Britain’s Conservative Party won a landslide in 2019. Now the Tories and their elite are the butt of jokes overseas as polls point to possible humiliation. 10 Downing Street, the official residence and office of the British Prime Minister, in London, 20 October...
Politics can seem boring to some young people. But in Britain it is anything but. Correspondent Barry Moody takes us through the musical chairs of British prime ministers and shows how political divisions inside the British government over Brexit, taxes and the economy could lead to a breakup of the United Kingdom.
Exercise: Create teams of five. Each team should choose one member to be prime minister. The other four students should each take on the roles of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. They should each do some basic research on their region’s current relationship with the British government. The student who is the prime minister will research and consider the importance of having these countries united into one government. Together they will create a poster that explains the individual identities of the four countries and how they benefit or are disadvantaged by their subordination to a united government.
I was in Berlin in 1989 when the Wall came down. I wish I had thanked Mikhail Gorbachev for changing my life and letting me witness history. The author perched on a Berlin underground station entrance in the fall of 1989 (Photo courtesy of Elaine Monaghan) In June...
In 1989, Elaine Monaghan found herself in Germany. She would spend two decades covering international affairs for the Reuters news service, but the night she witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall changed her life. Reflecting on that event, she marks the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, then leader of the Soviet Union, whose decisions contributed to the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR. Monaghan tells us that “even if you don’t always grasp everything that is happening around you, if you follow an unmarked, difficult path, opting not to resist the pull of history, walls can come tumbling down.” She offers youth an important reminder that, with strife all around us, they can still make a difference.
Exercise: The Berlin Wall was a concrete barrier that separated East and West Berlin, dividing two countries – the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Can your students think of a wall today, either physical or geographic, that acts as a political divide? What might bring that wall down?
A half century ago, I watched Richard Nixon plunge the U.S. into a constitutional crisis. Now I wonder if American democracy will survive Donald Trump. Former U.S. President Donald Trump as he spoke to supporters from the Ellipse at the White House in Washington on 6...
The Taliban have barred girls from schools in Afghanistan. So some of them gather secretly in homes in Kabul, drawn together by a former teacher. Hassan Adib leads a discussion of “Memories of a translator” by Mohhamad Qazi in Kabul, April 2022. (Photo by...
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan means millions of girls cannot attend school. Many young people outside of the country know this, but it is difficult for them to conceive just what this means for a young Afghan girl their age. In his story, Jalal Nazari, an Afghan now living in Canada where he is a Global Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, takes us inside Kabul homes, where about 30 teenage girls meet secretly twice a month to improve their reading and writing skills. To hear the girls and their teacher speak adds a highly personal dimension to a conflict that for many young people remains distant and abstract. The courage they show in the face of Taliban strictures is a reminder to young people everywhere that education is a privilege not to be taken lightly.
Exercise: Ask your students to interview their parents, asking them why education is important, and then to write an essay quoting their parents and adding their own thoughts.
My grandmother has spent her entire life in Georgia. The Soviet Union was not all bad, she said, but Georgia’s dawning independence was beautiful. My grandfather and grandmother, Ellen Bagdasarian Davidova, getting married in 1967 “My name is Ellen Davidova,...
