Comenius 1-1: School Project

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

Hosting School

Tørring Amtsgymnasium - Tørring (Denmark)

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Report on the Tørring Conference, May 5th to 7th, 2008

A. STARTING POINT

In Spain there are some problems to get the money from the National Agency in an acceptable time even it is granted many months before. The school got the money for the running project right now.

  1. All partners still/again have some problems to carry out COMENIUS work because of the school reforms in our countries; sometimes is doesn’t fit with the new curricula and for many of our colleagues there is an understandable limit in their power/capacity because of the reform work.

  2. We all agree that it is a nice advantage that we have the chance that more and more students take part in our conferences – this time 20 students! – even it is also more difficult to do an efficient work.

  3. The Tørring choir has been for a performance in Hamburg again in March. That was of course not a COMENIUS activity, but it is another proof that our schools are getting a better cooperation also beside the official COMENIUS activities.

  4. The headmasters of Tørring and Hamburg, Ole Nørregard Hansen and Ullrich Becker, had a whole day meeting at the first day of our conference.

 B. Evaluation: Theme “Family”

At the Hamburg Conference in November last year we decided to work on four sub topics. The following results were presented:

1. Mobility of parents and grandparents
Denmark:
The impressing geographical maps showed (beside some interesting examples of Danish humour) a clear tendency: While the grandparents in their majority didn’t move very much (mainly in local surroundings) a lot of parents nowadays are moving from the (big) towns to the countryside.
(2 classes / 2 and 4 lessons / 39 students involved)

Spain:
The students produced some enormous family trees and maps and here you can find the opposite direction of the Danish results: the main tendency is movement from villages to the cities.
(2 classes at the age of 15-16 / 7 and 4-5 lessons/ 50 students involved)
Beside of this common task a music teacher studied with 50 students (12 lessons / age 16) typical songs of parents and grandparents. They also sang these songs; they were recorded, mixed and burned to a CD. They found out a tendency from very local music (often connected to work in the fields) to songs of neighbour provinces and nowadays music from other countries.

Germany:
In the entrance hall of the school had been placed a big map of Europe and a big world map. Every student had to mark with two pins the place where his parents came from.
They moved from all over the world to Hamburg, students with parents from Hamburg are the minority at KTG.

2. Family structure
The participants reported the main results of their work on the common questionnaire.

Denmark:
74 students have been asked
- not many patchwork families
- not many of the parents have been married before
- 3 children are common
- 41% of all marriages in DK are divorced
- it’s very common that both parents have a job
- big majority of the students agrees in gay marriage

Spain:
140 students have been asked
- more than 80% are living in traditional families, not many single families
- 7,8% of the parents are divorced
- 2 children are common
- in 65% of the families both parents have a job

Germany:
130 students have been asked
- the majority lives in traditional families
- about 33% are living in patchwork families
- most of the families have 4 members
- less tolerance to gays than in Denmark and Spain (explanation: high rate of Muslim students)

Detailed results will be sent soon to Silvia. She will make a synopsis and send it to the partners. Results will also be published in the net.

3. Ideal of family life

Work on this topic
Denmark:
A group of 11 students produced 4 posters that all show that the ideal family for them is the traditional father-mother-daughter-son constellation.

Spain:
Three classes (86 students) produced posters. They are not homogeneous. Some of them are presenting the traditional family like the Danish students did but most of the time they added a dog. Especially in the number of children there are big differences: There are ideal families with only one child and other ones with a lot of children.

Germany:
No results because there was no chance to find classes to work on this topic.

Ê Posters have been exchanged and will be presented in the partner schools.

4. Family policies
Spain presented an overview of different aspects of this topic made by different groups of 92 students: Marriages and divorces, birth rate, maternity/paternity leave, support for families with children, childcare, abortion, same sex couples.

Results from Germany and Denmark will follow soon.

C. Planning next year’s themes

1. Neighbours, tolerance, belief and knowledge
Especially the second part of this theme was forced mainly by our anticipated partners from Poland and Bulgaria who were not granted in the end. At the conference the partners decided that the focus should be on “neighbours and tolerance”.

