Apologising for My Lai - William Calley Speaks Out

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai."

The words of William Calley, speaking just a few days ago in America, and reported by a blogger who was there. Calley is the only man to have been convicted of the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, and remains to this day a controversial figure. The news of his 'apology' broke more widely on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

FDR's Legacy

Former US President Bill Clinton considers the legacy of his illustrious predecessor here.

20 Years Ago....

'Time' magazine has an excellent 1989 anniversary issue out at the moment, reviewing that crucial year. You can see the articles online here; 1989 was the year that the wall came down, communism collapsed into the sand, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the "end of history", Ayatollah Khomeini died, the Chinese massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square. Much of this happened over one June weekend, with the repercussions carrying on throughout the year, ending with the Christmas Day execution of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife. No-one doubts the significance of 1989, the consequences of which we are living with today, and the 'Time' articles provide a fascinating early overview.

Y13 Russia Background

Gents,

Below is a link to a series on You Tube called Land of the Tsars. You only really need to watch from episode 16 onwards but feel free to delve into the history of Ivan the Terrible etc if you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXPP1j1yahg&feature=related

In the P Drive/History/A Level History folder I have posted a reading list for next year's Russia course, the three I think might be of most use are highlighted.

I would also recommend getting a copy of A Very Short Introduction to The Russian Revolution, link to amazon page below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0192853953/ref=s9_simp_gw_s0_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=003J9PMPX2Y4VAZN5BGW&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467198433&pf_rd_i=468294

Hope this is useful.


Mr Shergold

GCSE Weimar Revision Session

For GCSE students, there will be a revision session on the Weimar Republic on Friday at school - period 3, Room 46 with Mr. Marshall.

Historic Anniversaries

A-level history students in both Lower and Upper Sixth will this year be writing about the events of eastern Europe and China in their exams almost twenty years to the day from when they occurred. It was on June 4th. 1989 that the Solidarity movement in Poland won the first free elections held in that country, a victory which eventually catapulted the whole of eastern Europe towards freedom from communism. Yet in China, on that same day, troops bloodily cleared Tiananmen Square of its pro-democracy demonstrators. Two communist systems, but with very different approaches to the 'year of democracy'.

Cultural Revolution

A session on the Cultural Revolution will run at 3.30 today in school for anyone interested. Check the blog later today for any further advice on the China AS paper tomorrow or extra powerpoint stuff.

UPDATE: A short power-point outlining origins and consequences of the Cultural Revolution can be accessed here. Please note a correction for the first slide - in the fourth point, Mao was obviously seeking 'immortality' rather than 'mortality', as stated on the slide!

Also, do remember that the examiners are keen on an evaluation which involves assessing the relative importance of different factors in an answer. Check their comments on the above linked page again.

AS Students - Examiners Resources

One of the best ways to ensure you have prepared your material properly is to look at the exam board's Examiners' Report. If you go to this page, you will find links to both the Chinese and British papers' reports from January.

In the case of the British course I have also added a link to the January paper (in pdf format).

The British report is much fuller, giving detailed general comments and two very detailed analyses of the actual questions - essential reading for your source preparation.

The Chinese paper did not yield specific reports on the January China questions, but the general comments are nonetheless revealing - I have underlined key points on the report itself.

Finally, we are covering Cultural Revolution late tomorrow afternoon (see below) for those who wish to come along, and if there is demand for it I will do a Deng session as well - perhaps the last Saturday of half term. Let me know if one is needed.

AS-level - China Questions

The Cultural Revolution is the topic for a revision session planned for tomorrow (Wednesday) after school - between 4 and 5 pm. Unlike the previous revision session, this will be a more straightforward run through of what the Cultural Revolution was, and an assessment of its impact. I have had a look through both the published exam questions that you have (specimen questions and the actual January exam) and compared them against the 'Key Issues' on the specification, and it strikes me that a likely Cultural Revolution Question could be based on the Key Issue - "Assess the origins and consequences of the Cultural Revolution" - so we will use that as the basis for our run-through.

GCSE Revision Sessions

I cannot do the planned revision day with Year 11 on Thursday, as I am out at a meeting all day. However, Mr. Shergold is running revision sessions which members of all Y11 sets are welcome to attend if they wish. The schedule from Thursday is as follows:

Thurs 21st May - Periods 6 and 7 - Cold War (Paper 1)

Friday 5th June - Period 3 - Weimar

Tuesday 9th June - Periods 4 and 5 (* see below) - USA 1919-39

Wednesday 10th June - Periods 6 and 7 (** see below) - The Nazi State

* - The timing of this on the Tuesday will allow those with a Geography exam on the morning of the 9th to attend if they wish

** - I have managed to fit this session into a Wednesday afternoon slot – you all have a 45mins Physics exam on the 10th starting at 1.30pm – you are welcome to attend if you want to.

GCSE History exam times and dates:

Paper 1 – Wednesday 3rd June 2009 9.00am

Paper 2 – Thursday 11th June 2009 1.30pm

All revision sessions will take place in Room 46

These sessions are completely optional – however, please note that if you arte coming into school for theses sessions you MUST WEAR SCHOOL UNIFORM!

Mr Shergold

Berlin Blockade Anniversary

It is the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Berlin Blockade today. On 12th. May 1949 Stalin tacitly admitted defeat, after a year of trying to stop the western powers supplying West Berlin with essential food and fuel. It was arguably the first conflict of the Cold War, and veterans from the time recall their experiences to the BBC here. BBC Bitesize has this short revision page as well.

