May 7th, 2020
75th Anniversary of VE DAY House Competition and Research Activities for all students
HOUSE COMPETITION CHALLENGE – Complete Either…
a) Record and upload your own version of the speech you think the Queen or PM should deliver this weekend on television. This must be NO MORE THAN 1 MINUTE and should explain why VE Day matters. You may want to suggest what we can learn from those historical events in light of our own Covid-19 challenges today. You should record your speech and upload it. Costumes are optional. (20 House Points per entry)
OR
b) Record and upload a short speech that explains how the challenge of Covid-19 is similar or different to WWII. Give your opinion and back it up with evidence. This should be NO MORE THAN 1 MINUTE. You record and upload your speech. (20 House Points per entry)
Research Activities for Students
This weekend is the celebration of Victory in Europe Day. Victory in Europe Day is when we remember the victory of the Allied Powers (Britain, America, etc) in Europe over Nazi Germany in 1945. For Europeans, this marks their end of the Second World War, however, the war continued elsewhere as Americans and their allies continued to fight against Japan for several months until they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, finally ending the war later that summer. This year is significant because it is the 75th anniversary of this ‘Victory in Europe’ Day.
The Imperial War Museum has made a very good summary of what VE Day is, and why people chose to remember this. The pictures are especially good.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-ve-day
WWII was a much bigger and global war than WWI. It affect Britons more directly than WWI because of how much more damage the German ‘Blitz’ had done to Britain through heavy bombing. Both our school site and a number of buildings on Jamaica Road were directly hit by German bombs. The website Bombsight can show you precisely where these bombs landed and you can see how these might have impacted your street or neighbourhood.
http://bombsight.org/bombs/9515/
The pictures in the Imperial War Museum article’s pictures show how people celebrated VE Day and the end of the war with the sorts of relief and celebration that many of us might hope we too can enjoy when we no longer need to be worried about Covid-19.
There was a local celebration planned for the veterans of the war in Southwark that has now been postponed until the autumn due to the coronavirus shutdown.
A number of other commemorations will go ahead, including a flyover and a special speech from the Queen.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ve-day-celebrate-lockdown-a4429736.html
Some people like the idea of celebrating VE Day, while others think it is an outdated idea. Many people have drawn comparisons between WWII and the Covid-19 crisis, and several commentators have said that they are looking forward to the ‘VE-Day’ from Covid-19.
Others have argued that fighting a war is different than fighting a virus for many reasons, including that we won’t likely all be able to come out and celebrate the end of the ‘lockdown’ in the same way because this might risk spreading the virus further. Zoe Williams has written that celebrating VE Day this year feels like ‘celebrating Christmas in a trench.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/06/ve-day-heroes-patriotic-multicultural-britain
