ENGLISH LECTURE about LEARNING ENGLISH - Grammar School Benesov - 20th December 2011
Mr Headmaster, dear staff and students,
First of all, I would like to thank for getting the opportunity to come back here and talk to you about our recent experiences. We both value that very much. Particularly I, as an ex-student of this Grammar school and a former member of the teaching staff here I appreciate so very much that I can share my most interesting life moments here with you.
We as teachers have an important and difficult task and that is to educate you students today for tomorrow’s world. World full of digital media, endless opportunities, but also world of high expectations from the professors at university and your future employers. We need to make sure that today you get ready for tomorrow and succeed in a constantly increasing competition in the fast life. How do we know what will be important in ten, twenty years time? Our lifestyle has changed so dramatically since I was a student, so many new things have emerged since I thought I finished with studying. I had to learn, catch up with and re-learn many new skills and all sorts of new information. Therefore the answer to my question is that to be honest we do not know what exactly what you will need for your future life, but certain development of things we can guess. Certain values hopefully will stay the same and hopefully will allow you on your studying journey to be flexible, critical enough as well as open-minded in order to stay progressive in learning throughout your lives.
We came here today to inspire you. I love the word inspiration – you all should have someone who inspires you and who can perhaps positively influence your future choices; who encourages you to dare to do things beyond the ordinary... Can you think of people who inspire you and why?
Anyway we came here today to inspire you to learn more English, to start thinking in English and open your mind towards the English speaking world. We would also like to tell you about interesting places abroad and how people there learn English. We put together a few pictures, photographs, so those who are already bored by me talking or half asleep also have something to look forward to. Finally I am hoping to leave some useful information in your heads which you can utilise at your school leaving examinations this year or in years to come.
Firstly, let me introduce my husband – Mr John Woolgar, who will now tell you about the world of Harry Potter, the world he knows very well from his own experience as a student, the world that not many people know – the world of British private schools....
Bearwood College
I came here today to share some of my life experiences with you and also to show you the benefits of learning English. When I was a young boy, my father worked abroad, he was a sea captain on a big ship and I was sent to England to a boys private school which was mainly a boarding school. It was a beautiful place which game me the opportunity to not only study and develop my academic knowledge, but also to do various sports on a competitive level and art, to establish life friendships and appreciation for......
Some of you might have heard about the Private schools in England, but some of you perhaps do not know all the ins and outs and find the following useful and interesting.
Private schools
By Private, or public, or independent school we mean school that is not financed through the taxation system by local or national government, and is instead funded by private sources, predominantly in the form of tuition charges, gifts and long-term charitable endowments
There are now more than 2,500 independent schools in the UK, educating some 615,000 children, or some 7% of children throughout the country. Educational achievement is generally very good. Independent school pupils are four times more likely to attain an A* at GCSE than their non-selective state sector counterparts and twice as likely to attain an A grade at A level. Independent schools are able to set their own discipline regime, with much greater freedom to exclude children, primarily exercised in the wider interests of the school: the most usual causes being drug-taking, whether at school or away, or an open rejection of the school's values, such as dishonesty or violence.
Many independent schools teach their own distinctive ethos, including social aspirations, manners and accents, associated with their own school traditions. Many pupils aspire to send their own children to their old schools in their historical buildings, over successive generations. Most offer sporting, musical, dramatic and art facilities, sometimes at extra charges, although often with the benefit of generations of past investment.
Boarding schools
Most of the larger independent schools are either full or partial boarding schools. The classic British boarding school became highly popular during the colonial expansion of the British Empire. British colonial administrators abroad could ensure that their children were brought up in British culture at public schools at home in the UK, and local rulers were offered the same education for their sons. More junior expatriates would send their children to local British-run schools, which would also admit selected local children who might travel from considerable distances. The boarding schools, which inculcated their own values, became an effective way to encourage local people to share British ideals, and so help the British achieve their imperial goals.
One of the reasons sometimes stated for sending children to boarding schools is to develop wider horizons than their family can provide. A boarding school a family has attended for generations may define the culture parents aspire to for their children. Equally, by choosing a fashionable boarding school, parents may aspire to better their children by enabling them to mix on equal terms with children of the upper classes.
School system in Britain
2 months – 3 years - Nursery
¢ 3-6 years - Prep (preparatory) school or Pre school
¢ 7-10 years – Primary school
¢ 11- 16 years – Secondary school (GCSE exam)
¢ 17-18 years – Secondary school – 6th form (A levels – school leaving examination)
Most famous private schools:
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor". It is located in Eton, near Windsor in England, north of Windsor Castle, and is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. Eton has a very long list of distinguished former pupils. David Cameron is the nineteenth British Prime Minister to have attended Eton. Eton has traditionally been referred to as "the chief nurse of England's statesmen", and has been described as the most famous public school in the world.
Rugby
Rugby School was founded in the year 1567, In 1828 Thomas Arnold was appointed headmaster of Rugby. Although a prosperous private school, Rugby was not seen as having the same status as schools such as Eton. Arnold had a profound and lasting effect on the development of public school education in England. Arnold introduced mathematics, modern history and modern languages and instituted the form system and introduced the prefect system to keep discipline. He modernized the teaching of Classics by directing attention to literary, moral or historical questions. Although Arnold held strong views, he made it clear to his students they were not expected to accept those views, but to examine the evidence and to think for themselves. This school is also famous for the alleged invention of the game Rugby.
FOOD
Coming back to my own experience as a student in a private school, one of the strongest impressions which this place left in me is the memory of the food we used to have. Similarly to when we used to eat on a ship with my dad, everything was very formal, the napkins over your lap, the cutlery (the forks and knives and spoons) in the right order and very well prepared and presented. I used to could not wait to get up and run downstairs to have full breakfast.
English breakfast
Full breakfast" also refers to the main course, a traditional cooked dish, typically and originally eaten at breakfast, though now often served at other times during the day. The full breakfast traditionally comprises several fried foods, usually including bacon and eggs, sausages, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast.
Sunday roast
The Sunday roast is a traditional British main meal served on Sundays (usually in the early afternoon for lunch), consisting of roasted meat, roast potato, mashed potato together with accompaniments, such as Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, vegetables such as parsnip, carrots and Brussels sprouts and gravy.
Fish and chips
Fish and chips is a popular take-away food that originated in the United Kingdom in 1858. It consists of deep-fried fish (traditionally cod) in batter or sometimes breadcrumbs with deep-fried chipped potatoes.
Sticky toffee pudding
Sticky toffee pudding is a British steamed dessert consisting of a very moist sponge cake, made with finely chopped dates or prunes, covered in a toffee sauce and clotted cream.
We would eat all these delicious foods in a large dining room where we sat on long benches together with our House masters who made sure our table manners were regular. Besides the food I also never forget the school’s lake where we used to... and in a whole the atmosphere of the different world of the private schools,
Westonbirt school
I was lucky enough that I taught at two lovely all girls private schools – Malvern St James and Westonbirt school. In both schools I was teaching only PE and Sports, however there is a massive difference between Physical Education in Britain to what you know from the Czech Republic. Students who chose to study PE as an exam subject attend theoretical classes where they learn about Human Anatomy, Physiology (so how the body functions, particularly when exposed to exercise), History of Sport and Sport Psychology – subjects which are only taught here at a University level. The students have proper textbooks and at the end they take GCSE and A level exam. These exams consist of a practical part, where students are assessed in two sports of their choice. Then there is a test with short questions and a longer essay type question. All exams in the UK are organized and produced by the Government, the Ministry of Education and all students in the whole country take them on the same day. This happens in May or in the beginning of June, and the results are publicised in August. As there are no Universities entrance exams, the results of A levels are very important in order to get to university. I enjoyed teaching theoretical PE and Sport enormously. This was partly because I could utilise my knowledge from Czech University which the Czech PE teachers often do not use much in the practical sessions, and partly because the classes in private schools are very small (I had only about 6 students in the class) which makes the teaching and learning environment very friendly and close. Also the practical side of PE is different to the lessons here. Each lesson is more like a coaching session, in which students learn and develop many skills which they then apply in a game. Every Saturday, there are inter school matches and almost 50% of students are members of various school teams. The sports taught in England, particularly in private school differ to sports in the rest of Europe. Boys play Cricket, Rugby, Tennis and Hockey and Girls do Lacrosse, Rounders (a game similar to Softball) and Netball (a game similar to basketball, but girls play in skirts and are not allowed to dribble the ball and leave a section of the court which is attached to their position). All schools include swimming, gymnastics and Athletics. Most private schools have large outdoor and indoor sporting facilities which makes teaching much easier.
