Our project was for a second time kindly invited to the capital of the Netherlands. Our partner school, ALASCA, opened its doors now for both staff and students and we were warmly welcomed to their school. Travel went smoothly (all schools were able to come by train except for the Spanish) and weather was good enough. For this third JSPM we were aiming at teaching our students the impact of our colonial past, the need for decolonialisation and the pitfalls of cultural stereotyping.
On Tuesday we immediately started with the workshop World Festival for which we invited the organisation Globi. The group was divided into three. The first lesson was a European pub quiz about facts from different European countries. The second lesson was a debating class in which the students had to take sides on particular topics and defend their position with arguments. The third lesson was a board game where students were confronted with intercultural dilemmas. With these three lessons our students learned a lot about how different cultures would make different decisions based on their own values, that you can take a position which you have to defend with arguments and that you should know some facts about a different culture. We thank our colleagues from Globi for this insightful day!
On Wednesday we had a very busy schedule. The topic of the day was decolonialisation and why we should decolonize our minds and culture in order for Europe to become more democratic. In the morning we got a workshop by Leen Alaerts from our associated partner UCLL about the colonial past. She designed her workshop on neurodidactic principles by focussing on feelings, knowledge-building and action-orientedness. The workshop was very insightful for many of our students about where racism and racial stereotypes came from, where you can find these stereotypes, why they are harmful and how we should change them. You can find the presentation on our project page. In the afternoon, the students got a tour through the renewed Wereldmuseum in which the colonial past of the Netherlands was explored. In the evening then we went to a lecture on how we could learn from a local community action in Africa in response to the climate crisis and how they created political support in low-information communities in order to foster climate resilience.
In Amsterdam too we did the obligatory sightseeing. We went on a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam and we visited the Stedelijk Museum. In the end this mobility was one of our most informative mobilities yet. Looking forward to Spain!