Three schools participate in the project: EKS in Bochum (Germany), ZSU in Rybnik (Poland) and IES Barañain (Spain). The German and the Polish school have collaborated successfully within international programmes for many years; the Spanish school is highly motivated and up to date – especially as to brand new IT tools. Due to the current situation in Europe it seems to all of us more urgent than ever to strengthen our students to inform themselves about their rights and duties and to stand up for them actively. As citizens of a united Europe who create their future in a responsible way - they need to be instructed about historical contexts - they must inform themselves about current political events using reliable sources, which means that they must adopt a critical attitude towards biased media reporting and manipulative operations - they must learn to develop a respectful, tolerant, open and constructive attitude towards people from different origins, nationalities and religions who have different premises, interests and opinions (corresponding to the horizontal priority „social inclusion“) - it is a great advantage for them if they can communicate fluently in English and use it as lingua franca - they need to get an overview of all the areas that they can commit themselves to. These goals can only be reached if you motivate students by making use of a variety of methods and media. The project will deal with three topics: 1. “the history of democracy” (from Ancient Greek to the French Revolution, to the totalitarian regimes of the 30s and 40s of the last century up to the foundation of the EU and its present meaning); 2. “current threats to democracy and to the EU (as Brexit, the conflicts with Turkey, nationalistic tendencies in many countries etc.) and 3. “possibilities for students to create society actively“ (school councils, young political democratic parties, local charity organisations, refugee aid, international Human Rights Organisations etc.) . The most important and most challenging product is an interactive game that will be developed in the course of the two project years by all the students and teachers. Two fictitious figures will lead through it: a teenage girl and a teenage boy from Ancient Greek. At the beginning of the project they will be invented within an online competition (name, age, biographies, outward appearance, interests, character traits etc. will be agreed upon). This trick of inventing two historic figures of the students’age (i.e. between 15 and 18) who travel through time and space enables a change of perspective and thus a chance of self-reflection. In addition to this all students can be involved at any stage of the project: these two figures run through all the project activities like a thread. They are part of the action during theatre and dance performances and role-plays, they are retained on murals, they are the ones to ask the students questions about the democratic barometer, during trivia quizzez about democracy and in questionnaires. Additionally the interactive educational game will be linked to informative educational websites and You tube videos and tutorials produced by students participating in the project. Video recordings that document perfomances and visits during transnational training, teaching and learning activities can be uploaded there and listening and watching activities explained by the two fictitious figures can be added there, which allows peer-teaching in a very motivating way. Teachers of various subjects are involved regardless of their participation in transnational meetings. They work on the project theme in different contexts with different groups of students aged from 15 to 18 according to the corresponding curricular standards. This leads to an implementation of the project’s topic, i.e. “democracy” and a sustainability that goes far beyond the end of the project. A pool of all the activities to strengthen the students’ positive attitude towards a European democracy is created, which supports collaboration and networking in each school. This can only be realized under the condition that work groups, that have already been established at each school, meet regularly in order to agree upon activities and evaluate them later. The conception of this project involves all the members of the school community. Due to its relevance and political topicality it will not be difficult to enthuse and involve the local press, local institutions and other stakeholders. The complex and challenging educational game can still be used in all the schools after the end of the two years.
Three schools participated in the project: EKS in Bochum (Germany), ZSU in Rybnik (Poland) and IES Barañain (Spain). The German and the Polish school have collaborated successfully within international programmes for many years; the Spanish school is highly motivated and up to date – especially as to brand new IT tools. Due to the current situation in Europe it seemed to all of us more urgent than ever to strengthen our students to inform themselves about their rights and duties and to stand up for them actively. As citizens of a united Europe who create their future in a responsible way - they need to be instructed about historical contexts - they must inform themselves about current political events using reliable sources, which means that they must adopt a critical attitude towards biased media reporting and manipulative operations - they must learn to develop a respectful, tolerant, open and constructive attitude towards people from different origins, nationalities and religions who have different premises, interests and opinions (corresponding to the horizontal priority „social inclusion“) - it is a great advantage for them if they can communicate fluently in English and use it as lingua franca - they need to get an overview of all the areas that they can commit themselves to. These goals could only be reached if we motivated students by making use of a variety of methods and media. The project dealt with three topics: 1. “the history of democracy” (from Ancient Greek to the French Revolution, to the totalitarian regimes of the 30s and 40s of the last century up to the foundation of the EU and its present meaning); 2. “current threats to democracy and to the EU (as Brexit, the conflicts with Turkey, nationalistic tendencies in many countries etc.) and 3. “possibilities for students to create society actively“ (school councils, young political democratic parties, local charity organisations, refugee aid, international Human Rights Organisations etc.) . The interactive game could not be developed in the course of the two project years because of digital difficulties and lack of time. The two fictitious figures, who lead through it: a teenage girl and a teenage boy from Ancient Greek had nevertheless played a pivot role. At the beginning of the project they were invented within an online competition (name, age, biographies, outward appearance, interests, character traits etc. and agreed upon). This trick of inventing two historic figures of the students’age (i.e. between 15 and 18) who travel through time and space enabled a change of perspective and thus a chance of self-reflection. In addition to this all students could be involved at any stage of the project: these two figures ran through all the project activities like a thread. They were part of the action during theatre and dance performances and role-plays, they are retained on murals, they are the ones to ask the students questions about the democratic barometer, during trivia quizzez about democracy and in questionnaires. Teachers of various subjects were involved regardless of their participation in transnational meetings. They worked on the project theme in different contexts with different groups of students aged from 15 to 18 according to the corresponding curricular standards. This lead to an implementation of the project’s topic, i.e. “democracy” and a sustainability that went far beyond the end of the project. A pool of all the activities to strengthen the students’ positive attitude towards a European democracy was created, which supports collaboration and networking in each school. This could only be realized under the condition that work groups, that have already been established at each school, have met regularly in order to agree upon activities and evaluate them. The conception of this project involved nealry all the members of the school community. Due to its relevance and political topicality it was not too difficult to enthuse and involve the local press, local institutions and other stakeholders.