International students
In every private school in England besides the local pupils there are also many international students from all around the world. We had several students from South America, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Germany and Russia and there is always a large group of Asian students in the Sixth form, particularly from China, India and Thailand. These students are sent to England to gain British GCSEs and A-levels in order to study at British Universities and have a greater chance to succeed in a vast job competition in their home countries. Many of these pupils come with a very little knowledge of English, however in a year in England, studying the British curriculum and living with English children their written and spoken English improves dramatically. Being a foreigner I had a particularly close relationship with these girls, knowing how hard it is to be far away from their families and friends (they often travelled back home only once or twice a year). They were also often more motivated than the English girls, because they fully appreciated the opportunity given from their parents to live and study abroad. It was also extremely fascinating to learn from our overseas girls about their cultures and customs. It was incredible that many different nationalities could communicate with each other about their different live experiences, and all thank to English language.
Newton International School in Doha
This school is only one of many international schools in Doha. The curriculum is British, all teachers are English speaking, although they came from different countries such as USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America. Many of our teaching assistants are from Asia, particularly Thailand or Philippines. Besides Qataris students there are students from around the world. On our skiing trip for 26 students which we are organizing in March 2011 we have 15 different nationalities – from Egyptians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Moroccans, New Zealanders, British, Canadians, Irish and South Africans. Doha is a real melting pot of people and their children attend international schools. They speak in their native languages at home with their families (many parents do not speak English at all) and they gain their education in English which makes them bilingual. We have a great admiration particularly for the Arabic students who have to learn how to write in Arabic (from right to left) and in English. The youngest pupils in the Primary section of our school are 3 years old, and often when they first come to school they cannot speak in English at all, twelve years later they take British GCSE exams in English.
Qatar
Is an Arab country, known officially as an emirate, in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south; otherwise, the Persian Gulf surrounds the state. A strait of the Persian Gulf separates Qatar from the nearby island nation of Bahrain. Qatar is an oil- and gas-rich nation, with the third largest gas reserves, and the first or second highest GDP per capita in the world. An absolute monarchy, Qatar has been ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-19th century and has since transformed itself from a British protectorate noted mainly for pearling (hunting for pearls) into an independent state with significant oil and natural gas revenues.
The population living in Qatar reaches about 1.5 million, of which there are over one million males and 350 000 females. Most of Qatar's 1.5 million inhabitants live in Doha, the capital. It might also surprise you to learn that Qataris are very much a minority in their own country. The largest population group is probably Indian, but there are also large numbers of Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Philipinos, Pakistanis, Africans, Egyptians and others living there. Therefore foreigners with temporary residence status make up about three-fourths of the population. Foreign workers comprise as much as 85% of the total population and make up about 90% of the total labour force. (In other words most people working in Qatar come from abroad, a large proportion of Qataris do not work, however they own minimum of 51% of shares of all companies functioning in Qatar.
National dress and women
On the whole the local population always wears traditional dress in public. Men’s white full-length shirt dress is called dishdasha. They wear it with a head dress which cover their head and which they don’t take off in the public. Similarly, women wear a black obaya in public – a long looses robe that covers their normal clothes. Some women also cover their faces with either a black veil or a black face mask known as BURKHA. An interesting thing is that many young women wear Western clothes underneath, this often is the latest fashion designer’s clothes such as Versace, Gucci or Armani which women wear normally at home or when they are amongst their girl-friends. At school our students wear British school uniform, Muslim girls however keep their headscarfs and cover their arms and legs. In the PE lessons, if the girls are taught by a female teacher in a sports hall, they would take their headscarfs off. This is quite nice for me as I get to see their hair and I feel closer to them because our relationship is built on trust. No men (students or teachers are not allowed to see them when they are doing their PE). Some girls with very strict fathers are not allowed to do Swimming in school or do any sport outside although they would be fully covered. This is not because, how it is often falsely interpreted by the Western media, the women in Muslim world would be suppressed, but because women and girls are being protected from men, fathers do not want men and boys to be looking at their teenage daughters’ hair and bodies and husbands do not wish other men to picture their wives and bother them in any way. Women in Qatar are mostly well treated and seem very confident and independent in public (not mentioning that they are mostly extremely rich). If there is a long queue of men, woman is always to skip the queue and come first. There are also lifts only for women available and separate fitness gyms, swimming pool and meeting areas so women are safe from men. Girls are mixing with boys normally until the age of 11, then they are separated and attend only all girls’ classes. However at break times, they usually speak to boys freely. Qataries are very polite and friendly and love support families, particularly young children. Although I have got blonde hair I have to say I did not get far as much attention as my daughter who is two years old.
Famous attractions in QATAR
Qataries are passionate about their Arabic horses, camel racing, dune bashing in the desert and indoor play centres.
Arabian horses are known the world over for their intelligence, stamina and spirit, and their distinctive head shape, large eyes and high tail carriage make them easily recognisable. All Arabians, no matter what their coat colour, have black skin, which evolved to provide protection from the hot desert climate. Developed in a desert climate, the horse was prized by the bedouin, and was often brought inside the family tent for shelter and protection. This close relationship with humans helped to develop a horse that was good natured and quick to learn. It also developed the high spirit and alertness that was essential in a horse used for raiding and war.
Dune bashing is an exciting and dizzying experience. Dune bashing means driving in desert in a four by four vehicle, going up and down the dunes of which some reach impressive 50 meters in height. As much as this is a fun ride to tackle these seemingly vertical sand walls, it is important to hire an experienced driver. Many locals however try to do this themselves and often get stuck or damage their vehicles.
I have never seen such an array of indoor play grounds, theme parks with large roller coasters, water slides in my life. This is purely due to the heat as temperatures reach over thirty for the majority of the year and over forty and fifty during the summer months. Also humidity is quite high, so it is impossible to be outside during the day and in the summer even during the night. So the whole world in the Middle East is air-conditioned, artificial, indoors. When we first arrived to Qatar, it was the 6th September, 2a.m. We hoped that at night it would not be as hot and that we would cope well wearing just a short sleeved shirt and lights trousers cut below our knees. What a surprise when we left the airport air-conditioned building! We were literally hit by hot air which felt to be very thick, suddenly it was hard to breath. We spent outside only about 5 minutes, just to get to the car that was ready there for us. We were walking slowly and yet in that moment our clothes were soaked, sweat was dripping from our foreheads and noses. What a relief to turn the air-con in the car again – we asked for 17 degrees. In the summer, the true Oasis in the Middle East are Shopping malls. They are very spacious, full of restaurants, promenades for walking and there is also an Olympic size ice rink in almost every shopping centre. The Qatari’s obsession with cold is understandable. Ice and snow can be also seen in Dubai, where they have built the indoor skiing slope with a chair lift that is largest in the world. Although the locals cannot skate or ski, they love the idea of freezing cold and to them ice is as exotic as sandy beaches to us.
ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES
Now moving on from Qatar, we would like to highlight the fact that Qatar isn’t the only country where you can get by or work as an English speaking person. The more we travelled the more we realized that there are so many countries which use English as a first or second language. Most of them are obvious and I am sure you have heard a lot about them, but many are still quite exotic to us Europeans and we still get fascinated when we learn about their cultures and customs or see pictures from them. To give you a bit of a breathing space and a bit of a visual satisfaction to the visual learners who cannot concentrate more than 5 minutes on spoken word and have switched off listening to us ages ago, let us show you a few highlights of the most know countries and places.
FLUENCY IN ENGLISH
Finally, let us conclude on what we open as an idea in the beginning – why do we learn English and why is it worthwhile to be fluent at this language. For you as students the most immediate reason is that you could study an English University Course abroad. I am still studying a PhD in History and Media at Gloucestershire University in England and I have enjoyed every aspect of it. Not only it is a very different experience of learning but also it is valued a lot when you come back to your home country.
Following your studies, if you are fluent in English you can permanently or even only temporary work abroad. And not necessarily in a theme park in the USA but actually as an engineer, doctor or a teacher. I was amazed when in the same school in Qatar where I teach at the moment I suddenly met a Czech couple from Prague, who teach there as Primary teachers – they are sending their regards by the way. Travelling and the fascination is another obvious reason, but for those who do not enjoy going or living abroad English is also valuable. With your good knowledge of the language you can also impress your future employers and get the job of your dreams. Furthermore, there is also a whole virtual world out there which you would be able to successfully access such as
¢ www.google.com – on which you can find pretty much anything you need
¢ Google books, Google Scholar
¢ Wikipedia
¢ BBC – access to news from all around the world
¢ MTV
¢ AND MUCH MORE...(FILMS, BOOKS) It is great to be able to watch your beloved film start and actually hear their true voice, or read the actual words of your favourite book author and not what someone else translated...
Before we go we would just like to share with you our future plans and goals which we have set to ourselves.
SMART
¢ Drawing upon our experiences from the private English educational system in Britain and international schools in the Middle East we are opening an English College in Benesov.
¢ Tuition only in English, British curriculum and teaching methods through which students learn English not as a foreign language but naturally as the natives do. We also want to open an English library for our clients.
