerato. 3 lessons had been spent and including homework 20 hours had been spent all in all.

Routines
26 1st year and 17 2nd year Danish students had made posters in their Spanish courses. Posters showed routines on three levels: activities of a week, a year and a lifetime. Posters were distributed to the partners.

Questionnaires
All three countries had answered the questionnaire on our concept of time. In Hamburg about 100 students answered the questionnaire and in Palencia another 121 students gave in their answers, whereas in Tørring only a group of 24 students took part. Nevertheless, there was material enough to find striking differences. The results have been summed up by Michael Bartsch (see annex 1)

Literature
This part of the work had been very popular in all three countries, a lot of time had been spent which had resulted in many products.
Germans: In Germany Baroque poetry had been studied. The class started by trying to define the meaning of the word Time. Drawings were made to symbolize different understandings of time. Work had been carried out in a literature class of 28 students, and 4 lessons + homework had been necessary.
In an attempt to understand the different approaches to the concept of time through the ages, texts from different periods were studied, among others the Genesis, psalms, etc., and the notions of the beginning/the end were discussed. A rather philosophical approach.
Also 3 courses of philosophy, 70 students, had been involved. They made stories about eternity, time travelling, and other aspects of time. The results were all in German.
The relation between narrated and narrative time were discussed, f.ex. how long time does it take to boil a cup of coffee (depending on the type of coffee, how many explanations you want to give, etc.) or how to tell a story (slow/fast, few/many details etc.). Or what happens if you realize that there is a burglar in the house, what do you think in that moment. Or when somebody proclaims “I love you”, or “I would like to be your friend”.
Time metaphors were dealt with f.ex. Heraclit’s “river of time” and the different time notions of the different eras: middle ages, enlightenment, etc.
The German literature class spent two months studying “The Ages”.

Spaniards: Students of the 2nd bachillerato studied poems of the golden age. One characteristic feature is that they begin and end in the same way. Students discussed time related to death: f.ex. Jorge Manrique has no fear of time, whereas Quevedo expresses fear.
Renaissance is a brief period in Spain – about 50 years of the 16th century.
Students wrote essays in Spanish and poems about time. 21 students spent 2 lessons + homework.
The Spanish students at the conference presented the work they had done on the film Babel.
Philosophy and English were involved and 26 students of the 1st year of bachillerato spent 3 lessons watching the film, and 1 lesson analyzing + translating results.
Students handed in reports.
Another group of 24 students, made a similar work
The Spanish students also wrote the essay we agreed on with the title “The day all clocks stopped”. First they made a work on how to study narratives and decided a starting point for the essay: 31st of December, the beginning of the New Year seemed an appropriate starting point. 26 students 1st bachillerato took part.

Danes: A group of 25 1st year students had worked on the theme in German class. Representatives, who were present at the conference, reported from their work on "Lola rennt" and "Momo".
24 3rd year students had worked on the theme in English class. They had read H.G. Wells: The Time Machine in connection with a theme on the Victorian Era.
They wrote the essay: “The day all the clocks stopped”. In groups the students selected the best results. In a class plenum the selected essays were read aloud and the class voted for the best three essays. Apart from the prizes for the three best essays, prizes were given for other categories: narrative technique, for using an oxymoron, for intertextuality and finally teacher’s favourite (requested by the students).

Proverbs
DK: 25 students found a lot of German proverbs on time. They selected five favourite proverbs and presented them in English.

E: Three groups of respectively 24, 28 and 26 students spent a lot of time finding English proverbs and their Spanish equivalents.

D: In Germany language teachers had been asked to find proverbs (Spanish, French, Latin and English), and it was seen that a number of proverbs are universal, f.ex. “Time is money”, “who is late will be punished”, “time is a remedy for everything”, “time heals everything”.

Final report

The common part of the final report for the national agencies was filled in together. Some of the points were delegated to different partners: Michael and Nanny will take care of all practical information (p. 1). On the basis of the key words we agreed on, Harry and Inger will fill in 1 and 2.1 about contents and aims of the partnership. Deadline: before the end of the school year. The report must be sent in to the national agencies by September 1.

Comenius News

We decided to make a final issue of the Comenius News with the following contents:
p. 1      Summing up impressions of the last season(s) – Arturo/Silvia.
p. 2      Theme work on Neighbours, work about a European diet done by Maria José’s students.
p. 3      Theme work on Time, proverbs, summing up the questionnaire – Michael.
p. 4      Future cooperation, students’ ideas, Harry’s corner.

