Term 2 Inquiry: World War 1 - A Living Story

Next term we will be joining the world as it remembers World War One 100 years on. We will study the history of World War One, but we particularly want to look at the way people have communicated their experiences/stories of war through the arts - poetry, painting, theatre, posters, short stories etc.

We also would like to explore why wars happen and what alternatives there might be to solving conflict through war.

Following on from this inquiry we will be exploring and then implementing the Cool Schools Peer Mediation Programme in which students learn to help other students solve altercations and conflict.

If you have any resources, contacts or ideas that might help support this very exciting inquiry, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Wilfred Owen - one of the great war poets who was killed a week before the end of World War 1 almost to the hour - said, "All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful." We would like to learn the "truths" contained in both the historical facts and the representations of war in the arts. We expect that students will explore multiple perspectives and through that journey, perhaps, begin to develop their own personal response like the little girl in the excerpt below

Out of the mouths of babes.....

excerpt from The People, Yes

by Carl Sandburg

The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
"What are those?"
"Soldiers."
"What are soldiers?"
"They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can."
The girl held still and studied.
"Do you know . . . I know something?"
"Yes, what is it you know?"
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."