CLIL History

THE LONG POSTWAR (1944-1973) ACTIVITY 4.F Referring to the text I Have a Dream write a short paragraph describing: past conditions of life for the Negroes in the US present conditions of life (1960s) for the Negroes in the US Martin Luther King s hopes for the future Europe in the Sixties. The Parisian Students May In the Sixties Europe was full of young people who could look to the future with confidence thanks to the spread of wealth and education. At the same time they expressed dissatisfaction with the political and social systems they were living in. They criticized consumerism as a way of life and the war in Vietnam, too. Students in European universities developed a passion for philosophical discussions and were influenced by Marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, feminism and anticolonialism. This new youth culture challenged authoritarian political and educational structures, and the social and economic systems, in the name of freedom and the autonomy of the individual. Their desires were summarized by famous slogans such as: It is forbidden to forbid , Be realistic, ask for the impossible and All power to the imagination . In France the student demonstrations in May 1968 were triggered by the shutdown of the new University of Paris X, in the suburb of Nanterre, where a building had been occupied by the students some months before. In response university students and teachers organized a protest march in Paris and, after violent clashes with the police, they occupied the Sorbonne, the oldest university in the city. The students protests became national when millions of workers went on strike to support them. ACTIVITY 4.G Read the text Europe in the Sixties. The Parisian Students May and answer the following questions. 1. What were the reasons for the dissatisfaction among young people in the Sixties? 2. What were the cultural and ideological schools of thought that influenced European university students? 3. What did the students challenge? 4. How did the Parisian students movement become a national protest? Europe in the Sixties. Eastern Europe After World War II the USSR imposed communist regimes in Eastern European countries. However, planned economies and repressions of all dissenters were not accepted without resistance. In 1956 a revolution broke out in Hungary against the Soviet rule but this caused a bloody repression. During the Sixties deep social unrest began to spread in Poland and Czechoslovakia. In March 1968 university students protested against the communist regime in Warsaw. The Polish Communist Party did not hesitate to accuse protesters of being part of a Jewish conspiracy, and around 20,000 Jews who had survived the Holocaust left the country to reach Western countries. In August 1968 the Soviet armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia to stop the reforms started by Aleksander Dubc ek, who was the first secretary of the Communist Party. During the previous months (a period known as the Prague Spring ) he had adopted some important measures, including the abolition of censorship, in an attempt to provide socialism with a human face . The Czechoslovakian people responded to the invasion with mass civil disobedience. In January 1969, the university student Jan Palach became a symbol for his generation after setting himself on fire to protest against the Soviet occupation. 46