Deadline: first week of May.
Printing: before May 15.

Future

New Comenius
All participants showed their interest in making a new Comenius project with the same old partners and with a couple of new schools.
Especially the students voted in an enthusiastic way for it because in their opinion Comenius is good for making the countries more international, it widens the horizons and it is a wonderful forum for having European contacts between students. (By the way: They proved it at this conference: After a very short while the different national groups were so totally mixed up that nobody from the outside would have noticed which students came from which country.)

Also the teachers want to go on even both in Spain and in Denmark a certain tiredness after cooperating for about 10 years was noticed. Silvia mentioned that it might be difficult to find new ideas. Maybe new coordinators should be found. In Denmark other people might want to make totally different projects. This must be checked before a new Comenius project could be started. Even KTG is a quite new partner, problems could have appeared because after Harry’s retirement 2 years ago Nanny will retire this year and Michael will follow soon. Luckily a number of young(er) colleagues are ready to take over and keen to continue the work. They would be very interested in starting a new Comenius project.

It would be a pity to let go of a successful cooperation between our schools and thus it was decided to try to start a new project with some new people (new schools, new coordinators) from the school year 2010/11.
It was suggested that the following schools be contacted: Inger / Harry – schools in Bulgaria, Poland
Dorthe – our former partner in Ostia
Silvia – schools in Portugal, Greece or France
The idea is to balance the group, so different parts of Europe are more equally represented.
Everybody tries to get answers from the possible new partners within the month of May and we check the status at the end of the month.
We are now aiming at a preparatory meeting in November 2009. Preparatory meetings must be applied for one month in advance.

Cultural programme
Even some of the participants had already been in Hamburg several times before (in connection with our collaboration) we all got some totally new highlights.
We had an interesting excursion to Stade (30 km West of Hamburg), an old town that in the Middle Ages was an importing place for trading in Northern Europe. Nowadays it is very provincial and at the first sight you can feel the boring charm of Pinneberg or Tornesch, Tinglev or Rødekro, Venta de Baños or Amplituda. But our guide, Mrs. Gulasch (good luck, nobody tried to taste her), showed us some old streets with half-timbered houses and could tell us a lot of stories about old customs, explained symbols at the old buildings and gave us a lot of background information.

Good luck that nobody realized that our train tickets were not valid for the long distance Hamburg-Stade. In the worst case of being controlled we would have had to pay around 1200 € punishment for the whole group.
The next day we had a very inspiring guided tour in Kunsthalle by Nanny’s friend Sara Sello. She was a real expert because she had a job in this institution for many years and showed and explained some of her favourite paintings. Interesting: Even she is an American (married with a German) sometimes she had some problems to find the right English words. Comenius people know this phenomenon of mixing and confusing languages when they are meeting.

On Friday we were invited for a very special event: Mozart’s “La nozze di Figaro” at a “chamber opera” which means, compared to a real opera, a quite small room and an orchestra of only seven musicians. The performance was very funny sometimes when the actors were using equipment that wasn’t developed in good old days. But the real event was that this opera was combined with a very fine Spanish dinner (“Figaro” takes place in Sevilla). Before it started we got Sangria-Cava and a soup, in the break was offered an Andalusian tortilla with Chorizo and after the opera was over the main dish was served; in the end Creme Catalan as the dessert. Perfecto!
That was an upper class dinner but we also had the chance to study lower class food by a pizza delivering service in school. Most of the time we could study the middle class restaurants in their upper middle (Lutter&Wegner) or middle middle version (Borsalino/Altamira).

We had a surprising event in restaurant “Hamburger Segelclub” – a wonderful place on an island in the Alster: All of the teachers (except Harry and Niels) ordered fresh German asparagus but nearly all of  our students wanted chicken wings or Schnitzel, nobody of them asked for asparagus. It seems that for the next generations fresh asparagus will be kept underground and fried chicken wings will fly higher.
Special thanks to Nanny and Peter-Jochen who invited us to their private homes for an afternoon coffee and to Michael and Barbara who prepared a wonderful asparagus dinner for us (Barbara peeled 5 kg asparagus in only 50 minutes – we will apply for a registration in the Guinness book of records).

