Copyright © 2020 Christy S. Gerst. All Rights Reserved.
Did your phone or watch start buzzing wildly last Thursday (3/26/20) as the Chicago Mayor closed the Lakefront and the beaches with police enforcement and $500 fines for large gatherings? Pictures soon emerged with police vehicles blocking off tunnel and path entrances to the Lakefront. Basketball, soccer and football are banned. While our Governor holds a live, daily (and scripted) briefing, the verbal tirades of Italian mayors ("we will send the police over. We will send flamethrowers") have gone viral. Chicago has seen restrictions that seemed unthinkable a month ago and currently faced by people everywhere. During the remainder of the school year, we will embark on our EU Mock Council PBL, challenging you to parse the largest global problem of your own lifetime, a task the National Association of Independent Schools' Essential Capabilities would certainly recommend. You've already signed up for the nation you will represent, not knowing at the time what the future held, a life lesson in the historical thinking skill of "contingency."
Were you surprised that government has begun to exercise this degree of control over the public’s freedom of movement? How has, and how could, COVID-19 alter the relationship between the government and the people? As we turn to look toward the European Union, what measures should it, or individual member states, take to respond to COVID-19 and which shouldn’t they (be allowed to) take? Should the EU play any role in ensuring that member states are protecting individual rights and liberties? For example, would it be “ok” for a member state to ask tech companies to trace the location of any diagnosed individual’s cellphone? Could our "choices", as Yuval Noah Harari puts it, "change our lives for years to come?" Look for the political themes of liberal constitutionalism, the rule of law, illiberalism, and authoritarianism.
According to the IMF, COVID-19 has “triggered a deep global recession.” COVID-19 first emerged back in November, and it has severely constrained economies in Asia and Europe. Within the context of our own economy, three million Americans became unemployed almost immediately as governors of states issued “stay-at-home” orders. According to the Guardian, “[m]ore than 250 million European citizens are in mandatory home confinement to help curb the spread of Covid 19.” Nor are they alone. India began a 21-day lockdown order this week. The economic consequences are potentially staggering. Is a unified approach by the EU possible, presumably leveraging its finance ministers? How should individual member nations respond to the socio-economic fallout from COVID-19? What happened during the financial panic after the stock market crash of 1929? How did nations' responses differ in terms of social welfare legislation during the Great Depression? Does the 2007 Great Recession provide the roadmap? Are there contemporary lessons from others such as China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan who are many months into the crisis? Look for themes of historical economic panics, recessions and depressions, government intervention, as well as strategies of economic nationalism with protectionist legislation versus themes of regional and global integration (e.g., open borders, liberal visa policies, free movement of people and goods, customs union, and free trade).
Can the European Union survive COVID-19? Put another way, is nationalism resurgent (again, still, more)? As COVID-19 has spread across Europe, and related to the economic question above, what does it mean for the future of the European Union that on the 25th anniversary of Schengen passport-free travel, borders have been closed by at least 14 member nations? How might the economic troubles affect the public's willingness to aid refugees? What does history tell us? How is xenophobia rising across the globe from Europe to Thailand? Can the EU use its beginnings in the midst of the global war-ravaged Europe to inspire Europeans to solidarity or is the "European project" doomed? Look for themes of national identity, European identity, cross-cultural interaction, liberal nationalism, extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and opening and closing of borders historically.
The elephant in the room is whether we will be conducting this PBL project virtually or in person. Did you know that the real EU is currently handling this crisis by video conference? So, I'm fairly confident we can cook up a virtual solution, if a gathering of more than 50 is not possible come May. The EU, after all, also has an earthquake in Croatia, the refugee crisis on the Greece-Turkey border, the Polish judiciary reforms, and continuing Brexit fallout to manage as well. Will it survive?
