Einbettung des Gandhi-Films in eine Unterrichtseinheit "Kolonialismus" (Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, USA)

I hope to achieve several goals in creating this teaching unit for my high school World History students. The first is to acquaint students with the cultural and racial differences and conditions in the British colonies of South Africa and India which resulted in a form of legal discrimination. Some of the fundamental human rights questions that should interest my students are the following: How have people historically responded to legal injustice? What recourses other than violent action do people have available to them? What role can effective leaders play in helping to organize effective responses to oppression? Can we judge which responses are most effective given their historical context? What attitude changes are necessary both on the part of the victims and the victimizers in order for the situation to change? I hope this unit on Gandhi will challenge my students to increase their ability to think across cultures and to consider possible applications of Gandhi's ideas and techniques in twenty-first-century America.

The second goal is to acquaint students with Gandhi's personal philosophy and goals. We certainly can reason that Gandhi often became frustrated and angry because of the humiliation and physical injuries he suffered as a targeted member of a persecuted group. How was this man able to turn this justifiable anger into a calm determination to win social, economic and political gains for his people? In an attempt to "get inside" Gandhi, students will spend some time learning what effects Gandhi's various life experiences had on his "world view." How did growing up in a prominent liberal Hindu middle class (his was the Vaisya caste for farmers and merchants) home affect him? How did being married at thirteen to a girl he had never met before affect his thinking about romantic love? How did his life in England as a law student influence his ideas on Christianity and the industrial revolution? What life experiences caused him to develop such a committed interest in ameliorating conditions of caste, class and poverty for his people?