Sample 10th Grade Global History Online Lesson on the Rwandan Genocide
Sample 10th Grade Global History Online Lesson on the Rwandan Genocide
Developed by Alan Singer, director of social studies education at Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY.
ONLINE TEACHER EXPLANATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6piF4Caaig&feature=youtu.be
In response to the Corona Virus, schools across the country are closed and teachers are racing to prepare online lessons for their students. First a confession, I am not a tech geek and I have always resisted online instruction, but know I recognize that teachers have no choice. This lesson is designed to reintroduce to students and extend their understanding of the New York State “enduring issue” of human rights violations, in this case, genocide.
To support social studies teachers and their students, I recommend the following approach to online instruction.
1. It provides students with a video where a teacher explains the lesson before students begin the assignments and includes document analysis, guiding questions, and a range of different types of documents (multiple entry points), and requires written explanations by students, including an exit ticket.
2. The lesson concludes with a follow-up question for students to consider. Rwanda is a case study of genocide, something that happened repeatedly in global history and could happen again. What makes people engage in mass murder and how can it be prevented?
3. In this case the EXIT TICKET is also the AIM QUESTION. Students could complete the assignments on a format like Google Docs or Classroom or submit their answers as a Microsoft Word attachment.
4. However, what I am most interested in here is modeling a document-based lesson that includes the explanatory video. I posted the sample explanatory video on YouTube.
5. Teachers should create their own lessons and edit documents based on the academic performance levels of their students.
AIM QUESTION: Why were almost a million people murdered in Rwanda?
NEW YORK STATE CONTENT FRAMEWORK:
1. Following World War II, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was written. This provides a set of principles to guide efforts to protect threatened groups.
2. Historical and contemporary violations of human rights can be evaluated, using the principles and articles established within the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
3. Students will examine and analyze the roles of perpetrators and bystanders in human rights violations in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur in light of the principles and articles within the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
4. Students will trace United States foreign policy regarding Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo, exploring the tension between defending human rights and the reluctance to intervene stemming from the Vietnam syndrome.
http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/programs/curriculum-instruction/ss-framework-9-12.pdf
SKILL FOCUS:
1. Identify and define an enduring issue examined in the following set of documents.
2. Using your knowledge of Social Studies and analysis of the documents, argue why these events in Rwanda are significant and how they illustrate the issue of genocide that has endured across time.
ONLINE TEACHER EXPLANATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6piF4Caaig&feature=youtu.be
An enduring issue is a challenge or problem that human societies have faced, debated or discussed across time. Many societies have attempted to address these enduring issues with varying degrees of success. Enduring issues explored in this lesson on Rwanda include the impact of colonization and decolonization, conflict, in this case, civil war, shifts in power and authority, and human rights violations.
https://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/2-enduring-issues-chart.pdf
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/ss/hs/framework/ghg2/draft-prototypes-global.pdf
Rwanda is a small landlocked country in South Central Africa. According to the American C.I.A. World Factbook, Rwanda is smaller than the state of Maryland. Its population of over 12 million people is about the same as Illinois or Pennsylvania.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html
After World War I, the League of Nations stripped Germany of its African colonies and granted the European country of Belgium control over the area known as Rwanda. Germany and Belgium used a policy of divide and conquer to control Rwanda. They ruled through local Tutsi monarchs and reinforced ethnic divisions. In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu majority overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed or exiled. In 1990, Tutsi exiles formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and began a civil war hoping to return home. The war further exacerbated ethnic tensions. Starting in April 1994, the Hutu controlled Rwandan government was responsible for the murder of three-quarters of the Tutsi population. The Tutsi-led RPF finally defeated the Hutu national army and militias and established a new government. However, in just 100 days, about 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered by government forces and Hutu extremists who claimed they were weeding out “cockroaches.”
1. Your first task is to examine and explain Article III of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
2. Your second task is to locate Rwanda on a map of Africa.
3. Your third task is to watch, take notes on, and answer questions based on a video on Rwanda narrated by BBC Africa journalist Victoria Uwonkunda.
4. Your fourth task is the complete the questions that follow each document in the document packet.
5. Your final task is to answer the EXIT TICKET question: Why were almost a million people murdered in Rwanda?
Start your essay with an assertion that you will document with sources.
· In your answer, you should consider the responsibility of Rwandans and the international community.
· You answer should cite a minimum of three specific documents and materials from this lesson and should be at least 250 words. A better answer will cite more documents and would be longer.
Task 1: Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Questions
1. What is the definition of genocide?
2. What is meant by “intent?”
3. How does this definition differ from what you learned about genocide while studying the European Holocaust during World War II?
Task 2: Locate Rwanda in the map of Africa.
Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/rw.htm
Task 3: Watch, take notes on, and answer questions based on a video on Rwanda narrated by BBC Africa journalist Victoria Uwonkunda. In this video, Uwonkunda explains the events that led up to, happened during, and followed the Rwandan 1990s civil war. Watch the video report and answer questions 1–10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVnOGsJY5RQ
Questions
1. Who are the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda and which is the larger one?
2. Which of the two groups dominated the country until independence from Belgium?
3. What was the goal of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)?
4. What event sparked these events?
5. How long did the campaign of violence last?
6. How did the militias identify the people they were looking for?
7. What role did the international community play in permitting these events to happen?
8. How was propaganda used to stir up hatred?
9. What were the results of the civil war?
10. In your opinion, based on the United Nations definition, did events in Rwanda qualify as genocide?
Task 4: Answer the questions that accompany each document in the packet.