Eastern Europe - Link for A2 students

Use the link from this post to access the various articles on Eastern Europe, which you will find helpful for note-taking and forming an overview of how the Eastern Europe countries evolved during the century.

GCSE Revision

I will run a GCSE Revision Day on Thursday May 21st., organised as follows:

9.30 - 11 - Aspects of Paper 1 Section A (International Relations 1919 - 1963)

11.30 - 12.30 - Paper 1 Section B (Britain in World War 2/focus on answering source based questions)

2 - 3pm - Paper 2 - Answering Questions on Germany

3 - 4pm - Paper 2 - Answering Questions on the USA.

The format will be to consider key content, and apply it to sample question styles. It would be helpful to know roughly how many, if any, students are intending to come along, in order to prepare the appropriate quantities of material. Please indicate using the comment section of the blog.

AS Level Revision Sessions

These will run as follows:

Thursday May 14th.
9 - 10 am - Early Years (1911 to 1930s)/focusing on the Nationalists
10.15 - 11.15 am - Reasons for and assessment of the Communist victory by 1949
11.45 am - 12.45 pm - Mao and the CCP 1949 - 1966

Wednesday May 20th.
4 - c.5pm - The Cultural Revolution

My apologies if these times are not wholly suitable - the difficulty has been fitting these revision sessions around AS exams, and the demands of holding AS politics and GCSE sessions as well. However, please remember tha if you wish to go through a revision essay, or check any other aspects of the course during revision, please just contact me by email or phone to arrange a time.

It would be helpful to know roughly how many students, if any, are planning to attend, in order to prepare appropriate quantities of material. Please use the comments section of the blog to say whether you are coming. Thanks.

Politics sessions are posted on the politics blog.

Revision Classes

A timetable for the various exam revision classes will be published on this blog shortly, with sessions beginning on Wednesday (I am unfortunately away from school tomorrow - Tuesday). Similar politics timetable will go up on the politics blog for AS students.

Assessing Deng

Students considering Deng Xiaoping's achievements might be interested in checking these two profiles from the American media, both giving a lengthy and fair assessment.

CNN profiles Deng here, and Time magazine's 2006 profile is here.

Exam Class History on You Tube

As we approach the end of the GCSE / AS / A2 courses and start to prepare for revision, a good place to start might be to utilise these You Tube clips.

Y11 - Nazi Germany
6 part UKTV History documentary on the Night of the Long Knives - a well structured account detailing the causes of this event as well as the executions themselves and the aftermath. Clips 5 and 6 deal with the execution of Roehm. This link is to clip 1 ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6q16BDVN6k&feature=related


This is a decent dramatisation of the build up and consequences of the Reichstag fire - from the film 'Hitler: Rise of Evil'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt5HtPYv1FQ


Y12 / 13 - China
A 5 part documentary on the Tiananmen Square massacre from the History Channel. A good overview of causes, events and consequences ... try not to pay too much attention to the rock music background! Link to part 1 here ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jrkwtn3vc8

I will try to post more links in the coming weeks that may be of use.

The New Deal - Still Controversial

According to the Boston Globe newspaper, the conservative critics of President Obama's stimulus plan have homed in on FDR's New Deal as part of their critical attack. The main thrust of the criticism - which should be familiar to all GCSE students - is that the New Deal didn't work, since it didn't really solve unemployment. For the conservative critics of today, that's as good a reason as any to condemn Obama's FDR style spending plans. But, says columnist Scott Lehigh, the criticism is deliberately warped, using unemployment figures in a misleading way; the New Deal was a success, he says - and three election victories goes to prove it. Click on the link above to read the whole article.

Cold War Books

As Year 10 start on the topic of the Cold War, here are one or two books that are worth reading to really get acquainted with this extraordinary period of recent history.



Historian Gaddis has produced a very readable, fast paced account of all aspects of the Cold War, from the end of World War 2 to the end of the Soviet empire.



Martin Walker is a journalist who brings his journalistic training to produce another, gripping read about the Cold War. Both the Gaddis and Walker books are almost like novels in their approach.



The book that accompanied the CNN video series which we use in lessons - the hardback version contains a range of excellent photos as well.

Christmas Reading - 1. China (A-level students)

Some books you might be interested in reading over the Christmas holidays are detailed below. Others can be identified in the carousel above, where clicking on any of the titles takes you straight to the relevant amazon page.

1. "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" is a slightly different look at Mao's life from his former physician - a little salacious at times, has proved popular with previous students.



2. The best single volume narrative history of this period - which in facts starts quite a bit earlier - is Jonathan Spence's excellent "Search for Modern China".



Rana Mitter's book "A Bitter Revolution" is of course linked above, and in earlier posts.

3. Jonathan Spence has also written a balanced short biography of Mao, which you may wish to use alongside Jung Chang's better known but very antagonistic book (see post below, and links above).



4. Quite an expensive book, but this one is an interesting and lively attempt to counter the anti-Mao bias of recent books; includes a chapter attacking Jung Chang's biography!



Don't forget to use the school library which has a number of relevant China books for loan as well, including Jonathan Fenby's general history, and a biography of Chiang Kai-Shek (more relevant for L6th stduents).