A GCSE example of an empathy
exercise Richard Jones-Nerzic
Hitler as an orator
The key to good empathy is the preparation. This activity
begins with a fairly traditional source analysis lesson of eyewitness
accounts of Hitler as a speaker. (Activity sheet 1,
2,
3
and 4)
At the end of it, the students have a fairly good idea of what
contemporaries said about Hitler but they have still not seen him speak.
Next I show this short video taken from the BBC documentary: The
Fatal Attraction of Hitler. As a result of the previous lesson, students
ought to be more attuned to the various techniques that Hitler
employed.
Next we move on to the empathy. The instructions are very
clear:
'It is late in the evening and you have just returned
home from a Nazi Party rally. You cannot sleep so instead you decide to
write about the events of the evening in your personal journal. You have
never been interested in politics before but as a consequence of the
meeting you decide that in future you will support the Nazis. In your
journal you hope to explain your conversion.'
Then the advice:
Good empathy is
imaginative but always based on fact. It is not fiction but rather faction.
Do not invent names. You are middle class, a social worker or teacher for
example. You live in Hamburg and the meeting you attended was on the 23rd
of March.
Good empathy seeks to
do more than describe events as they are witnessed. Description is
important but empathy also attempts to “step into the shoes” of someone
who might has lived in the past. This means explaining attitudes and
emotions in a convincing way. The videos should be able to help you do
this. This scene from Cabaret is excellent at capturing the atmosphere and
emotion of crowd mentality.
(I was first sold on the
idea of empathy as a PGCE student with this clip alone!)
You hope to convince
the reader that you are real. You must try to give your character depth.
The reasons for your conversion are complex and not everything that the
Nazis stand for appeals to you. You have hopes and fears.In your explanation of
why you are now going to support Hitler remember to refer to more than just
the evening’s events. Hitler did give a great speech but your experiences
of the last three years were also important. Again see the video on the
fatal attraction of Hitler and the interview with the elderly former social
worker.
