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Hi guys, as one of my final prove yourself kind of things for this semester I have to teach a high school class about the Armenian Genocide on Monday or Tuesday this upcoming week. Now... I've taught a class before but it was on a subject I knew a ton about and that was pretty easy and straight forward. But this time around I'm having trouble coming up with a lesson plan for the class on the off chance that I do my presentation too fast and we have a lot of extra time.

Think I can get any help?

Ask lots of questions to the class, and get them to back up what they're saying. You might want to get them to talk about the relevance of it today, and how it affects Armenia now, and the Caucasus/Middle East/Turkey as a whole.

Make sure they know where Armenia is first

Talk a little about Armenian history. Their religious back ground and why the genocide took place. Talk about the effect it had on modern Armenia, and how they are looking right now.

You might be able to ask them to come up with some other examples of genocides and sum it up "genocide is bad".

Perhaps you could also talk about some of the refugees from Armenia, how many of them are there in your country etc.

I hope that helps

Slowly opens Rome: Total War on the projector...

Or, if you're feeling mildly malicious, you could use hard-to-spot logical fallacies to prove that genocide is good, and see how many of them manage to spot the faults in your reasoning. >:D

Maybe not a good idea...

You could go to a Turkish nationalist website and see the evidence they have that the whole thing is a massive beat up and never happened, no sir.

Or you could ask them why they think there are people who deny that anything happened and other examples of such "thought" or lack thereof.

That is a really hard subject I would avoid it like the plague. Really, you might find yourself to be in a little bit of trouble. Just don't is better.

Now there's an interesting idea - I could imagine a great dialogue coming out of this, assuming your class is quite active and knowledgeable on the topic of genocide.

I did that a couple years ago during an internship to show how battles *might* have been fought in Roman times... Of course it was just my excuse to play RTW MP at school in front of the class. Needless to say, I was stomped miserably.

I appreciate the concern, though I feel as though I might be safe considering this was assigned to me by the teacher.

Well I go in tomorrow morning. Hope I dont mess up

Went... Meh... Felt more like I was presenting a topic than actually teaching. Probably what it was...

Well, it's pretty hard to present genocide in an interesting way, especially genocide that isn't the Holocaust.

My Roman history teacher for this past quarter used Rome: Total War on a few of his slides during lectures

He also had a slide of Civ4, it was all around pretty awesome.

As for the OP, I don't know if anyone's asked this question, but how are the students (assuming this is the US)? Can they point to Armenia on a map (I certainly hope so). Do they understand the relevance of Armenia to history as a whole? When I was in high school I found it interesting when people went really in depth on that kind of stuff (probably because I was a history nerd), but a lot of my friends found that kind of stuff really boring.

*EDIT* didn't realize the event had already passed. Oh well, I'd still like to know some info on the above.

!00% of the people in the class as well as the teacher couldn't pin point Armenia nor did they know there was even a Genocide somewhere in Europe that wasnt started by Hitler...

What grade was it?

The American public school system. When you think they've hit rock bottom you forget they can still dig.

I still wonder how Western culture embraces the topic like a woolen blanket found in the middle of a blizzard.

This is Backroom material. I simply protest something subject to research and academical discussion to be put in front like "go to some Turkish nationalist website and enjoy what the retards say".

I -as a member- ask for a lock.

To be fair, very few people in the west know how divisive this topic is.

If it's any constellation his classmates probably know what and where Turkey is

My point.

Something gobbling and lying roasted all over the tray.

I don't care what Lemur says , you've still got it

Seniors in high school... Even though it was a continuation school, I was surprised at the teachers lack of knowledge in the subject.


Also LEN, this wasn't meant as a topic for people to talk about the Armenian Massacre, I just needed advice on how to give an unbiased and riveting lesson on a topic my teacher chose.

So, Im asking any one with political opinions about the topic I was teaching to put spoil tags on it or if you really need to bring politics into this, post in the back room. I'm supposed to do another teaching lesson after christmas, so if we have any teachers or soon to be teachers here I would really appreciate some help.

Yeah, well, how many Armenians or Turks know about indentured servitude or the Trail of Tears (Turkey is more likely to air some insane gunfight between Captain America, Spiderman, and Luke Skywalker)? Armenian history just isn't very relevant to us. And I'm pretty sure it's part of Asia.

please.... Dont get this thread locked. Leave the who does this and who does that for the back room.

But still, why should American students be expected to have detailed knowledge of the history of Armenia?

Damn, beat me to it
IIRC, the Armenian Lobby is the second most powerful foreign interest group in Congress (After the J00s), and there's a large Armenian-American population in California.

Source?

Detailed knowledge, no, but at least a brief reprieve from the ignorance that there is a world outside the US of A (woot!) and that, occasionally, significant events occur in this magical place.

I'd bet it's the same deal with every country's school system.

Well, my class at least covered the Armenian Genocide. Not in depth, but I'm at least aware of its existance. I'm a high school junior btw.

So education isn't THAT bad... just the normal level of bad.

Interesting. When's yer birthday?

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