Month: May 2019

Kasey Turcol has just 75 minutes to explain to her high school students the importance of D-Day — and if this wasn’t the 75th anniversary of the turning point in World War II, she wouldn’t devote that much time to it.

D-Day is not part of the required curriculum in North Carolina — or in many other states.

Turcol reminds her students at Crossroads FLEX High School in Cary that D-Day was an Allied victory that saved Europe from Nazi tyranny and that the young men who fought and died were barely older than they are. She sprinkles her lesson with details about the number of men, ships and planes involved in the landing at Normandy while adding a few lesser-known facts about a Spanish spy and a deadly military practice conducted six months earlier in England.

Losing resonance

In the U.S. and other countries affected by the events on June 6, 1944, historians and educators worry that the World War II milestone is losing its resonance with today’s students.

In France, which was liberated from German occupation, D-Day isn’t a stand-alone topic in schools. German schools concentrate on the Holocaust and the Nazi dictatorship. And despite having been part of the Allied powers, in Russia, the schools avoid D-Day because they believe it was the victories on the Eastern Front that won the war.

“History has taken a back seat” in the U.S. because of the focus on science and math classes, said Cathy Gorn, executive director of National History Day in College Park, Md. 

In the U.S., teaching about World War II varies from state to state. It’s often up to the teachers to decide how much time they want to give to individual battles like D-Day.

California framework

California’s History-Social Science Framework, adopted in 2016, includes for sophomores an expansive unit on World War II that covers how the conflict was “a total war,” the goals of the Allied and Axis powers and how the fighting was fought on different fronts. The unit also includes a section on the Holocaust. 

In New York, school officials are using the D-Day anniversary to review the curriculum and “make recommendations on how the current average time of 90 minutes of World War II study in a school year can be strengthened, expanded and mandated.” 

There are special programs available to immerse select students in the history of D-Day. 

For eight years, National History Day sent 15 pairs of students and teachers to Normandy to immerse them in the history of D-Day. The high school sophomores and juniors would research individual soldiers close to them — relatives or people from their hometowns — who died. On the last day, the group visited a cemetery where each student read a eulogy for his or her individual soldier. 

Teachers also have outside resources. The National World War II Museum offers an electronic field trip through D-Day and provides suggested lessons plans.

In North Carolina, history is taught through “conceptual design” with connections to themes such as geography, economics and politics, said Meghan Grant, coordinating teacher for secondary social studies in Wake County schools.  

The lessons are based on a method of teaching social studies that was developed in 2013 and used by about half the states, said Larry Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies. Paska said it may focus on asking students a question like, “What makes an event a turning point in the war?” Students then will use difference sources of evidence to back up their answers.

‘This is the moment’

As part of her D-Day lesson, Turcol tells her class of juniors and seniors that the Germans thought an attack from the Allied forces wouldn’t be possible.  

“It’s too stormy. It’s too risky,” she said. “And what do we do? Yeah, we find a glimmer of hope. On June 5th, the skies kind of clear. The moon kind of shines. And we’re like, ‘This is the moment. This is what is happening.’ ”

She tells students that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower kept D-Day plans on the “down low.”  

Turcol plays a few minutes of a documentary about D-Day to “show you the true humanity of the war,” she says.  

“You saw the German praying … asking for his mother, father, asking for this to be over. Not everybody is on the same message in Germany,” she says. “Everybody here is a father, a mother, a brother, a cousin, a friend. So every life matters.”

Students in Europe also receive dramatically different lessons on D-Day depending on where they live.

Because of Germany’s history, any hint of militarism remains a taboo. While battles like D-Day, Stalingrad and the Operation Barbarossa invasion of Russia might be mentioned briefly in schools, they tend to be lumped together in broad overviews of the war. Individual teachers do have leeway, however, to pursue topics that capture the attention of students. 

The curriculum is similar from state to state. In Berlin high schools, for example, curriculum guidelines include the history of the war under the overall focus on “the collapse of the first German democracy; Nazi tyranny,” which includes classes on Nazi ideology, resistance movements, the Holocaust and World War II.

Similarly, Bavaria’s ninth-grade curriculum focuses primarily on explaining how the Nazis came to power and their anti-Semitic ideology and genocidal policies, with the war taught briefly as part of their “expansion and conquest policies.”  In the 11th grade, the focus is even more directly on the Holocaust, and the curriculum guidelines note specific dates to be learned, including the anti-Jewish “Kristallnacht” pogrom in 1938.

The Russian narrative on D-Day has remained almost unchanged since the days of the Soviet Union. Historians and schoolbooks describe the invasion as a long-awaited move, happening after the course of WWII had already been shaped by Soviet victories in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and other battles on the Eastern Front.