¢ Because we are planning to stay in Qatar for another year the only course available are Summer camps (including Tennis and swimming) and summer intensive tuition for secondary and university students (July/August 2011) – sign up starts from 1st March 2011 – limited availability of spaces
¢ Full time yearly courses starting in September 2012.
¢ www.smartec4u.weebly.com (web site launch in February 2011)
¢ With this we would like to thank you very much for your attention and we hope you enjoyed our presentation. It was a pleasure seeing you again, have a lovely Christmas holiday and we look forward to seeing you soon. Have a good day bye bye.
INTRODUCTION OF PhD THESIS - TEREZA WOOLGAR - draft 2011
Introduction
This thesis explores a variety of representations of the Czech RAF airmen in selected WW2 British national and Czech community newspapers and investigates how these representations in these mediated narratives relate to and interact with the Czech RAF veterans’ own recollections. These newspapers which reflected and recorded public collective memory of Britishness and Czechness are approached as archival artefacts; and similarly the private memories or private versions of narratives co-constructed and preserved by a living archive revealed in the interviews uncover specific oral community artefacts. Thus this study becomes to certain extent archaeology of ethnicity. In a broader context, my explorations open a discussion of the relationships between memory, identity, ideology and propaganda.
The key and the original notion of this research is the notion of versioning of memory, an occurrence in which an assortment of versions of memory of one event are being constantly created due to a multiple influences of the producers such memory. This notion emerged from my examination of the interaction of public and private memories and the subjects influencing them and how these memories contribute towards a creation, co-creation or recreation of a historical reconstruction. Versioning of the past to a certain extent challenges as well as is founded within the current theoretical framework of media and memory studies. Thus this thesis challenge approaches such as the re-visits and re-visions of history undertaken by feminist historical researchers who place public and private memory in opposition and highlight tensions the two (Summerfield, 1998; Wakewich and Smith, 2006). Whilst it supports theories which stress that our visions of history are drawn from different sources where media often influence our understanding of the past and that there is a constant need to ‘define and redefine the place that we occupy in the world’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2005, pg 2). The through line of this research includes approaching or reflecting the past through different versions of memory in terms of reconstructing and deconstructing (Munslow, 1997) and preserving old whilst producing new multidirectional (Rothberg, 2009) representations of our past existence and identity (which subsequently become history). On one hand, this study investigates how and to which point the WW2 public memory represented in the various WW2 newspapers was influenced by ideology, propaganda and news values. On the other hand, the influences of individual private narrative and living memory are being explored.
These two parallel discussions are at the end drawn together into a one debate about the multiple historical representation of the Czech RAF airmen which however needs to be critically evaluated as it was reconstructed by me as a contemporary researcher thus became another specific version of memory itself. As Munslow (1997) claims ‘by exploring how we represent the relationship between ourselves and the past we may see ourselves not as detached observers of the past but, [...] like participants in its creation’ (Munslow, 1997, pg 178). In order to highlight this issue I will examine the ‘construction of memories’ (Radstone, 1999) together with a perspective of self-consciously authored history (Munslow, 1997). Drawing upon the current debates of transnational (Radstone, 2010) and multidirectional memories (Rothberg, 2009) I will be exploring what happens when different representations of the past and memories confront each other. The fact that our memory can only be recovered and reproduced from traces of recollections which are only ‘mere glimpses of what once a whole living realm’(Lowenthall, 1990, pg 192) suggests that our past represented by private memory can only be described in a scatted way rather than in a full or a complex way. This is why researchers turn more often towards written sources such as media texts or various documents which in time appear to be more constant (Cubitt, 2007).This thesis argues that despite the possible dissimilarities between the various versions produced naturally and inevitably through versioning in order to attain a deeper understanding of the past it is valuable when researching memory to consider all versions of memory and explore their interrelations and map where they engage and disengage (Walder, 2003). In the case of the Czech RAF airmen, versioning assisted me to illustrate a more complex image of the Czech RAF airmen which goes beyond a narrow frame of a heroic ‘friendly allies’ representations.
In this complex whirl of versions of memory, where I argue that ‘media and memories shape one another’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2005, pg 18), a unifying element which links all these versions however also can be found. In the case of the Czech RAF airmen’s WW2 representations, such element was the war discourse - which not only over bridged public and private memory but also transcended collective memories of the British and Czech nations (Radstone, 2010). Moreover, this research based on memory work challenges history itself as a proposed ‘objective’ public master narrative (Radstone, 2000). Through the dialog between dominant public versions and the versions of subjective private memory a space for various alternatives is created and recognized (Radstone, 2000).
In order to cover the wide range of subjects that emerge from the examination of historical representations and memory, this study utilizes several research approaches from several academic fields or disciplines. Socio-cultural studies and media studies provided me with a foundation for understanding the mediated processes and audience theories and thus strengthen my textual analysis of the press. Oral history considering the different ways historical consciousness developed from life history experiences (Perks and Thomson, 2006) assisted me to theoretically underpin the interviews. For the exploration of memory I found extremely useful the theories of memory studies. “Memory work has a great deal to offer as a method of inquiry. It makes available the actual forms through which identities are composed: stories or images which encode memories” (Radstone, 1999, pg 221). Memory studies is not yet a clearly defined discipline, it is emerging field to which establishment this thesis also contributes.
This cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research benefits from the facility to follow the different versions of memory from various producers across various disciplines using a variety of methods without being restricted within one academic field. However, it is important to state that using a range of disciplines also creates some difficulties which this research needs to address and tackle. Notably the number of terms and theories this thesis is based upon multiplies with each engaged field, therefore in some places I was not able to reach the same depth when discussion these as would be reached in a study based on a single discipline. Furthermore, in order to maintain a substantial depth in this research, a debate about the wide range of political, military and ethical concerns that the war inevitably raises I chose to omit and thus is beyond the scope of this study. My research is more limited and concerned predominantly with memory and socio-cultural issues. Also the application of multiple methods during the process of examination multiple or multidirectional memories created an issue due to lack of theories which define appropriate methodology for a cross-disciplinary study based on Memory studies (Reading, 2009). In addition, as one culture was being explored within another, problems with language and cultural contexts had to be tackled.
In order to explore how the Czech RAF airmen were represented in British newspapers I decided to analyse The Times; a well established, strong, conventional ‘quality’ or a broadsheet newspaper presenting hegemonic discourse with an official voice. To broaden the spectrum of the analysed press and to reveal the more popular discourse, I also focused on tabloids. A type of newspapers that “prioritizes entertainment, human interest and commercial profitability and which is usually presented as oppositional to ‘serious’ and socially responsible journalism” (Biressi and Nunn, 2008, pg 7). The daily newspaper selected for this research, the Daily Mirror, was believed to “symbolize a truly British version of the tabloid [...] which claimed to be the defining popular organ of the day” (Conboy, 2006, pg 7). Second tabloid, a popular Sunday newspaper with a hybrid identity contributing towards “commencing astute journalism in its targeting of a range of general contents of a broad market” (Conboy, 2004, pg 157) was the News of the World. However the Czech RAF airmen’s representations appeared in this newspaper only in a sporadic way.
An original angle added into this research by a discovery of a local community newspaper of the Czechs and Slovaks living in Britain, The Czechoslovak, which has not been academically examined before. The question that examines the reasons behind the production of this newspaper is one of the key questions of this project. The Czechoslovak was a diasporic type of community media which created some non-mainstream alternative discourse in contrast with the discourse of the British WW2 newspapers. Not much background evidence surrounds this newspapers, however I discovered that It was printed by the famous Unwin Brothers publishers who were also printing for National Defence Ministry at that time and its aim to inform and entertain the Czech community in the mother tongue and contributed to the maintaining the Czech traditions abroad is also apparent. In contrast with the British newspapers, therepresentations of the Czech RAF airmen in The Czechoslovak were far more detailed and included regularly. Regrettably this newspaper was produced solely in the Czech language which limits employment of this unique source, therefore the most central text of this investigation became the special English issue of The Czechoslovak newspaper. This text however gained a very special position in this study not only due to its language accessibility but more importantly due to its originality and exclusivity. Firstly, there are no other similar types of texts preserved in British archives, and secondly the fact that it was produced by Czech journalists in English and had very high aspiration to compete with other more established newspapers at the time (price was sixpence whilst the cost of the News of the World was a twopence) is also very extraordinary. The Czechoslovak special issue represents one community living within another and at the same time presents this Czech community to the British nation. Thus despite some similarities in representations of the Czech RAF airmen with the representations of the British press such as heroism of the airmen, this issue created a very different version of public memory to any other media texts.