21st CENTURY PROBLEM-SOLVING
The National Association of Independent Schools' Essential Capacities for the 21st century emphasizes the need for students to use knowledge and creativity to solve complex "real world" problems with a "global perspective" and in "one or more international languages." Over the past four years, AT Modern European History has enhanced and reshaped its curriculum to prioritize global connectivity and cross-cultural interaction as a course theme, introduce a winter research paper individually tailored to each student’s global heritage and identity, and refocus our year-long project to current, international affairs. Our second semester project, in lieu of a research paper, is an EU Mock Council with a global footprint within Europe (movement of peoples and goods, security and defense, and refugee crisis) as well as beyond Europe (India, China, Russia and Turkey), leveraging students' world language skills. The Essential Questions we have highlighted so far this year are as follows:- How does constitutional democracy preserve the rule of law and protect against tyranny?
- How do countries, multi-national corporations, small businesses and individuals navigate the competitive, trade-based, global environment? Does everyone benefit?
- How may the national, linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe challenge and contest the formation of “European identity”?
HISTORY OF EU
The European Union, commonly known as the EU, is an institution in Europe created in the aftermath of World War II in order to achieve the political goal of peace in Europe. Founding members of the European Union all came from Western Europe, which should not surprise you now that you have learned how Stalinist Russia took over Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and communist governments were installed in all such countries. In a sense, EU membership was a bulwark against the Soviet Union (and now Russia). When communism collapsed between 1989 and 1991, these same countries obtained their political and economic independence and looked to democracy and capitalism (See People’s Century, 1989).
By the 2000s, many clamored to join the European Union to enjoy the benefits of regional prosperity, peace, and security through economic and political unity. For the last ten years, the unity of the European Union has been troubled with the fallout from the Great Recession of 2008, which wrought financial devastation in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain. These countries, which had joined the Euro, not only lost control of their monetary policy during the crisis because they could not devalue their currencies but their fiscal policy because Germany and the IMF (among others) insisted upon austerity. It was feared that Greece would leave the Euro followed by “a contagion” of other countries. Was economic integration, which had created, strengthened, and enlarged the Union, at an end? The European Union became further embroiled in controversy with the refugee crisis of 2015, with Germany’s Angela Merkel leading the moral charge to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflicts in North Africa and Southwest Asia. This has further deepened resistance to a core principle of the European Union, namely “freedom of movement,” which was already attacked as endangering further terrorist attacks (Spain 2004, Netherlands 2004, UK 2005, Belgium 2014, Paris 2015). Finally, many resent what they see as the legal, regulatory, and economic burdens of membership and there is talk of the creation of an EU Army. Most recently, we have seen Brexit and the "threat of rebellion" in Eastern Europe as obvious examples of DISUNITY. Now, there is COVID-19. Can the EU survive it?
STEP 1: Look up your country's European Union page. It contains a country profile as well as several links on the left.
STEP 2: 19 countries of the European Union countries also use the Euro currency. Read your country profile on the euro-challege website.
STEP 3: If your country is not a member of the EU (Turkey, China, India, and Russia), I have linked you to the EEAS via the country roster, which begins to describe your country's relationship with the European Union.
STEP 1: Look up your country's European Union page. It contains a country profile as well as several links on the left.
STEP 2: 19 countries of the European Union countries also use the Euro currency. Read your country profile on the euro-challege website.
STEP 3: If your country is not a member of the EU (Turkey, China, India, and Russia), I have linked you to the EEAS via the country roster, which begins to describe your country's relationship with the European Union.
STEP 4: Follow your country's handling of the COVID-19 crisis, along with general EU news regarding any unified response to it. Google search: France and COVID-19. Refine search to "News" or "Videos." This document houses all the current events articles, separated by country, that Mr. Janus and I have posted in the last four school years.
Beginning on March 30, we will increasingly juxtapose our troubled present with critical developments in world history, linking history to current events, using themes such as liberal democracy and the rule of law; trade, competitiveness and globalization; and identity, national vs. European, cross-cultural interaction, and globalization. How can the EU survive in the face of challenges faced?
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