(A) In 1926, Belgians introduced ethnic identity cards that differentiated Hutus from Tutsis largely based on head measurements. (a) Belgium officials taking head measurements. (b) An identity chart created by Belgium colonial officials. © A sample Rwandan Tutsis ID card from the 1950s. It shows a person’s date and city of birth, profession, name of spouse, and children’s birthdays.
Source: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2018000400277
Questions
1. How did Belgium officials determine ethnic identity?
2. How could ethnic identity cards support Belgium’s colonization of Rwanda?
3. In your opinion, what was the impact of ethnic identity cards on Rwandans?
(B) Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines
RTLM was a government supported Rwandan radio station that broadcast during the April–July 1994 events. It was accused by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal of transmitting racist propaganda against the Tutsi minority, inciting ethnic hatred, and advocating the annihilation of all Tutsis in Rwanda. RTLM reported on the latest massacres to promoted their anti-Tutsi agenda. To dehumanize the Tutsi, it referred to them as “cockroaches” and it told its followers “You have missed some of the enemies. You must go back there and finish them off. The graves are not yet full!” This brief clip from the movie Hotel Rwanda contains sample radio broadcasts translated into English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qx7JMpOI.
Questions
1. What crimes is RTLM accused of?
2. How did broadcasts attempt to dehumanize the Tutsi?
3. In your opinion, should a radio station be punished for the actions of its listeners?
© Newspaper Coverage of Rwandan Massacres
Source: https://www.newspapers.com/topics/world-history/rwandan-genocide/
Questions
1. How does Jean-Luc Thevoz describe the events in Rwanda?
2. What happened to the Ghanaian peacekeeper?
3. Why is it hard for other nations to claim ignorance of the events?
(D) Jacqueline Murekatete’s Survivor Account One Hundred Days of Genocide in Rwanda
Source: Social Studies for Secondary Schools (NY: Routledge, 2008), p. 5.
I spent most of the 100 days of genocide at the orphanage. Each day we had more kids arrive whose parents had been killed and it grew very crowded. Some of the children had hands or arms cut off by the killers. Sometimes parents dropped off their children for safety and then they would try to find a place to hide from the Hutus. There were many instances where I witnessed Tutsi men and women being dragged to their deaths by the killers as they tried to climb the fences of the orphanage. In the orphanage, little children cried every night for their parents. We did not have enough food in the orphanage and many children died from malnutrition or diseases that spread because of the overcrowding. It got to the point that the priests built a cemetery inside the orphanage. Every day or so we all went to the cemetery, the priests would say a prayer, and they would bury a child. It became almost like a daily routine. I was fortunate to never get really sick. Every night, I prayed that the whole thing would be over soon and then I would go back home and see my family. Hutu soldiers, who were trying to escape, came to the orphanage and told the Italian priests that they were going to finish the job and exterminate all the Tutsis, including the children and babies. They herded us into the cafeteria and made us sing their victory songs. Soldiers walked up the aisle in the middle of the cafeteria pointing guns at us and pushed around the priests. The children cried and we thought, “They are going to kill us.” But the priests convinced them we could do them no harm and offered them money to leave us. I was almost ten years old when all of this happened. I do not know how I managed to escape the killers in the several instances when I came face to face with them. I believe that God was responsible for my safety.
Questions
1. How old was Jacqueline Murekatete when these events took place?
2. What horrors did she witness?
3. How was she able to survive?
4. In your opinion, should the United States or an international military force have actively intervened to prevent these events? Explain.
(E) Political Cartoons describe the International Response
Questions
1. Describe the scene in cartoon A?
2. Describe the scene in cartoon B?
3. In your opinion, do the cartoonists have similar or differing views of events in Rwanda? Explain.
(F) Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings “Genocide’”
Source: D. Jehl, New York Times, June 9, 1994, A8
“Trying to avoid the rise of moral pressure to stop the mass killing in Rwanda, the Clinton Administration has instructed its spokesmen not to describe the deaths there as genocide, even though some senior officials believe that is exactly what they represent. That decision has left the Administration at odds with the Secretary General of the United Nations and a cast of distinguished experts who say there is no doubt that the violence, which is said to have killed at least 200,000 people and perhaps as many as 400,000, is part of the deliberate and widespread extermination of an ethnic group. But American officials say that so stark a label could inflame public calls for action the Administration is unwilling to take. Rather than compare the massacre with, for example, the deaths under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the State Department and the National Security Council have drafted guidance instructing spokesmen to say merely that “acts of genocide may have occurred.”
Questions
1. Who issued the instructions to avoid describing events in Rwanda as genocide?
2. Why was this a controversial decision?
3. How was this decision defended?
4. In your opinion, was this a legitimate decision? Explain.
Task 5: Answer the EXIT TICKET question: In our opinion, why were almost a million people murdered in Rwanda?
EXIT TICKET question: Why were almost a million people murdered in Rwanda?
Start your essay with an assertion that you will document with sources.
· In your answer, you should consider the responsibility of Rwandans and the international community.
· You answer should cite a minimum of three specific documents and materials from this lesson and should be at least 250 words. A better answer will cite more documents and would be longer.
Follow-Up Question to Consider: Rwanda is a case study of genocide, something that happened repeatedly in global history and could happen again. What makes people engage in mass murder and how can it be prevented?
Additional Resources for teachers so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
New York City “Learn at Home” website
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/learn-at-home
Larry Ferlazo’s Best Advice on Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have to Because of the Coronavirus)
Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/
Stanford’s Reading Like a Historian https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons
I especially love music video by HistoryTeachers on a range of historical topics. My favorite is The French Revolution performed to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”