Another source of unique versions of memories of the Czech RAF airmen is the WW2 ‘living archive’ of private recollections. In order to explore these versions I interviewed seven Czech participants, the only former members (and a wife of a former member) of the RAF available or willing to contribute towards my research. From their narratives I also gained knowledge about their understanding of the war atmosphere in Europe and learnt about their feelings and their position of the Czech airmen in English WW2 society. The heterogeneity of their testimonies diffused their narratives into diverse pictures which could be described as subjective representations of human existence created by unique witnesses. However, despite their dissimilar versions of the past, I argue that they all produced their versions of memory and consequently had the right to such memory (Reading, 2010, current research). I also examined the possible reasons behind the diversity of their narratives again drawing up on the theories of memory studies, questioning to what extent personal memory is artificially manufactured (Hunt and Robbins, 1998). Moreover, due to the age of my interview participants, I considered thoroughly the issue of ethics of this research and made sure that the whole process was correct, smooth and not hurtful.
One issue that emerged from one of my interviews which needs to be addressed in the beginning of this research was the distinction between and of the employment of words ‘Czech’ and ‘Czechoslovak’. One interview participant felt that the term ‘Czechoslovak’ should be the sole label for the group of airmen as there were Slovakian airmen flying alongside to the Czechs in the RAF; however the majority of the participants I had interviewed were not concerned with this matter or did not really recognise any difference, often using a non-existing term ‘Czecko’ themselves. This is why I decided from a position of a current researcher to use both terms ‘Czech’ as well as ‘Czechoslovak’, however not as synonyms, but distinguishing between them according to the historical and cultural context.
The main distinction between these two names of members of a particular nation is very complex. As a researcher living in 21st century, I am writing about members of a currently existing country the Czech Republic, therefore Czechs. These men are however also former members of former country which consisted of two nations Czechs and Slovaks thus Czechoslovakia, in which case they were referred to as Czechoslovaks. The ‘Czechoslovak’ nationality was established by the first Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk in 1918 after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy and maintained between the years 1918 – 1939 and 1945 - 1993 before these two countries became independent again. Therefore it is now (as well as it was by some Czechs during the WW2) used as a traditional name rather than a correct historical idiom.
The reasons behind my choice of this topic are several. Firstly, the social side of the periods of the First and Second World War have always lied in the centre of my academic interest. Also the notion of living in exile was also in agreement with my current situation and position as a member of a Czech ethnic minority living in Britain. Furthermore, I was aware that the subject of the Czech RAF airmen and their contribution towards winning the war was neglected by the Czech historians for decades due to Communist regime in former Czechoslovakia and was a non-dominant issue within the British WW2 history. To expose this community memory therefore became my aim. Media played a very important role in the Second World War, as Andersen (2006) claims ‘it was the best reported war, ever’ (Andersen, 2006, pg 21). However, except from examination of Holocaust, WW2 media discourse has been investigated only in a sporadic way therefore quite neglected. By analysing the representation of the Czech RAF airmen within and beyond media discourse this thesis fills in a gap in knowledge.
In today’s world where a lot of academic research focuses on digital media, I decided to go back to the Second World War and explore memory of this disappearing war generation. Hence this study makes an important contribution to Media History by revealing a particular part of WW2 history from the perspective of the Czech airmen and the Czech community living and working in Britain during the Second World War. However this research does not only contribute towards existing academic knowledge by the analysis of the WW2 historical representation of the Czech RAF airmen identities but also by the examination of the interface between the public official memory represented in newspapers, and the private individual memory constructed by the veterans as their own recollections and their life narratives. There are also other studies concerning newspapers representation of other cultures in British newspapers such as K. Omenugha’s (2005) African women as news: a cross-cultural study. Generally however, I discovered that there is a scarcity of texts examining memory of the Second World War from WW2 newspapers, cross-referencing this data with oral narratives among academic publications. Therefore this thesis seeks to offer a methodological qualitative research model for exploring historical cross-cultural data within memory studies and to create very specific critical theories about British and Czech public memory produced by newspapers during the Second World War and the Czech private memory emerging from the personal narratives.
This thesis has been arranged to spread across six chapters which navigate the reader from an extensive review of pertinent academic literature, through methodology I employed, towards the analysis of the data gathered and its evaluation. The first two chapters place my study within a broad academic framework by examining theories and literature that underpin subjects of public mediated memory, and private narrated memory. Chapter 1 ‘Press as an archive’ based on the socio-cultural and media studies interconnects the theories about the historical context of the WW2, propaganda and war discourse (Balfour, 1979; Williams, 1992, 1998; Donnelly, 1999; Dedaic and Nelson, 2003), and news discourse (Fairclough, 1995; Curran, Seaton, 2003; Macdonald, 2003; Allan, 1999; Munslow, 1997). Particularly the theories of media representation (Hall, 1997; Moores, 1998, Pickering, 2001) emphasising the influence of ideology and the multiplicity of produced versions of representations extending from the ‘other’ towards the hegemonic versions, set out my theoretical position developing from the notion of competitive memory towards an ongoing interaction of multidirectional memory (Rothberg, 2009). This review of literature also creates a space for a discussion about the contrasts between tabloidized and traditional newspapers (Conboy, 2001, 2002, 2006; Örenbring, Jönsson, 2008; Curran, 2002; Greenslade, 2004) including community newspapers (Howley, 2009; Rennie, 2006). Besides an examination of the media theories from a position of a producer Chapter 1 also studies the influences of the media production from a receiver and thus draws on target audience theories (Alasuutari, 1999; Moores, 1999; Williams, 2003; Devereux, 2006; Zelizer, 2008). In order to explore the possible interconnection between the press and the archive, my survey of literature also acknowledges work on theory of archive (Bundsgard, 2006; Derrida, 1995; Yakel, 2006; Blouin, Rosenberg, 2006).
Second theoretical chapter ‘Living memory – the private versions of reality’ lays out the supporting framework of theories linking the memory studies work on memory (Halbwachs, 1992; Radstone, 1999, 2008; Lowenthal, 1985; Reading, 2002; Green, 2004; Bergson, 2007), oral history work on narrated private individual memory (Perks and Thomson, 1998, 2006; Ritchie, 2003; Perks, 1992) and historical theories (Nora, 1986; Foucault, 2003; Munslow, 2001) which in particular focus in ‘history from below’ and deconstruction of history. I have also drawn heavily on theory of identity and its interconnection with memory (Radstone, 2010; Hall and du Gay, 1996; Rapaport, 1997) and forgetting (Conway 2008; Radstone, 2000; Poole, 2008; Assche, Devlieger, Teampau, Verschraegen, 2009). This literature review also creates an outline of mediated memory theories linking media as a source of public memory and private memory together (Dijck, 2007; Zelizer, 2008; Hoskins, 2004), and the notions of multiple memories (Rothberg, 2009; Poole, 2008).
Chapter 3 ‘Methodology’ outlines the research process, and the various methods used, and ethical issues (Russell, 1999; Wenger, 2002), as well as provides a further survey of literature that underpins my methodological choices and practices (Jensen and Jankowski, 1991; Deacon, Pickering, Golding & Murdock, 1999; Macdonald, 2003; Fairclough, 2003; Cottle, 2000; Perks and Thomson, 1998, 2006). In this chapter I describe how I selected and combined some traditional socio-cultural and oral history methods so they suited this cross-disciplinary media and memory research and highlighted another research which benefited from using a comparative method (Wakewich and Smith, 2006). I also explained the difficulties emerging from the interconnection of these methods (Reading, 2009), and discussed my position in this research, the limitations and issues arising from my viewpoint which affects the research outcome (Chandler, 2005; Wakewich and Smith, 2006; Summerfield, 1998).
The following two analysis chapters are exploring and evaluating data I gathered. Chapter 4 ‘Discourse analysis of the WW2 press’ interrogates how the various British and Czech press created diverse public mediated memory discourses in order to represent the Czech RAF airmen reflecting the ideology of the era and the particular newspaper’s ethos. A special attention is here paid to the unique discourse of The Czechoslovak special English issue. Supported by theoretical work I examined, I will argue that public collective memories of Britishness and Czechness recycled in newspapers on one hand create diverse versions of past and on the other carry certain similar features. Thus the period of the Second World War and the war propaganda and ideology constructed certain nation-transcending commonalities which brought together different national or community collective memories (Radstone, 2010). Chapter 5 ‘Analysis of private individual narratives’ utilizes interview narratives again alongside with the academic literature I have employed to interpret these private memories. This chapter looks particularly at the issues of identity revealing three layers of identity of the airmen – the Czech, the British and the RAF war identity which for the Czech RAF airmen arguably became the strongest of them all. The final Chapter 6 ‘Sources of historical reconstruction – comparison of the private and public memory’ evaluates the previous analysis of private and public memory and merges these initially two discussions about newspaper representations and interview narratives into one debate about versions of memories and multidirectional nation transcending memory (Rothberg, 2009, Radstone, 2010) of the Czech RAF airmen. By doing so this research creates a space where different memories of the Czech RAF airmen interact and thus enrich the historical representation of the WW2.
