This activity was used with pupils in key stage 3, year 9.

This activity took place with a year 9 class in a mixed 11-16 comprehensive school in East London. The school has 620 pupils from a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds.

The activity was part of a five-lesson unit on the Second World War.

Aims

• To understand that the Second World War brought people from diverse backgrounds and experiences into contact with each other.
• To explore how these encounters influenced and changed people and helped shape the post-war world.
• To consider the significance of these encounters for the post-war world.

Activity objectives

• To learn that autobiographical accounts of African, Caribbean and Indian soldiers in the Second World War include descriptions of encounters with fellow soldiers and other people that caused both parties to rethink and change their attitudes and life choices.
• To understand that some of these changes in attitudes led to decisions by significant groups of people that affected the course of events after the war.
• To communicate knowledge and understanding of the past through role play and extended writing.

This activity relates to unit 18, 'Hot war, cold war: why did the major twentieth-century conflicts affect so many people' from the QCA/DfES key stage 3 scheme of work for history.

It also relates to the following references from the key stage 3 programme of study for history:

• describe and analyse the relationship between the characteristic features of the periods and societies studied, including the experiences and range of ideas, beliefs and attitudes of men, women and children in the past (2a)
• learn about the social, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of the societies studied, both in Britain and the wider world (2b)
• identify, select and use a range of appropriate sources of information (4a)
• communicate their knowledge and understanding of history using a range of techniques (5c).

Activity description

The pupils worked in small groups or pairs and looked at a selection of two or three sources from the 'Whose freedom?' teaching pack. These included autobiographical accounts, for example Bildad Kaggia from Kenya telling fellow ship passengers about racial discrimination in East Africa. The extracts also describe how Waruhiu Itote's conversations with a white fellow soldier, an African-American GI and Indians involved in the Quit India campaign radicalised his sense of himself as an African and caused him to become involved in, and eventually a leader of, the Mau Mau movement in Kenya.

Each pair or group then looked at sources from the same pack that described experiences of racism, for example Learie Constantine being refused entry to a hotel and Eric Ferron encountering British children who had been taught negative racial stereotypes by their teachers.

The pupils carried out a hot-seat activity, taking it in turns to play the role of the writer of a particular source and answer questions from the rest of the class about their positive and negative experiences during the Second World War, and how their wartime encounters affected the decisions they made about the future.

After the hot-seat activity the whole class discussed how significant the contribution of black servicemen and servicewomen during the Second World War was, particularly for post-war developments in British colonies. They then worked on a piece of extended writing using the discussions to structure their ideas.

Commentary

This lesson helped the pupils to understand the experiences of black soldiers during the Second World War. They also realised that the story of black soldiers was not a peripheral aspect of the war but something of real significance, and that the full impact of the war cannot be fully understood without taking this into account.

The activity challenges racism implicitly by focusing on black experiences of the war as the centre of this key stage 3 unit. The pupils learnt how certain groups significantly affected the course of events after the war, for example East Africans engaging in anti-colonial movements, British soldiers voting Labour to achieve Indian independence and West Indians returning to the UK to settle in the late 1940s and 1950s. The pupils enjoyed doing this activity in conjunction with 'Joining up 1' and were intrigued to learn more about this history.

Resources

'Whose freedom?' - a photocopiable teaching pack available from Savannah Press. For further information write to the publisher at 13 Church Road, Oare, Faversham, Kent, ME13 0QA

'Memorial Gates: We also served' - a section of the Birmingham grid for learning website with stories, facts and resources about soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean

'Together' - a pack of extracts, biographies and information on black and Asian Soldiers in the war. The pack is available from the Imperial War Museum shop (020 7416 5327) for £30

'We also served' - a project pack developed by the Birmingham Advisory and Support Service (ISBN 1-898244-66-9). The pack contains 16 veteran stories from Black and Asian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars. It includes a teacher's pack and resources. The project pack can be ordered for £35 from the Birmingham Advisory and Support Service (BASS) on 0121 303 8118, Fax: 0121 039 8555 or email: bass.publications@birmingham.gov.uk.