The topic
Northern
Ireland or rather Ulster have been a topic for
English lessons for nearly 30 years now. Fortunately,
since the Ceasefire of 1997, the Peace Talks, and the
Referendum the Civil War in Ulster seems to be over.
Nonetheless, a lasting peace is still threatened by
events like Portadown (besieged since July 1998), the
cruel bombing of Omagh (August 15th, 1998) and last
not least by all sorts of sectarian violence in the
first half of 1999.
Finally,
the decisive point, the decommissioning of arms,
remains unsolved but on Good Friday 1999 it looks
like Tony Blair and the Irish Taoiseach, Mr Ahern
succeeded in rescueing the Belfast Agreement.
With loads of material
available in all sorts of text-books the basic
background to the hopefully historic troubles (what a
euphemism) in Ulster can be worked out quite well,
even if our pupils have got a lot of problems with
all the details, names, parties, historic events,
religions etc.
Thanks to
the WWW the topical situation can be worked out in a
rewarding way. As usual, in pairs and groups with
specific tasks to find out about the topical
situation and to understand what's going on. Straight
from the horses mouth, so to speak, as all parties
and interests involved have their platforms on the
Web. So there's really a lot of authentic material
available, just a mouse-click away!