Mr Headmaster, dear staff and students,
First of all, I would like to thank for getting the opportunity to come back here and talk to you about our recent experiences. We both value that very much. Particularly I, as an ex-student of this Grammar school and a former member of the teaching staff here I appreciate so very much that I can share my most interesting life moments here with you.
We as teachers have an important and difficult task and that is to educate you students today for tomorrow’s world. World full of digital media, endless opportunities, but also world of high expectations from the professors at university and your future employers. We need to make sure that today you get ready for tomorrow and succeed in a constantly increasing competition in the fast life. How do we know what will be important in ten, twenty years time? Our lifestyle has changed so dramatically since I was a student, so many new things have emerged since I thought I finished with studying. I had to learn, catch up with and re-learn many new skills and all sorts of new information. Therefore the answer to my question is that to be honest we do not know what exactly what you will need for your future life, but certain development of things we can guess. Certain values hopefully will stay the same and hopefully will allow you on your studying journey to be flexible, critical enough as well as open-minded in order to stay progressive in learning throughout your lives.
We came here today to inspire you. I love the word inspiration – you all should have someone who inspires you and who can perhaps positively influence your future choices; who encourages you to dare to do things beyond the ordinary... Can you think of people who inspire you and why?
Anyway we came here today to inspire you to learn more English, to start thinking in English and open your mind towards the English speaking world. We would also like to tell you about interesting places abroad and how people there learn English. We put together a few pictures, photographs, so those who are already bored by me talking or half asleep also have something to look forward to. Finally I am hoping to leave some useful information in your heads which you can utilise at your school leaving examinations this year or in years to come.
Firstly, let me introduce my husband – Mr John Woolgar, who will now tell you about the world of Harry Potter, the world he knows very well from his own experience as a student, the world that not many people know – the world of British private schools....
Bearwood College
I came here today to share some of my life experiences with you and also to show you the benefits of learning English. When I was a young boy, my father worked abroad, he was a sea captain on a big ship and I was sent to England to a boys private school which was mainly a boarding school. It was a beautiful place which game me the opportunity to not only study and develop my academic knowledge, but also to do various sports on a competitive level and art, to establish life friendships and appreciation for......
Some of you might have heard about the Private schools in England, but some of you perhaps do not know all the ins and outs and find the following useful and interesting.
Private schools
By Private, or public, or independent school we mean school that is not financed through the taxation system by local or national government, and is instead funded by private sources, predominantly in the form of tuition charges, gifts and long-term charitable endowments
There are now more than 2,500 independent schools in the UK, educating some 615,000 children, or some 7% of children throughout the country. Educational achievement is generally very good. Independent school pupils are four times more likely to attain an A* at GCSE than their non-selective state sector counterparts and twice as likely to attain an A grade at A level. Independent schools are able to set their own discipline regime, with much greater freedom to exclude children, primarily exercised in the wider interests of the school: the most usual causes being drug-taking, whether at school or away, or an open rejection of the school's values, such as dishonesty or violence.
Many independent schools teach their own distinctive ethos, including social aspirations, manners and accents, associated with their own school traditions. Many pupils aspire to send their own children to their old schools in their historical buildings, over successive generations. Most offer sporting, musical, dramatic and art facilities, sometimes at extra charges, although often with the benefit of generations of past investment.
Boarding schools
Most of the larger independent schools are either full or partial boarding schools. The classic British boarding school became highly popular during the colonial expansion of the British Empire. British colonial administrators abroad could ensure that their children were brought up in British culture at public schools at home in the UK, and local rulers were offered the same education for their sons. More junior expatriates would send their children to local British-run schools, which would also admit selected local children who might travel from considerable distances. The boarding schools, which inculcated their own values, became an effective way to encourage local people to share British ideals, and so help the British achieve their imperial goals.
One of the reasons sometimes stated for sending children to boarding schools is to develop wider horizons than their family can provide. A boarding school a family has attended for generations may define the culture parents aspire to for their children. Equally, by choosing a fashionable boarding school, parents may aspire to better their children by enabling them to mix on equal terms with children of the upper classes.
School system in Britain
2 months – 3 years - Nursery
¢ 3-6 years - Prep (preparatory) school or Pre school
¢ 7-10 years – Primary school
¢ 11- 16 years – Secondary school (GCSE exam)
¢ 17-18 years – Secondary school – 6th form (A levels – school leaving examination)
Most famous private schools:
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor". It is located in Eton, near Windsor in England, north of Windsor Castle, and is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. Eton has a very long list of distinguished former pupils. David Cameron is the nineteenth British Prime Minister to have attended Eton. Eton has traditionally been referred to as "the chief nurse of England's statesmen", and has been described as the most famous public school in the world.
Rugby
Rugby School was founded in the year 1567, In 1828 Thomas Arnold was appointed headmaster of Rugby. Although a prosperous private school, Rugby was not seen as having the same status as schools such as Eton. Arnold had a profound and lasting effect on the development of public school education in England. Arnold introduced mathematics, modern history and modern languages and instituted the form system and introduced the prefect system to keep discipline. He modernized the teaching of Classics by directing attention to literary, moral or historical questions. Although Arnold held strong views, he made it clear to his students they were not expected to accept those views, but to examine the evidence and to think for themselves. This school is also famous for the alleged invention of the game Rugby.
FOOD
Coming back to my own experience as a student in a private school, one of the strongest impressions which this place left in me is the memory of the food we used to have. Similarly to when we used to eat on a ship with my dad, everything was very formal, the napkins over your lap, the cutlery (the forks and knives and spoons) in the right order and very well prepared and presented. I used to could not wait to get up and run downstairs to have full breakfast.
English breakfast
Full breakfast" also refers to the main course, a traditional cooked dish, typically and originally eaten at breakfast, though now often served at other times during the day. The full breakfast traditionally comprises several fried foods, usually including bacon and eggs, sausages, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast.
Sunday roast
The Sunday roast is a traditional British main meal served on Sundays (usually in the early afternoon for lunch), consisting of roasted meat, roast potato, mashed potato together with accompaniments, such as Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, vegetables such as parsnip, carrots and Brussels sprouts and gravy.
Fish and chips
Fish and chips is a popular take-away food that originated in the United Kingdom in 1858. It consists of deep-fried fish (traditionally cod) in batter or sometimes breadcrumbs with deep-fried chipped potatoes.
Sticky toffee pudding
Sticky toffee pudding is a British steamed dessert consisting of a very moist sponge cake, made with finely chopped dates or prunes, covered in a toffee sauce and clotted cream.
We would eat all these delicious foods in a large dining room where we sat on long benches together with our House masters who made sure our table manners were regular. Besides the food I also never forget the school’s lake where we used to... and in a whole the atmosphere of the different world of the private schools,
Westonbirt school
I was lucky enough that I taught at two lovely all girls private schools – Malvern St James and Westonbirt school. In both schools I was teaching only PE and Sports, however there is a massive difference between Physical Education in Britain to what you know from the Czech Republic. Students who chose to study PE as an exam subject attend theoretical classes where they learn about Human Anatomy, Physiology (so how the body functions, particularly when exposed to exercise), History of Sport and Sport Psychology – subjects which are only taught here at a University level. The students have proper textbooks and at the end they take GCSE and A level exam. These exams consist of a practical part, where students are assessed in two sports of their choice. Then there is a test with short questions and a longer essay type question. All exams in the UK are organized and produced by the Government, the Ministry of Education and all students in the whole country take them on the same day. This happens in May or in the beginning of June, and the results are publicised in August. As there are no Universities entrance exams, the results of A levels are very important in order to get to university. I enjoyed teaching theoretical PE and Sport enormously. This was partly because I could utilise my knowledge from Czech University which the Czech PE teachers often do not use much in the practical sessions, and partly because the classes in private schools are very small (I had only about 6 students in the class) which makes the teaching and learning environment very friendly and close. Also the practical side of PE is different to the lessons here. Each lesson is more like a coaching session, in which students learn and develop many skills which they then apply in a game. Every Saturday, there are inter school matches and almost 50% of students are members of various school teams. The sports taught in England, particularly in private school differ to sports in the rest of Europe. Boys play Cricket, Rugby, Tennis and Hockey and Girls do Lacrosse, Rounders (a game similar to Softball) and Netball (a game similar to basketball, but girls play in skirts and are not allowed to dribble the ball and leave a section of the court which is attached to their position). All schools include swimming, gymnastics and Athletics. Most private schools have large outdoor and indoor sporting facilities which makes teaching much easier.