We started working in national groups.
The Spaniards focussed on nationalities. They proposed a questionnaire to find out if visits in the neighbour countries had changed stereotypes and prejudices. Another idea was to find stereotypes in Spanish literature.
The German group had the idea to create a utopian camping site with guests from different European countries. Which neighbour would you prefer? Why? Which neighbour would you not like? Why not? Which should be the rules on this camping site? Alternative idea: You are the owner of this camping site and have to place the guests from the different nations.
Ê Especially the students have been very europhoric about the idea of organizing a real camp with students and teachers at the end of the project (spring 2009).
Denmark wants to distinguish between local, national and international neighbourhood and created the following questions: How is the relation to your next neighbours (“liguster fascism” in Denmark)? Do you actually use your neighbours? Who do you want to compare with? How do you deal with neighbours with different religions (Mohammed cartoons – freedom of expression in different countries)? How do you greet each other? How, why and where do people from neighbour countries meet each other (war, sports, holidays, Eurovision)? Globalization of stereotypes?

After a lot of discussions we agreed in the main idea “European house” with the following structure:

a. Introduction (free choice):
            - Collage about “the European house”
            - Questionnaire (Annex 1)
- Cartoon “Das europäische Haus” (Annexes 2 & 3): identification of the different nationalities; which activities could be added for the new members of the EU?
Results shall be passed over to the partners until 15th of October

b. The European house
            The house will have the following structure:


3rd floor

2 apartments

2nd floor

3 apartments

1st floor

3 apartments + common room

Basement

4 apartments


Every group starts with a lottery to distribute the different apartments to the following nationalities: A, CZ, D, E, DK, F, GB, I, NL, P, PL, S, teams of 2-3 students take over the role of one of these countries.
In the discussion the teams have to find arguments why their country should be placed in this house in the highest position. (By the way we had a cultural clash: While the Danes and Germans think the penthouse is the most attractive place the Spaniards don’t like it because of their climate. But nevertheless we agreed in the idea of this model: The higher the better.)
The plenum of the group will after the discussion make a vote of the final distribution of the apartments.
The final results and the main arguments will be sent to the partners.

c.  Rules
Of course some rules are needed in this house for a good neighbourhood: How to handle: different income, cooking, shopping, cleaning, noise, animals/pets, drugs, freedom of expression, what will happen to inhabitants that don’t stick to the rules? etc.
The classes should find a solution. Also the role of the assembly should be defined. Which kind of events should take place in the common room?
Results will be passed over to the partners.

d. Newspaper “What is going on in this house?”
A very creative task: The groups shall write a “newspaper” about the European house.  They are free to fill this paper with fictive stories about the life in this house, gossip, cartoons etc.
The newspapers will be presented at the next conference.
e. Side tasks are of course allowed (f. ex. Which neighbours would we prefer? Do I like my neighbours? Quirkology.)

2. Time

We made brainstorms in different groups.

Group 1

  1. Social time (school time, working time, life time, time to buy a stamp…)
  2. Communication time (time to welcome each other, time for a kiss…)
  3. Technical time (different types of clocks, calendars…)
  4. Linguistic time (tenses, “soon”, “in a moment”…)

Group 2
Dealing with a Danish children’s song (translation):
            Time is something strange, I never really understood what it is.
            I can’t touch it, I can’t taste it and I can’t see it.
            What is it? – I don’t know.
            Hours, days, weeks and years – all I know is that time is running.
            Time is something strange, I never really understood what it is.
            Is it small or is it golden? Is it edged or is it round? Is it bitter or is it sweet?
            What is it? I don’t know.
            But when this song is finished now it took two minutes.

  1. 4th dimension – men and animals have a different feeling of time
  2. Past, present, future – what does it mean in the different countries?
  3. Changes during the time – manpower, machines, robots

Group 3

  1. relation to time / stress
  2. travelling in time / time machine
  3. music: time and space
  4. situation where you want to stop the time or want to move it faster
  5. What would happen if you could save time like money in the bank?
  6. Essay about dreams of the future
  7. How do you use time? What is most important?