Even in the country where D-Day occurred, the assault doesn’t have a central place in the teaching of World War II. The history of 20th century conflict is taught in France as a theme and no longer as a chronological list of major battles.

A week of lessons ‘not possible’

“We no longer teach as we did before, what we called ‘the history of battles,’ ” says Christine Guimonnet, who teaches history at a high school west of Paris and is secretary-general of the APHG, a French association of history and geography teachers. “Everyone will, of course, speak about June 6 because it was a major moment in the war, but we’re not going to spend a whole week on it. That’s not possible.” 

As long as they are still teaching the broader themes, French teachers may home in on specific events, like D-Day, to organize study projects and, if they have the budget, trips to Normandy beaches, museums or screenings of The Longest Day, a 1962 film about the events of D-Day. 

As cultural director at Normandy’s Caen Memorial, Isabelle Bournier deals daily with school groups that tour the museum. French children often aren’t familiar with the details of D-Day, partially because fewer families have relatives who lived through the war and can pass on their stories, she said.

Students from Normandy are different from the broader French student population, she said.

“All families are more or less impregnated by this history. It is part of us,” Bournier said. 
…

On stage, amid the hubbub of a Bolivian street market, women recount their stories of abuse at the hands of men.

But the violence depicted in the play isn’t just make-believe for the 22 indigenous actresses: It’s based on their own real-life experiences.

“Kusisita,” a work that seeks to raise awareness about violence against women and mobilize people to fight it, has been drawing large audiences in Bolivia, which has one of South America’s highest rates of femicides.

In the theater, Maria Luque portrays a woman who asks her drunken husband to stop abusing her. In her own history, she said, she was so brutally beaten by the father of her four children that she was left partly paralyzed. Even after more than a decade, she still has trouble moving some of the muscles in her face. 

“I’ve suffered discrimination since birth,” she told The Associated Press. “My mom was very poor and she escaped violence. For some, (violence) might be normal, but we want to show that it shouldn’t be that way.”

“Kusisita” is one of two plays offered by the Kory Warmis – Women of Gold in the Aymara language – troupe, and both focus on the problems of gender violence and convincing women to reject it.

“I was quiet, submissive, but I left that behind on stage. Theater is now my life,” said Luque, 56, who immigrated to the city of El Alto from a rural community in search of work opportunities. 

The plays, presented in Aymara, are also aimed at indigenous communities where nearly half of all reports of gender-based violence takes place, according to 2017 figures from the National Statistics Institute. Those communities make up roughly a fifth of Bolivia’s population.

​About 40% of the country’s police cases involve family violence and alcohol is involved in 90% of cases, according to a government report last year on gender-based violence.

“It’s a very high and alarming rate,” said government minister Carlos Romero, who helped write the report.

Actress Gumercinda Mamani, an artisan and shepherd , recalled how the body of a friend was found on the outskirts of La Paz with marks from a rope that her partner had used to choke her.

“It’s hard to understand how the man that you give your life to is the one who takes it away,” said Mamani, a former representative for female farmers. “I’m fighting against this.”

Carmen Aranibar, another actress, joined the group in the hopes that her story would encourage other women to leave abusive relationships.

“We can’t wait until they kill us or we want to take our own lives out of the desperation caused by violence,” said Aranibar, a mother of two boys who sells diapers for a living.

She said she endured beatings by her partner for more than 10 years before finding out that he was cheating on her with a younger woman. 

“I nearly killed myself,” she said. “I put up with everything he did because I was afraid that he’d leave me. But then I realized that it wasn’t worth it and I left him. I’m happy here and that’s what I tell in the play.”

The theater group, which was founded in 2014, finds itself gaining an audience as waves of women mobilize to fight gender violence across the world. In neighboring Argentina, a grassroots movement known as “Ni Una Menos,” or Not One Less, emerged in 2015 and drew thousands to hold massive demonstrations in support of women’s rights. But while movements in Bolivia have lacked the impact of Ni Una Menos or the (hash)MeToo movement in the United States, some say the plays have had impact.

“It’s a success, 100% percent,” said Paola Ricalde of the La Paz mayorship’s directorate for equality policies. 

Theater group director Erika Andia said it’s challenging to oversee a group of women who have been forced to be silent and submissive. But she said that their strength of will helped them achieve their goal of “discovering what they’re capable of, helping them loosen up and boost their confidence.”

“We never thought we’d reach so far,” Andia said. “There are no limits to what we do. Every year we continue to grow and there’s happiness after all the pain that our actresses have suffered.”
…

Simon Pagenaud arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month with his job on the line and rumors swirling around Gasoline Alley that Alexander Rossi could soon replace him at Team Penske.