International students
In every private school in England besides the local pupils there are also many international students from all around the world. We had several students from South America, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Germany and Russia and there is always a large group of Asian students in the Sixth form, particularly from China, India and Thailand. These students are sent to England to gain British GCSEs and A-levels in order to study at British Universities and have a greater chance to succeed in a vast job competition in their home countries. Many of these pupils come with a very little knowledge of English, however in a year in England, studying the British curriculum and living with English children their written and spoken English improves dramatically. Being a foreigner I had a particularly close relationship with these girls, knowing how hard it is to be far away from their families and friends (they often travelled back home only once or twice a year). They were also often more motivated than the English girls, because they fully appreciated the opportunity given from their parents to live and study abroad. It was also extremely fascinating to learn from our overseas girls about their cultures and customs. It was incredible that many different nationalities could communicate with each other about their different live experiences, and all thank to English language.
Newton International School in Doha
This school is only one of many international schools in Doha. The curriculum is British, all teachers are English speaking, although they came from different countries such as USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America. Many of our teaching assistants are from Asia, particularly Thailand or Philippines. Besides Qataris students there are students from around the world. On our skiing trip for 26 students which we are organizing in March 2011 we have 15 different nationalities – from Egyptians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Moroccans, New Zealanders, British, Canadians, Irish and South Africans. Doha is a real melting pot of people and their children attend international schools. They speak in their native languages at home with their families (many parents do not speak English at all) and they gain their education in English which makes them bilingual. We have a great admiration particularly for the Arabic students who have to learn how to write in Arabic (from right to left) and in English. The youngest pupils in the Primary section of our school are 3 years old, and often when they first come to school they cannot speak in English at all, twelve years later they take British GCSE exams in English.
Qatar
Is an Arab country, known officially as an emirate, in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south; otherwise, the Persian Gulf surrounds the state. A strait of the Persian Gulf separates Qatar from the nearby island nation of Bahrain. Qatar is an oil- and gas-rich nation, with the third largest gas reserves, and the first or second highest GDP per capita in the world. An absolute monarchy, Qatar has been ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-19th century and has since transformed itself from a British protectorate noted mainly for pearling (hunting for pearls) into an independent state with significant oil and natural gas revenues.
The population living in Qatar reaches about 1.5 million, of which there are over one million males and 350 000 females. Most of Qatar's 1.5 million inhabitants live in Doha, the capital. It might also surprise you to learn that Qataris are very much a minority in their own country. The largest population group is probably Indian, but there are also large numbers of Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Philipinos, Pakistanis, Africans, Egyptians and others living there. Therefore foreigners with temporary residence status make up about three-fourths of the population. Foreign workers comprise as much as 85% of the total population and make up about 90% of the total labour force. (In other words most people working in Qatar come from abroad, a large proportion of Qataris do not work, however they own minimum of 51% of shares of all companies functioning in Qatar.
National dress and women
On the whole the local population always wears traditional dress in public. Men’s white full-length shirt dress is called dishdasha. They wear it with a head dress which cover their head and which they don’t take off in the public. Similarly, women wear a black obaya in public – a long looses robe that covers their normal clothes. Some women also cover their faces with either a black veil or a black face mask known as BURKHA. An interesting thing is that many young women wear Western clothes underneath, this often is the latest fashion designer’s clothes such as Versace, Gucci or Armani which women wear normally at home or when they are amongst their girl-friends. At school our students wear British school uniform, Muslim girls however keep their headscarfs and cover their arms and legs. In the PE lessons, if the girls are taught by a female teacher in a sports hall, they would take their headscarfs off. This is quite nice for me as I get to see their hair and I feel closer to them because our relationship is built on trust. No men (students or teachers are not allowed to see them when they are doing their PE). Some girls with very strict fathers are not allowed to do Swimming in school or do any sport outside although they would be fully covered. This is not because, how it is often falsely interpreted by the Western media, the women in Muslim world would be suppressed, but because women and girls are being protected from men, fathers do not want men and boys to be looking at their teenage daughters’ hair and bodies and husbands do not wish other men to picture their wives and bother them in any way. Women in Qatar are mostly well treated and seem very confident and independent in public (not mentioning that they are mostly extremely rich). If there is a long queue of men, woman is always to skip the queue and come first. There are also lifts only for women available and separate fitness gyms, swimming pool and meeting areas so women are safe from men. Girls are mixing with boys normally until the age of 11, then they are separated and attend only all girls’ classes. However at break times, they usually speak to boys freely. Qataries are very polite and friendly and love support families, particularly young children. Although I have got blonde hair I have to say I did not get far as much attention as my daughter who is two years old.
Famous attractions in QATAR
Qataries are passionate about their Arabic horses, camel racing, dune bashing in the desert and indoor play centres.
Arabian horses are known the world over for their intelligence, stamina and spirit, and their distinctive head shape, large eyes and high tail carriage make them easily recognisable. All Arabians, no matter what their coat colour, have black skin, which evolved to provide protection from the hot desert climate. Developed in a desert climate, the horse was prized by the bedouin, and was often brought inside the family tent for shelter and protection. This close relationship with humans helped to develop a horse that was good natured and quick to learn. It also developed the high spirit and alertness that was essential in a horse used for raiding and war.
Dune bashing is an exciting and dizzying experience. Dune bashing means driving in desert in a four by four vehicle, going up and down the dunes of which some reach impressive 50 meters in height. As much as this is a fun ride to tackle these seemingly vertical sand walls, it is important to hire an experienced driver. Many locals however try to do this themselves and often get stuck or damage their vehicles.
I have never seen such an array of indoor play grounds, theme parks with large roller coasters, water slides in my life. This is purely due to the heat as temperatures reach over thirty for the majority of the year and over forty and fifty during the summer months. Also humidity is quite high, so it is impossible to be outside during the day and in the summer even during the night. So the whole world in the Middle East is air-conditioned, artificial, indoors. When we first arrived to Qatar, it was the 6th September, 2a.m. We hoped that at night it would not be as hot and that we would cope well wearing just a short sleeved shirt and lights trousers cut below our knees. What a surprise when we left the airport air-conditioned building! We were literally hit by hot air which felt to be very thick, suddenly it was hard to breath. We spent outside only about 5 minutes, just to get to the car that was ready there for us. We were walking slowly and yet in that moment our clothes were soaked, sweat was dripping from our foreheads and noses. What a relief to turn the air-con in the car again – we asked for 17 degrees. In the summer, the true Oasis in the Middle East are Shopping malls. They are very spacious, full of restaurants, promenades for walking and there is also an Olympic size ice rink in almost every shopping centre. The Qatari’s obsession with cold is understandable. Ice and snow can be also seen in Dubai, where they have built the indoor skiing slope with a chair lift that is largest in the world. Although the locals cannot skate or ski, they love the idea of freezing cold and to them ice is as exotic as sandy beaches to us.
ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES
Now moving on from Qatar, we would like to highlight the fact that Qatar isn’t the only country where you can get by or work as an English speaking person. The more we travelled the more we realized that there are so many countries which use English as a first or second language. Most of them are obvious and I am sure you have heard a lot about them, but many are still quite exotic to us Europeans and we still get fascinated when we learn about their cultures and customs or see pictures from them. To give you a bit of a breathing space and a bit of a visual satisfaction to the visual learners who cannot concentrate more than 5 minutes on spoken word and have switched off listening to us ages ago, let us show you a few highlights of the most know countries and places.
FLUENCY IN ENGLISH
Finally, let us conclude on what we open as an idea in the beginning – why do we learn English and why is it worthwhile to be fluent at this language. For you as students the most immediate reason is that you could study an English University Course abroad. I am still studying a PhD in History and Media at Gloucestershire University in England and I have enjoyed every aspect of it. Not only it is a very different experience of learning but also it is valued a lot when you come back to your home country.
Following your studies, if you are fluent in English you can permanently or even only temporary work abroad. And not necessarily in a theme park in the USA but actually as an engineer, doctor or a teacher. I was amazed when in the same school in Qatar where I teach at the moment I suddenly met a Czech couple from Prague, who teach there as Primary teachers – they are sending their regards by the way. Travelling and the fascination is another obvious reason, but for those who do not enjoy going or living abroad English is also valuable. With your good knowledge of the language you can also impress your future employers and get the job of your dreams. Furthermore, there is also a whole virtual world out there which you would be able to successfully access such as
¢ www.google.com – on which you can find pretty much anything you need
¢ Google books, Google Scholar
¢ Wikipedia
¢ BBC – access to news from all around the world
¢ MTV
¢ AND MUCH MORE...(FILMS, BOOKS) It is great to be able to watch your beloved film start and actually hear their true voice, or read the actual words of your favourite book author and not what someone else translated...
Before we go we would just like to share with you our future plans and goals which we have set to ourselves.
SMART
¢ Drawing upon our experiences from the private English educational system in Britain and international schools in the Middle East we are opening an English College in Benesov.
¢ Tuition only in English, British curriculum and teaching methods through which students learn English not as a foreign language but naturally as the natives do. We also want to open an English library for our clients.