Group 4
The group presented the following mind map:

 

 

Discussion
In the discussion after the presentation of the results some more aspects were mentioned:

  1. Timetables of the different countries
  2. Black holes
  3. A- and B-types
  4. Time in literature
  5. Real time and felt time / individual time
  6. Different periodisation of history

D. Practical matters

1. Comenius News
The brandnew Comenius News were distributed:  500 to Spain, 250 to Denmark, 350 to Germany. The costs will be shared in three parts.

2. Dates and deadlines
Detailed results about theme family structure will be sent soon to Silvia. She will make a synopsis and send it to the partners. Results will also be published in the net.
Results from Germany and Denmark about family policies will follow soon.
Results of the introduction to theme neighbours and tolerance shall be passed over to the partners until 15th of October
The newspapers what’s going on in this house will be presented at the next conference.
Next conference in Palencia 19th – 21st of November 2008

3. Evaluation of the conference
Beside all the positive comments given by the participating students we should think about the critical points that were mentioned:

  1. The tasks were not always clear enough to work on them. Students should be prepared in a better way.
  2. Students should be more mixed up, also teachers and students.
  3. The work was not always concentrated enough (necessary translations, group too big).
  4. Time was too narrow.
  5. More singing (of course a demand of the Danish students).

E. Cultural programme

We had to pass an exciting cultural programme again.
It started very local in Hjortsvang, a neighbour village of Tørring. While traditional cake was offered in the surrounding of 19th century interior we heard a speech about the countryside life at that time. After that we went around in the different buildings of this museum with hundreds of exhibits of the local daily and working life in that area. Most of it was really interesting but sometimes you could get the impression that the farmers used this museum to get rid of their rotten machines.

Everybody knows that Denmark is not only a country of farmers it’s also one of sailors. So we were very happy that headmaster Ole invited us for a trip with his 100-year-old fishing boat in Århus Bugt. Beside the wonderful weather and and the nice view to the landscape from the seaside everybody was very impressed by an input and an output adventure: The input event was Ole’s homemade skipper labskovs, the output adventure was the interesting technique of the saltwater toilet on the boat (the fact that the instruction for using the toilet was written in many languages underlines Ole’s international attitude).

                                           
Find a headmaster!

We also visited “Den Gamle By” (The Old Town) in Århus, a museum of old houses that were collected in whole Denmark and have been built up there again. Exhibitions and a lot of traditional workshops and stores are shown.

At our visit in Koldighus Castle we learned a lesson about complications in European history. During the Napoleonic wars the Danes tried to keep neutral but after, in 1807, Britain bombed Copenhagen and stole the very modern Danish fleet (only one ship was left) the Danes of course became an ally of Napoleon who sent about 3,000 soldiers to Denmark, most of them Spaniards. (By the way: commander of these troops was Marshall Bernadotte who later became king of Sweden.) In 1808 Koldinghus Castle burned down and until today many Danes believe that this was the work of Spanish soldiers who were placed in a part of the castle. In reality the two Danish guards who were responsible for the security of the castle didn’t do their job that night – one of them didn’t appear and the other one went home during the night because he was hungry and didn’t come back.
Another rumour that many Danes still believe in, is that these Spanish soldiers produced a lot of children with Danish girls. It is proved that this is also wrong – an explanation might be that most of the Spaniards brought also their families to Denmark.

At the last day our Tørring colleague Ella invited for an afternoon coffee in her garden in Kolding. We were deeply impressed by her house, the enormous amount of cakes and last not least by a beautiful waterfall that Ella had constructed in her garden according to the Niagara falls.

Conclusion: This cultural programme showed us only fakes: First we saw a lot of scrap in Hjortsvang, then Ole explained that every part of his old ship has been exchanged in the last 100 years, Den Gamle By never existed, Koldinghus Castle is in reality a ruin and  - to be honest – Ella’s waterfall doesn’t work in the right way yet.   

But nevertheless everybody was very excited by this wonderful programme.  

Harry Wulff
Inger Lehmann (TG)