Sounds of a struggle

\"Remember Sharpeville. `Bullet in the back` day. Because it epitomized oppression. And the nature of society.\" Hawken eighth graders may not ever soon forget those words. "Remember Sharpeville" is South African poet Dennis Brutus` memorial to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when South African police fired into a crowd of apartheid protestors killing 69, including women and children, and injuring more than 180. It was an event that thrust the apartheid conflict onto an international stage. Recently, eighth grade Humanities classes wrapped a unit of study about Africa, its history, its conflicts and its future. As part of the lesson, classes wrote letters to the United Nations, urging that conditions be improved in some of the continent`s worst stricken countries and homed in on South Africa and its nearly century-long apartheid struggle. They learned about the South African government-sanctioned segregation and disenfranchisement, the violence and its aftermath. But they also learned how South Africans coped with it all. Through songs and poems. Led by Humanities teachers Brian Hart, Garet Libbey and Jenifer Halliday, the students recently performed a handful of these poems for sixth graders. The content was emotionally heavy, but Libbey thinks it`s important that the students are exposed to all sides of issues, even the disturbing parts. \"I don`t know that they always get the multiple perspectives...and since [the eighth grade question] for the year is, `how can I make a difference in the global community?` its our mission for the year that they`re exposed to more than just the American or European perspective on things,\" she said. In the winter, the classes will turn their focus to India and Ghandi and some of the parallels with America and Malcolm X. In the spring, they`ll move to the Middle East, exploring readings from both Arab and Israeli perspectives. The units are designed so that the students can, according to Libbey, \"at least begin to think about how to move outside of themselves\" and learn the issues facing the world community. Then they can become world changers. Click below to listen to the students` moving performances of the South African poems of protest. Remember Sharpeville by Dennis Brutus Where the Rainbow Ends by Richard Rive Because I`m Black by Herbert Dhlomo Rise Up by Desmond Dhlomo How Long, O God by Walter N.B. Nhalpo The Contraction and Enclosure of Land by St. J. Page Yako translated from Xhosa