¢ Because we are planning to stay in Qatar for another year the only course available are Summer camps (including Tennis and swimming) and summer intensive tuition for secondary and university students (July/August 2011) – sign up starts from 1st March 2011 – limited availability of spaces
¢ Full time yearly courses starting in September 2012.
¢ www.smartec4u.weebly.com (web site launch in February 2011)
¢ With this we would like to thank you very much for your attention and we hope you enjoyed our presentation. It was a pleasure seeing you again, have a lovely Christmas holiday and we look forward to seeing you soon. Have a good day bye bye.
INTRODUCTION OF PhD THESIS - TEREZA WOOLGAR - draft 2011
Introduction
This thesis explores a variety of representations of the Czech RAF airmen in selected WW2 British national and Czech community newspapers and investigates how these representations in these mediated narratives relate to and interact with the Czech RAF veterans’ own recollections. These newspapers which reflected and recorded public collective memory of Britishness and Czechness are approached as archival artefacts; and similarly the private memories or private versions of narratives co-constructed and preserved by a living archive revealed in the interviews uncover specific oral community artefacts. Thus this study becomes to certain extent archaeology of ethnicity. In a broader context, my explorations open a discussion of the relationships between memory, identity, ideology and propaganda.
The key and the original notion of this research is the notion of versioning of memory, an occurrence in which an assortment of versions of memory of one event are being constantly created due to a multiple influences of the producers such memory. This notion emerged from my examination of the interaction of public and private memories and the subjects influencing them and how these memories contribute towards a creation, co-creation or recreation of a historical reconstruction. Versioning of the past to a certain extent challenges as well as is founded within the current theoretical framework of media and memory studies. Thus this thesis challenge approaches such as the re-visits and re-visions of history undertaken by feminist historical researchers who place public and private memory in opposition and highlight tensions the two (Summerfield, 1998; Wakewich and Smith, 2006). Whilst it supports theories which stress that our visions of history are drawn from different sources where media often influence our understanding of the past and that there is a constant need to ‘define and redefine the place that we occupy in the world’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2005, pg 2). The through line of this research includes approaching or reflecting the past through different versions of memory in terms of reconstructing and deconstructing (Munslow, 1997) and preserving old whilst producing new multidirectional (Rothberg, 2009) representations of our past existence and identity (which subsequently become history). On one hand, this study investigates how and to which point the WW2 public memory represented in the various WW2 newspapers was influenced by ideology, propaganda and news values. On the other hand, the influences of individual private narrative and living memory are being explored.
These two parallel discussions are at the end drawn together into a one debate about the multiple historical representation of the Czech RAF airmen which however needs to be critically evaluated as it was reconstructed by me as a contemporary researcher thus became another specific version of memory itself. As Munslow (1997) claims ‘by exploring how we represent the relationship between ourselves and the past we may see ourselves not as detached observers of the past but, [...] like participants in its creation’ (Munslow, 1997, pg 178). In order to highlight this issue I will examine the ‘construction of memories’ (Radstone, 1999) together with a perspective of self-consciously authored history (Munslow, 1997). Drawing upon the current debates of transnational (Radstone, 2010) and multidirectional memories (Rothberg, 2009) I will be exploring what happens when different representations of the past and memories confront each other. The fact that our memory can only be recovered and reproduced from traces of recollections which are only ‘mere glimpses of what once a whole living realm’(Lowenthall, 1990, pg 192) suggests that our past represented by private memory can only be described in a scatted way rather than in a full or a complex way. This is why researchers turn more often towards written sources such as media texts or various documents which in time appear to be more constant (Cubitt, 2007).This thesis argues that despite the possible dissimilarities between the various versions produced naturally and inevitably through versioning in order to attain a deeper understanding of the past it is valuable when researching memory to consider all versions of memory and explore their interrelations and map where they engage and disengage (Walder, 2003). In the case of the Czech RAF airmen, versioning assisted me to illustrate a more complex image of the Czech RAF airmen which goes beyond a narrow frame of a heroic ‘friendly allies’ representations.
In this complex whirl of versions of memory, where I argue that ‘media and memories shape one another’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2005, pg 18), a unifying element which links all these versions however also can be found. In the case of the Czech RAF airmen’s WW2 representations, such element was the war discourse - which not only over bridged public and private memory but also transcended collective memories of the British and Czech nations (Radstone, 2010). Moreover, this research based on memory work challenges history itself as a proposed ‘objective’ public master narrative (Radstone, 2000). Through the dialog between dominant public versions and the versions of subjective private memory a space for various alternatives is created and recognized (Radstone, 2000).
In order to cover the wide range of subjects that emerge from the examination of historical representations and memory, this study utilizes several research approaches from several academic fields or disciplines. Socio-cultural studies and media studies provided me with a foundation for understanding the mediated processes and audience theories and thus strengthen my textual analysis of the press. Oral history considering the different ways historical consciousness developed from life history experiences (Perks and Thomson, 2006) assisted me to theoretically underpin the interviews. For the exploration of memory I found extremely useful the theories of memory studies. “Memory work has a great deal to offer as a method of inquiry. It makes available the actual forms through which identities are composed: stories or images which encode memories” (Radstone, 1999, pg 221). Memory studies is not yet a clearly defined discipline, it is emerging field to which establishment this thesis also contributes.
This cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research benefits from the facility to follow the different versions of memory from various producers across various disciplines using a variety of methods without being restricted within one academic field. However, it is important to state that using a range of disciplines also creates some difficulties which this research needs to address and tackle. Notably the number of terms and theories this thesis is based upon multiplies with each engaged field, therefore in some places I was not able to reach the same depth when discussion these as would be reached in a study based on a single discipline. Furthermore, in order to maintain a substantial depth in this research, a debate about the wide range of political, military and ethical concerns that the war inevitably raises I chose to omit and thus is beyond the scope of this study. My research is more limited and concerned predominantly with memory and socio-cultural issues. Also the application of multiple methods during the process of examination multiple or multidirectional memories created an issue due to lack of theories which define appropriate methodology for a cross-disciplinary study based on Memory studies (Reading, 2009). In addition, as one culture was being explored within another, problems with language and cultural contexts had to be tackled.
In order to explore how the Czech RAF airmen were represented in British newspapers I decided to analyse The Times; a well established, strong, conventional ‘quality’ or a broadsheet newspaper presenting hegemonic discourse with an official voice. To broaden the spectrum of the analysed press and to reveal the more popular discourse, I also focused on tabloids. A type of newspapers that “prioritizes entertainment, human interest and commercial profitability and which is usually presented as oppositional to ‘serious’ and socially responsible journalism” (Biressi and Nunn, 2008, pg 7). The daily newspaper selected for this research, the Daily Mirror, was believed to “symbolize a truly British version of the tabloid [...] which claimed to be the defining popular organ of the day” (Conboy, 2006, pg 7). Second tabloid, a popular Sunday newspaper with a hybrid identity contributing towards “commencing astute journalism in its targeting of a range of general contents of a broad market” (Conboy, 2004, pg 157) was the News of the World. However the Czech RAF airmen’s representations appeared in this newspaper only in a sporadic way.
An original angle added into this research by a discovery of a local community newspaper of the Czechs and Slovaks living in Britain, The Czechoslovak, which has not been academically examined before. The question that examines the reasons behind the production of this newspaper is one of the key questions of this project. The Czechoslovak was a diasporic type of community media which created some non-mainstream alternative discourse in contrast with the discourse of the British WW2 newspapers. Not much background evidence surrounds this newspapers, however I discovered that It was printed by the famous Unwin Brothers publishers who were also printing for National Defence Ministry at that time and its aim to inform and entertain the Czech community in the mother tongue and contributed to the maintaining the Czech traditions abroad is also apparent. In contrast with the British newspapers, therepresentations of the Czech RAF airmen in The Czechoslovak were far more detailed and included regularly. Regrettably this newspaper was produced solely in the Czech language which limits employment of this unique source, therefore the most central text of this investigation became the special English issue of The Czechoslovak newspaper. This text however gained a very special position in this study not only due to its language accessibility but more importantly due to its originality and exclusivity. Firstly, there are no other similar types of texts preserved in British archives, and secondly the fact that it was produced by Czech journalists in English and had very high aspiration to compete with other more established newspapers at the time (price was sixpence whilst the cost of the News of the World was a twopence) is also very extraordinary. The Czechoslovak special issue represents one community living within another and at the same time presents this Czech community to the British nation. Thus despite some similarities in representations of the Czech RAF airmen with the representations of the British press such as heroism of the airmen, this issue created a very different version of public memory to any other media texts.