High tech culture was shown by Birgit and Conchita. They sent or received all the time about 10 SMS every minute (Guinness!). So it was possible that Birgit kept her family at home under control and Conchita could stay in contact with her "alcaldes" and other authorities. Good luck that Inger lost her mobile the first day and that it was found in Dorthe's car not before the last day.

Summary: Again this conference was a perfect mixture of concentrated work and cultural events. Thanks to the whole COMENIUS family.

Harry and Inger

EL PROYECTO COMENIUS: UNA UTOPÍA REAL

Hace un par de semanas tuve la suerte de vivir unos días intensos en Hamburgo dentro de las actividades del proyecto Comenius. También en ese mismo tiempo se me invitó a que reflexionase por escrito sobre mis vivencias mantenidas en él. He pensado mucho y creo haber cumplido la tarea si plasmo sobre esta hoja que el Comenius es sinónimo de utopía. Veamos qué quiero decir: la utopía es la negación del espacio, un lugar soñado para muchos e inalcanzable para todos. Sin embargo, durante estos tres últimos años he podido evidenciar cómo ese sueño se iba convirtiendo en realidad, en espacios visibles, en lugares tangibles y en personas de carne y hueso. Reivindico este Comenius porque está hecho por personas –en el sentido kantiano del término-que han compartido una visión homogénea del mundo dentro de sus propias particularidades. Reivindico a todas y a cada una de las personas que han hecho posible que la vieja y discutida idea de Europa tenga un sentido propio. Reivindico el trabajo de un puñado de profesores alemanes, daneses y españoles que han hecho práctica de una idea común. Reivindico las ganas de aprender de un grupo de alumnos motivados y motivadores de una realidad educativa alternativa.
Hace ya tres años que el horizonte global de la educación europea no es una utopía sino que es un topos – un lugar físico y real- cargado de muchas historias que hemos sido capaces de entretejer. Como decían los clásicos: no hay ningún acto humano que no tenga consecuencias. Esto es lo que para mí ha significado pertenecer y trabajar en el Comenius. Todas y cada una de estas consecuencias tienen un rostro, un momento, un aquí y un ahora, una persona detrás, un tiempo vivido, unas vidas transformadas.

Cuando leáis esto, sed indulgentes conmigo y permitidme una licencia como profesor de Filosofía que se ha dejado llevar por Freedom and Limits al decir que este tiempo me facilitado seguir pensando que enseñar y compartir sigue siendo tarea de quienes tienen la mente abierta y llena de ilusiones.
A todos…¡¡¡Gracias!!!

COMENIUS PROJECT: A REAL UTOPIA

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky to live a few but intense days in Hamburg thanks to the Comenius Project.  During my stay there I  was  also invited  to think over  and  write about  my experiences  during the time I have taken part in the project. I have  been thinking  a lot and  I  believe that I will have fulfilled the task if I express on this sheet that Comenius is a synonym of Utopia. Let us see what I mean: the Utopia is the denial of space, an unattainable place dreamed by many people. Nevertheless, during these last three years I have been able to witness how this dream was becoming real: a visible space, a tangible place, and real human beings. I claim  that  this Project  deserves recognition because it is done by persons – in the Kantian sense of the term-, who  have shared a homogeneous vision of the world, in spite of their own features. I ask for recognition for each and everyone of the people who have made possible that  the old controversial idea of Europe  makes  sense. I ask  for recognition for the work of a handful of German, Danish and Spanish teachers who have put a common idea into practice. I claim that the wish to learn of an enthusiastic group of students, who are motivating of an educational alternative reality, should be recognized at the same time.

The global horizon of European education has not  been  a Utopia since we started this project  three years ago  but a  “topos”– a physical and real place - loaded with many stories  that we have been capable of interweaving. As the classics said: There is no human act that does not have its consequences. This is what taking part in the Comenius Project   has meant for me. All these consequences have  a face, a moment,  here and  now, a person behind, a  time already lived , some lives transformed.

When you read this, be indulgent with me and allow me a license as a Philosophy teacher  who has  let himself be carried by Freedom and Limits when saying  that this time  has eased the way  to continue thinking that  teaching and  sharing is still  a task for  those who have an open mind,  full of illusions.
To all … thank you!!!

           Arturo Polanco Pérez.
               Profesor de Filosofía.
               Philosophy teacher .
                  IES “Jorge Manrique” (Palencia)