The Frenchman is leaving with a pair of wins, his face soon to be engraved on the Borg-Warner trophy as the Indianapolis 500 champion and an assurance from Roger Penske himself that he isn’t going anywhere.

“Do I even have to answer that?” Penske asked. “Absolutely.”

In a head-to-head duel for the ages, Pagenaud defeated none other than Rossi with a dramatic pass on the penultimate lap, then holding on the rest of the way to hand Penske his 18th win in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” Even sweeter, it came the 50th anniversary of Penske’s arrival at the Brickyard.

Pagenaud and Rossi swapped the lead five times over the final 13 laps, and the margin of victory was a mere 0.2086 seconds — the seventh-closest finish in the 103 years of the race.

“It’s a dream come true. A lifetime trying to achieve this,” said Pagenaud, who dismissed the thought over job security as he celebrated his first Indy 500 win. “The milk motivated me. I was just focused on the job, man.”

Pagenaud was dominant all day, leading 116 of the 200 laps, and the win was cathartic. He stopped his car at the start-finish line and hopped out to share the moment with his fans. And once he finally made his way to victory lane, Pagenaud climbed from his car and let out a primal scream, then dumped the entire bottle of milk over his head. 

“I never expected to be in this position,” Pagenaud said, “and I certainly am grateful.”

President Donald Trump phoned Penske in victory lane from Japan, where he was meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over trade. Penske passed the phone to Pagenaud, and Trump later tweeted an invite to the White House for the winning team.

Penske, who was there earlier with Joey Logano last month to celebrate last year’s NASCAR Cup Series championship, said Trump told him: “I must have been your good-luck charm.”

Penske now has two consecutive Indy 500 victories — Will Power won last year — for the first time since 2002-03. It was his third win in the crown jewel race in the past five years and fifth in the past 14.

​It was a banner day, too, with Josef Newgarden finishing fourth and Power in fifth.

Rossi lost his cool several times in the race, but the Californian had better fuel mileage than Pagenaud and the Penske cars. The 2016 race winner twice charged to the front in the closing laps.

“Horsepower. That’s unfortunately the way it is,” said Rossi, who was in a Honda for Andretti Autosport. “I think we had the superior car. We just didn’t have enough there at the end.”

Pagenaud was in a Chevrolet, and the bowtie brand was the dominant engine all May. It swept the top four spots in qualifying, won the race and took four of the top six spots.

Pagenaud is the first Frenchman to win the Indy 500 since Rene Thomas in 1914. Indianapolis records count five French winners, but Gil de Ferran in 2003 and Gaston Chevrolet in 1920, while born in France, list other nationalities. Pagenaud was the 21st winner form the pole and first since Helio Castroneves a decade ago.

As he began the traditional victory lap in the back of a convertible, Rossi was one of many drivers to walk onto the track to congratulate him. The American leaned in for a genuine embrace.

“Nothing else matters but winning,” Rossi said. “This one will be hard to get over.”

Rossi, who drove from the back to finish fourth a year ago, had been patient through the first half of the race and set himself up to take control after the halfway point. But a troublesome fuel hose on a pit stop caused a lengthy delay, and Rossi was angrily pounding his steering wheel while imploring the Andretti crew to get him back on track.

He really lost his cool when he couldn’t get past the lapped car of Oriol Servia. As Rossi finally raced by, he angrily raised his fist at the Spaniard. A late wreck then caused an 18-minute stoppage with Rossi set to restart the final sprint as the leader, and he conveyed his mood over his team radio.

“A bunch of hungry, angry cars behind me,” Rossi said. “Little do they know I’m angrier.”

Pagenaud got him on the restart, though, and the two went back and forth four more times before Pagenaud locked down the win. Former champion Takuma Sato finished third as he and Rossi gave Honda two spots on the podium. Santino Ferrucci in seventh was the highest finishing rookie.

Attention had been heavy on rookie Colton Herta, but the 19-year-old driver for team owners Mike Harding and George Steinbrenner IV was the first driver out of the race when his gearbox broke.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials had prepared for rain, and perhaps even a postponement, in NBC’s debut as broadcaster. But it was a bright, sunny day — a picture-perfect showcase for Pagenaud to triumph on Memorial Day weekend. 
…

North America, as the world knows it today, would likely look different without their efforts. Woodsmen logged forests, producing essential lumber and firewood, while also clearing farmland. They grew to be called lumberjacks, and at a recent competition in Sweden, a champion emerged a cut above the rest. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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