The Project

The first schoolproject

The school of civil courage -

for adolescents

Cradle of civil courage -

for kindergarten children

Soon.........

Until now only in Hungarian.

The Project

Educational programs

Knowledgebase

Press release

The Civil Works Association’s project called What would you do? began in 2011 when the organization’s video group has received a subvention and therefore a great opportunity to ask the question through film making: What would you do if somebody was bothered just near you ont he street only for his/her color difference, lifestyle or sexual orientation? These 5-8 minutes long short movies were all made by candid camera and they are speaking about social stereotypes. (http://www.temittennel.hu/film.html)

Nowadays it is a taboo to speak about minority groups like gays, the Roma or the homeless in the school environment, although they are parts of the common discussion, mostly in negative contexts. The age group of adolescents gets the information and image from the press, which only transmits one point of view and has the goal of raising awareness or criminalizing the particular group. The other source of their information is their closer and wider environment: the society.

In the first part of 2013 when we started our film pedagogy project we were talking and working about important social, ethical, human right and civil issues, which are invisibly affecting our everyday lives, feelings, passions and finally: our actions. During the project we did 20x90 minutes long sessions with 18 high school classes and 2 adults groups, altogether more than 600 person participated.

The leaders of the project:

Ágnes Bakonyvári L., drama teacher

Gábor Csaba Márton, actor and drama trainer, intercultural specialist

Resonsible for our films:

Mária Takács, director

Magdi Tímár, producer

Participated in the development of the „First schoolproject”:

Györgyi Kövesi, teacher of ethics

Translator:

Zsófia Jozifek

Through all the experiences we had in the „pilot project” – in addition to all the positive results we achieved - we considered important to declare some conclusions. One of them was that 1x90 minutes are too short for the particular class activity. The time is too short to deepen the subject, to discuss the questions that come from the short movies, to involve the students, to obtain social sensitivity.

The second important conclusion was the need for taking the next step. The students and the project leaders both would have needed more collaboration in practice, when the theoretical knowledge gained in the activities would have come to action; so how the Civil Courage functions?

The third important conclusion was that the strong basis of negative attitudes towards minority groups in the particular age group is not the real life experience but the fear they have. What we do not know, we fear, so we set the objective to have a deeper and more comprehensive social senzitivisation towards minority groups.

In September of 2013 our program could take its third step thanks to the subvention we got from the Norwegan Civil Fund (www.norvegcivilalap.hu).

We named the project The School of Civil Courage declaring the intention to emphasize the importance of schools micro environments, starting from personal references, arriving to deeper and wider understanding.

We planned a series of 5 session activities, where there are enough time, occasion and opportunity to build trust, to create a tolerant and consensual ambient, where one can stand up for his/her opinion and his/herself.

In the traditional school context – where the teacher is the source and mediator of every knowledge, the student stays as a reciever – there is no place for questioning, debating and doubt.

One objective of ours is to teach the students to ask. To create a way of critical thinking that focuses on changing between different points of views of a subject and therefore refines the existing opinions. To force the change of paradigma in the young members of our society, a society that’s social sensitivity is poor, solidarity hides in silence and is insensitive about the vulnerable and suffering ones. The aim of project is that the students don’t pass by social injustice, verbal, mental and physical violence without paying attention, but asking: is that all right that way? The answers that could be given would be the future step of the project.

We consider it particularly important that the youngsters pay attention to the everyday life stereotypes and the discrimination coming from them, that they think about the seen problems and they understand the working mechanisms.

Above the social sensitivization our goal is to achieve awareness about the opportunities to take action and help. We want youngsters to be more open-minded about human rights, social responsibility, to want and be able to take action individually for their closer and wider environment to live in a more solidary society and world.

The real novelty is the participation of the kindergarten group in the subproject, which got the Cradle of Civil Courage name. We talk through stories, tales, games and puppets about tolerance, empathy, differences and hate. We are convinced, that the ability of being open-minded is being learnt in that age, and researches also prove that the image about oneself and “the other” is already constructed, as well as stereotypes. In that period conversion is still possible, the children can be affected not to differentiate between their mates according to skin colors, body shapes and other given characteristics. Furthermore their identity can still be formed to feel responsibility for their companions.