6 thoughts on “23. Nov.”

1. Evaluation of pedagogical approaches:

   Q1+Q2- guided tour with contemporary witness
   +first hand infos
   -may be subjective
   Anti-bias
   + dismanteling of stereotypes
   – hard to ”kick” the center in some situations
   Q3- There should be done a very selection the eyewitnesses, relevant for the topic and for the event.
   Q4- People can benefit from lectures and presentations, anti-bias, movies, story-telling cafe, guided tour, rallye in small groups. But also very appropiate to people’s field mainly for those working within a NGO, social sciences, etc.

2. My presentation on conflict and cultures of remembrance in Romania talked about nothingness, void, absence. Of the need to put something where a landmark (typo: landMarx) once stood, may it be a statue, a building, or an authority figure. I was interested in what the Romanians used to fill the blank. It was either a reinterpretation, a replacement, or a sign to mark the absence. When I saw piece of the facade of (the new/the old?) Palast der Republik I understood that there can even also be something that imitates the initial thing that fills back the space. But this time it’s not hermeneutical or critical, it’s not subversive or involuntarily expressive and open (like the story of the Carol I statue turning into Stalin and Lenin and maybe now Carol I again, as Simona told it). It’s an affirmation of status; it’s the dream of a paradise lost, it’s a nostalgia that goes deeper in the past than GDR. It’s maybe denial or history. It’s quoting an entire work, but isn’t that cheating?

3. *of history

4. Talking about an “east-west conflict” is a stereotype and also an excuse for failure. Yelling and whistling at people when they don’t share your views you, talking about things you don’t know anything and the nostalgia of symbols are all parts of the inner conflict and mental wall we are building.
   Building different types of memorials about the wall makes the wall much more present than it should be.

5. The training was very balanced involving a wide variety of methods. I appreciated this variety. The weblog seemed not to work very well as it became a daily obligation more that a space for voluntary reflection. I enjoyed very much the inclusion in the program of several visits as such a long program wouldn’t survive well just with a lot of indoors work. The methods used during the seminar were complementary and well balanced. I felt that there was some lack of planning for team-building activities in order to create a greater cohesion within the group, which should be a priority in the first and/or the second day of the program. Creating conditions for a positive group dynamic influences immensely the process and results of any activity. Also the conflict management could be better addressed, in a way to transform positively the arising tensions within the group, which necessarily affect the group’s work and the willingness to actively participate. Once again i’d go for more activities that promote team building and a relaxed environment inside the group, as well as different attitude towards conflict . In the Anti-Bias workshop the conflict was better addressed, probably due to a more clear approach to it on the part of the facilitator.
   I’m interested in exploring the Anti-Bias method, both in its theoretical ground as well as a tool to work with groups.
   The artistic activity resulted really well and that actually surprised me as i felt the group energy was quite low in that day and frictions among participants were getting more visible. That was a good insight on how sometimes just liberating the participants to do a more creative and autonomous work work, with a flexible time frame, can be just the right recipe for a difficult day.

6. The pedagogical approaches I liked the most were the rally (it allowed to know other people of the group, bonding with the need to find answers and to find pathways in an unknown place), the biographic work (including the storytelling cafè for it’s usefulness in short time actions and the artistic expression to foresee the creative process while and after the biographic collection), the interactive GDR museum (it made me think about how museums might share historical insights and yet keep it’s fascination/raising interest feature), the anti-bias approach (for the doors it opened in the forthcoming work with conflicts and social justice) and the conversation with who experienced (KvU) and who keeps on sharing remembrance (Bernauer Straße) (in order to understand the dynamics of resistance as also of memory-keeping through time).

   The pedagogical approaches I did not like were the most sensationalist, namely the guided tour with the contemporary witnesses at the Hohenschönhausen former prison (I think it perpetuated the sense of constraint and repression of the prison, almost forcing the physical experience of fear and suffering with few possibilities to escape). I think that the presentation of pictures/photos/songs would have been better if the group’s elements had more similar degrees of engagement and responsibility. Classical methods like lectures and movies, even though being less original, were quite informative and useful.

   The disadvantages of the methods I liked would be the time needed for the rallye (almost impossible to adapt to a short action), the risk of increasing conflicts which would possibly bloc the group’s action in the storytelling and the anti-bias, the lack of depth in the interactive museum and the need for the physical presence of witnesses of memory, who may be unavailable in other moments of action.

   These methods would be improved if more time was spent in each activity and possibly if some stronger moderation (rather than facilitation) would emerge in moments of conflict that demand the entire group to stop. I also think that a broader spectrum of biographical approaches could be presented according to different objectives, in the effort of “opening empirical doors” to mobilize into different practical situations.

   The possibilities of adaptation in my educational field are quite good; I believe every method is adaptable, but we need to consider target group, available time, available resources, etc.

   I would like to use some of these pedagogical approaches, namely the informal talk with witnesses, other types of work with biographical and anti-bias methods and creative outputs of such actions. I personally feel these are very good ways to create space for dialogue and to understand “other people’s shoes”, putting ourselves in the other’s situations, reducing the distance between the “self” and the “other” – and thus constituting an excellent tool to work in conflicts.

   THANK YOU!