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The “final solution” to physically exterminate the Jews arose gradually in the Nazi regime after a policy of propaganda, stigmatization, isolation and deportation of them. For reasons that appeared as necessary back then, public opinion was convinced of the need of their expulsion in concentration camps, where, till the end of World War II, six million Jews had been massively killed. It was named “final solution” because it solved once and for good the problem of coexistence, within a pure nation, of a group of people that was spoiling the idea of a homogeneous Germany that Adolf Hitler was putting forth.The educational system that Europe is putting forth nowadays, seventy-four years after the end of the war, bespeaks the necessity of the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups of people. The Unesco Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) prohibits any exclusion from, or limitation to, educational opportunities on the basis of differences, such as sex, ethnic/social origin, language, religion, economic condition, ability. In December 2017, the European Commission of the Union adopted the European Pillar of Social Rights, the first principle of which is that “Everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education, training and life-long learning in order to maintain and acquire skills that enable them to participate fully in society and manage successfully transitions in the labour market”. Evening Highschools in Greece provide education to working pupils above 14 years of age, who have not completed their basic education or fail to do so in morning schools. For this reason, they have been considered as schools with pupils of a lesser quality, something that may lead to their stigmatization or marginalization, although these schools work through inclusive education: at the 1st Evening Highschool of Patras, for example, people of different ages attend lessons, ranging from 14 to 71 years of age, coming, moreover, from different nationalities, different learning backgrounds, and vulnerable social groups (ex drug addicts, Roma and immigrants).This year, the 1st Evening Highschool of Patras is taking over for the first time the coordination of a strategic partnership that leads hopefully, though the studying of the Holocaust, to the elimination of discrimination in classroom and to social inclusion. The project’s objective is for the pupils to get to learn a significant chapter of History, now that Europe is being threatened by extreme right wing policies within itself, and to apply in their environment, e.g. the classroom, principles and values of a democratic coexistence, without discrimination.Four different schools have been chosen on the basis of their historical and geographical relationship to World War II and the Holocaust, on the basis of the participating teachers’ interest and on the basis of pupils’ profile (inclusive classrooms or geographically isolated pupils). These are a Highschool in Sarkad, Hungary, a Highschool in Iasi, Romania, a Highschool in Hamburg, Germany, and a Technical School in Modena, Italy.Starting from the project that has been posted on etwinning, relating to the archiving of news on fascism and violence from local newspapers and a reading club of books documenting experiences from Holocaust survivors, the activities that have been compiled are crosscurricular, crossdisciplinary, and build on team-based experiential learning. They involve History, Social Studies, Geography, English, Drama and Information Technology, they are student-based, creative, and combine study visits outside the classroom with projects/reports/questionnaires/maps/timelines inside classroom.The expected benefits stemming from this partnership apply to pupils, teachers, the school unit and the local community. The former train basic skills, appreciate the need of social inclusion and become recipients of the values of the European way of living. Participating teachers gain self-confidence in the completion of a strategic partnership as well as in the preparation of an inclusive lesson plan in classrooms. The school unit revives its international profile and consolidates its democratic character, opening up channels of cooperation for future European partnerships. The local community reaps the profits of lifelong learning and of a multicultural environment where difference is tolerated. In the long run, the founding values of the European Union are reinforced and thrive: human dignity, freedom, equality, democracy, human rights. Pupils, citizens and teachers return with more loving attention to where we started from: school, education.
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