Che Guevara Material

[Ducked]

This went mostly OK, but it was more minimal than I'd intended, ending up as a one hour intro followed a week later by two hour lesson.

After a look at the textbook, and a Powerpoint introduction from me on Che as logo, based on "That" picture, put in the context of the political turmoil of my yoof, (Prague Spring, Grosvenor Square, Les Manifestations, Paris) and the mini-Che's, I got them to do 4 Powerpoints, each on a different phase of the guys life, with a DVD as backup/visual source for each one.

The topics were something like "Journey before the Legend" (Motorcycle Diaries), The Birth of a Legend: Guatemala (Hasta La Siempre Victoria) Journey Into legend: Cuba (The Argentine). Death as a Legend : Congo and Bolivia (Guerrilla)

I asked them to consider the question "Was Che a hero", and gave them URL's for the "Anti-Che" accusations "Dufus (incompetent), Coward, Murderer, Fanatic, noting that these were not necessarily unbiased sources (massive understatement, since they are mostly from Cuban exiles) and suggesting Wikipedia as a source for balance.

Powerpoints were mostly of a relatively high standard, except, unfortunately, the Cuba girls, who misunderstood the title of The Argentine DVD (obviously not looked at) and produced a rather scrappy ppt on Che's childhood in Argentina. Fail.

The discussion didn't go too badly either. They demolished the Coward accusation pretty easily, but with Murderer had trouble with the huge variation in the numbers of reported executions, and argued about whether these were justified in what was effectively a time of war. (Guy said yes, girls said no). Fanatic was a yes. Incompetent they based on Cuba's poor economy (Yes) and the suicidal nature of the Guatemala operation, (Yes) though it was pointed out that then he couldn't very well be a coward as well, which I thought was a pretty sophisticated line of argument for Taiwanese.

One of the girls went on to use the topic as a basis for an argument essay in her academic writing course (other instructor) but from what I saw she didn't make a very good job of it.

Thanks all for the help and suggestions.