Lessons about stereotypes to constitutions

I have been tasked to teach a session on stereotypes to a high school German class. Oh boy, stereotypes can go all different ways and I am trying to prepare for any number of scenarios of where the students will take the different planned conversations. While the textbooks have great exercises, including grammar, I want to supplement with a few video sources that I found online. Everyone loves movie time in class, so why not use it to my advantage?

First I had to find a video that did not contain foul language or beer drinking. I watched many videos made by a variety of different people, from teenagers to polished entertainment television programs. Finally, I decided to go with a video that shows how Germans self-identify, it is a funny video that discusses light hearted topics such as the beer brewing, Birkenstock wearing, non-sense of humor having, typical German. It does not go into xenophobia that is felt by immigrants into Germany or the bad guy, Nazi stereotypes that is frequently seen in American movies. Since it did not include the negative German stereotypes, I decided to pair it with a video of American extremes as seen by Germans. Germans find the American sense of patriotism, guns, religion, and extremes between rich and poor very concerning. The video about American extremes does not explain any of the topics in a full or even historically contextual way, but is designed to show a very extreme bias. I wonder if students will notice my (manufactured) bias or the biased views in the videos themselves.

In an effort to show the actual problems with German stereotypes, I have found some publications that were created by the German government to address different biases within their country. A major issue in Germany is xenophobia which is typically based on stereotypes. Gypsies have never been respected as people and have roamed the German countryside since time immemorial. The immigrants that were invited to re-build Germany after World War II were not integrated well into German society. Even though they may have lived in Germany for over 40 years but they did not receive the right of German citizenship until the 1990's. Today some people are struggling with the amount of Muslim refugees that have come into the country. Many people are afraid that these immigrants will swallow up their culture and Germany will be changed. Germany has changed a lot over the last two hundred years. They went from small principalities to democracy, to national socialism and finally are at democratic socialism. The U.S. has had its own challenges incorporating different cultures into citizenship, our constitution changed after the civil rights movement in 1965 to grant citizenship to people that have been here for generations or even since before their was a United States of America. The German government rests on the German constitution that grants certain rights to people that live within its borders. The German constitution, as well as the European Union constitution includes the right of human dignity. The U. S. constitution does not protect human dignity, but Germany’s does. This is the basis of law, why they cannot refuse refugees from anywhere. The basic concept that every human has the same right to human dignity must not only be defended by the government but by every citizen. Luckily, the German government has made a series of small movies in German, English and Arabic to explain how the laws are applied to all people that are physically located in Germany. The videos are very informative and can be found on the following website: http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.47445/ There are a total of three separate videos and the English language videos are the first of the three pairs near the bottom of the page.

My goal is to have fun while students explore their own identities, explore how they see others, how others may see them, how history has given us stereotypes and how the law protects us from negativity that may be spread by stereotypes. Students will learn to not make assumptions about other people based on what they look like, their land of origin, sex or religion because they are often wrong or incomplete.