Start Date
11-1-2012 9:30 AM
End Date
11-1-2012 11:00 AM
Description
From 1976 to 1983, Argentina experienced the worst dictatorship in its history. Roughly 30,000 people were disappeared in the military junta’s clandestine system of terror. Once democracy was reinstalled in 1983 and in particular throughout the last few years, many actions have been undertaken to bring justice and initiate a process of collective memory. The study abroad program “Argentina Social Movements and Human Rights” from SIT has the challenge to teach about this period of the history to foreign students. The different types of memorials are a path by which we can bring students to the understanding of a complex process. This approach presents some challenges in order to combine ethical principles with the pedagogical objectives. In this paper we describe briefly the history of Argentina and some core concepts about collective memory. We also describe the different types of memorials visited by the students as well as the impact it has on them. We define four main challenges that should be taken into account in the debriefing process: 1. From Oversimplification to Thick Comprehension 2. From Horror to Hope, 3. From Particular to Global 4. From Foreign to Personal Our proposition is that these challenges should be faced in order to assure that foreign students are able to comprehend a complex phenomenon being compliant to ethical principles and are able to reflect about broader human rights issues that go beyond this case.
Ethical and pedagogical challenges of experiential learning - in different types of memorials of repression - with foreign students in Argentina
From 1976 to 1983, Argentina experienced the worst dictatorship in its history. Roughly 30,000 people were disappeared in the military junta’s clandestine system of terror. Once democracy was reinstalled in 1983 and in particular throughout the last few years, many actions have been undertaken to bring justice and initiate a process of collective memory. The study abroad program “Argentina Social Movements and Human Rights” from SIT has the challenge to teach about this period of the history to foreign students. The different types of memorials are a path by which we can bring students to the understanding of a complex process. This approach presents some challenges in order to combine ethical principles with the pedagogical objectives. In this paper we describe briefly the history of Argentina and some core concepts about collective memory. We also describe the different types of memorials visited by the students as well as the impact it has on them. We define four main challenges that should be taken into account in the debriefing process: 1. From Oversimplification to Thick Comprehension 2. From Horror to Hope, 3. From Particular to Global 4. From Foreign to Personal Our proposition is that these challenges should be faced in order to assure that foreign students are able to comprehend a complex phenomenon being compliant to ethical principles and are able to reflect about broader human rights issues that go beyond this case.