Another source of unique versions of memories of the Czech RAF airmen is the WW2 ‘living archive’ of private recollections. In order to explore these versions I interviewed seven Czech participants, the only former members (and a wife of a former member) of the RAF available or willing to contribute towards my research. From their narratives I also gained knowledge about their understanding of the war atmosphere in Europe and learnt about their feelings and their position of the Czech airmen in English WW2 society. The heterogeneity of their testimonies diffused their narratives into diverse pictures which could be described as subjective representations of human existence created by unique witnesses. However, despite their dissimilar versions of the past, I argue that they all produced their versions of memory and consequently had the right to such memory (Reading, 2010, current research). I also examined the possible reasons behind the diversity of their narratives again drawing up on the theories of memory studies, questioning to what extent personal memory is artificially manufactured (Hunt and Robbins, 1998). Moreover, due to the age of my interview participants, I considered thoroughly the issue of ethics of this research and made sure that the whole process was correct, smooth and not hurtful.
One issue that emerged from one of my interviews which needs to be addressed in the beginning of this research was the distinction between and of the employment of words ‘Czech’ and ‘Czechoslovak’. One interview participant felt that the term ‘Czechoslovak’ should be the sole label for the group of airmen as there were Slovakian airmen flying alongside to the Czechs in the RAF; however the majority of the participants I had interviewed were not concerned with this matter or did not really recognise any difference, often using a non-existing term ‘Czecko’ themselves. This is why I decided from a position of a current researcher to use both terms ‘Czech’ as well as ‘Czechoslovak’, however not as synonyms, but distinguishing between them according to the historical and cultural context.
The main distinction between these two names of members of a particular nation is very complex. As a researcher living in 21st century, I am writing about members of a currently existing country the Czech Republic, therefore Czechs. These men are however also former members of former country which consisted of two nations Czechs and Slovaks thus Czechoslovakia, in which case they were referred to as Czechoslovaks. The ‘Czechoslovak’ nationality was established by the first Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk in 1918 after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy and maintained between the years 1918 – 1939 and 1945 - 1993 before these two countries became independent again. Therefore it is now (as well as it was by some Czechs during the WW2) used as a traditional name rather than a correct historical idiom.
The reasons behind my choice of this topic are several. Firstly, the social side of the periods of the First and Second World War have always lied in the centre of my academic interest. Also the notion of living in exile was also in agreement with my current situation and position as a member of a Czech ethnic minority living in Britain. Furthermore, I was aware that the subject of the Czech RAF airmen and their contribution towards winning the war was neglected by the Czech historians for decades due to Communist regime in former Czechoslovakia and was a non-dominant issue within the British WW2 history. To expose this community memory therefore became my aim. Media played a very important role in the Second World War, as Andersen (2006) claims ‘it was the best reported war, ever’ (Andersen, 2006, pg 21). However, except from examination of Holocaust, WW2 media discourse has been investigated only in a sporadic way therefore quite neglected. By analysing the representation of the Czech RAF airmen within and beyond media discourse this thesis fills in a gap in knowledge.
In today’s world where a lot of academic research focuses on digital media, I decided to go back to the Second World War and explore memory of this disappearing war generation. Hence this study makes an important contribution to Media History by revealing a particular part of WW2 history from the perspective of the Czech airmen and the Czech community living and working in Britain during the Second World War. However this research does not only contribute towards existing academic knowledge by the analysis of the WW2 historical representation of the Czech RAF airmen identities but also by the examination of the interface between the public official memory represented in newspapers, and the private individual memory constructed by the veterans as their own recollections and their life narratives. There are also other studies concerning newspapers representation of other cultures in British newspapers such as K. Omenugha’s (2005) African women as news: a cross-cultural study. Generally however, I discovered that there is a scarcity of texts examining memory of the Second World War from WW2 newspapers, cross-referencing this data with oral narratives among academic publications. Therefore this thesis seeks to offer a methodological qualitative research model for exploring historical cross-cultural data within memory studies and to create very specific critical theories about British and Czech public memory produced by newspapers during the Second World War and the Czech private memory emerging from the personal narratives.
This thesis has been arranged to spread across six chapters which navigate the reader from an extensive review of pertinent academic literature, through methodology I employed, towards the analysis of the data gathered and its evaluation. The first two chapters place my study within a broad academic framework by examining theories and literature that underpin subjects of public mediated memory, and private narrated memory. Chapter 1 ‘Press as an archive’ based on the socio-cultural and media studies interconnects the theories about the historical context of the WW2, propaganda and war discourse (Balfour, 1979; Williams, 1992, 1998; Donnelly, 1999; Dedaic and Nelson, 2003), and news discourse (Fairclough, 1995; Curran, Seaton, 2003; Macdonald, 2003; Allan, 1999; Munslow, 1997). Particularly the theories of media representation (Hall, 1997; Moores, 1998, Pickering, 2001) emphasising the influence of ideology and the multiplicity of produced versions of representations extending from the ‘other’ towards the hegemonic versions, set out my theoretical position developing from the notion of competitive memory towards an ongoing interaction of multidirectional memory (Rothberg, 2009). This review of literature also creates a space for a discussion about the contrasts between tabloidized and traditional newspapers (Conboy, 2001, 2002, 2006; Örenbring, Jönsson, 2008; Curran, 2002; Greenslade, 2004) including community newspapers (Howley, 2009; Rennie, 2006). Besides an examination of the media theories from a position of a producer Chapter 1 also studies the influences of the media production from a receiver and thus draws on target audience theories (Alasuutari, 1999; Moores, 1999; Williams, 2003; Devereux, 2006; Zelizer, 2008). In order to explore the possible interconnection between the press and the archive, my survey of literature also acknowledges work on theory of archive (Bundsgard, 2006; Derrida, 1995; Yakel, 2006; Blouin, Rosenberg, 2006).
Second theoretical chapter ‘Living memory – the private versions of reality’ lays out the supporting framework of theories linking the memory studies work on memory (Halbwachs, 1992; Radstone, 1999, 2008; Lowenthal, 1985; Reading, 2002; Green, 2004; Bergson, 2007), oral history work on narrated private individual memory (Perks and Thomson, 1998, 2006; Ritchie, 2003; Perks, 1992) and historical theories (Nora, 1986; Foucault, 2003; Munslow, 2001) which in particular focus in ‘history from below’ and deconstruction of history. I have also drawn heavily on theory of identity and its interconnection with memory (Radstone, 2010; Hall and du Gay, 1996; Rapaport, 1997) and forgetting (Conway 2008; Radstone, 2000; Poole, 2008; Assche, Devlieger, Teampau, Verschraegen, 2009). This literature review also creates an outline of mediated memory theories linking media as a source of public memory and private memory together (Dijck, 2007; Zelizer, 2008; Hoskins, 2004), and the notions of multiple memories (Rothberg, 2009; Poole, 2008).
Chapter 3 ‘Methodology’ outlines the research process, and the various methods used, and ethical issues (Russell, 1999; Wenger, 2002), as well as provides a further survey of literature that underpins my methodological choices and practices (Jensen and Jankowski, 1991; Deacon, Pickering, Golding & Murdock, 1999; Macdonald, 2003; Fairclough, 2003; Cottle, 2000; Perks and Thomson, 1998, 2006). In this chapter I describe how I selected and combined some traditional socio-cultural and oral history methods so they suited this cross-disciplinary media and memory research and highlighted another research which benefited from using a comparative method (Wakewich and Smith, 2006). I also explained the difficulties emerging from the interconnection of these methods (Reading, 2009), and discussed my position in this research, the limitations and issues arising from my viewpoint which affects the research outcome (Chandler, 2005; Wakewich and Smith, 2006; Summerfield, 1998).
The following two analysis chapters are exploring and evaluating data I gathered. Chapter 4 ‘Discourse analysis of the WW2 press’ interrogates how the various British and Czech press created diverse public mediated memory discourses in order to represent the Czech RAF airmen reflecting the ideology of the era and the particular newspaper’s ethos. A special attention is here paid to the unique discourse of The Czechoslovak special English issue. Supported by theoretical work I examined, I will argue that public collective memories of Britishness and Czechness recycled in newspapers on one hand create diverse versions of past and on the other carry certain similar features. Thus the period of the Second World War and the war propaganda and ideology constructed certain nation-transcending commonalities which brought together different national or community collective memories (Radstone, 2010). Chapter 5 ‘Analysis of private individual narratives’ utilizes interview narratives again alongside with the academic literature I have employed to interpret these private memories. This chapter looks particularly at the issues of identity revealing three layers of identity of the airmen – the Czech, the British and the RAF war identity which for the Czech RAF airmen arguably became the strongest of them all. The final Chapter 6 ‘Sources of historical reconstruction – comparison of the private and public memory’ evaluates the previous analysis of private and public memory and merges these initially two discussions about newspaper representations and interview narratives into one debate about versions of memories and multidirectional nation transcending memory (Rothberg, 2009, Radstone, 2010) of the Czech RAF airmen. By doing so this research creates a space where different memories of the Czech RAF airmen interact and thus enrich the historical representation of the WW2.
