Discussing politics and teaching history

The building of this term’s “From Empire to Europe” class of the University of Mainz was quite interesting. While the purpose was to follow the process surrounding the “Brexit” referendum in the UK, the teacher would introduce the students to the history of the British colonisation and, more importantly, decolonisation. This would give us a new, more profound perspective on the British foreign policy and help us what was the background and the expectations of the United Kingdom when they joined the EU.

This is quite a nice way of approaching any subject. Moreover, discussing the matter as it was growing helped us seize the whole process and its evolution. Quite honestly, this is what I think university is all about.

Our university, or maybe universities in general — and society as well — tend to forget that we are adults, grown ups. We actually are able to understand complex matters as long as they are introduced in a proper way. That being done, we are further able the use this new information, mix it with older knowledge to develop an opinion on subjects that we weren’t familiar with.

This is why I thought it interesting to couple the class with active blogging. We had to use either this new knowledge or things we knew from earlier experience and make further research on our own in order to construct interesting posts.

Maybe it was a little too much work for a 4 credits class, but in the end, I am glad I had to do it. It is not every day that not only a teacher, but also their class regards me as an adult. I would work much harder if only this could happen more often. However, the downside is that I sometimes had to rush through some of my posts instead of taking more time to clarify my arguments or to rephrase some thoughts.