John Simkin

As a result of being swamped by spam I am no longer able to use my normal email address (spartacus@pavilion.co.uk). Therefore I would ask people to contact me by using the email function at this website.

You will need to join the International Education Forum before you do this. To register please go to:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...t=Login&CODE=00

Please register in your real name. You will then be able to get into contact with me.

I thought members might be interested in this research being carried out on girls and ICT.

"Popular culture offers little outside-of-school support for children's mathematical learning. Computer games are a potential exception. These games exert a tremendous pull on some children. While many games purport to be educational and even to promote children's mathematical learning, there is little research to support these claims. Researchers are beginning to get a handle on the conditions under which students learn mathematics in school, yet almost nothing is known about how computer game-playing can support and extend children's knowledge of mathematics. In addition, researchers and software developers have paid little attention to the disparities between boys' and girls' involvement with these games. While computer games could provide the opportunity for increased mathematical learning by both boys and girls, the reality is that girls are not benefiting from the potential of computers to promote math learning. For girls, the computer's screen seems to be a kind of glass wall. They are allowed to glimpse its worlds from a distance, but are not invited inside. We explore these questions through research with elementary and middle school students, and draw on the fields of mathematics education, informal learning, children's play, and gender issues. We call our project Through The Glass Wall to emphasize that one of our goals is to help girls break down the "glass wall" that the computer screen sometimes represents: a wall that keeps them from acquiring important knowledge about technology.

http://www.terc.edu/mathequity/gw/html/papers.html

I thought members might be interested in this research being carried out on girls and ICT.

"Popular culture offers little outside-of-school support for children's mathematical learning. Computer games are a potential exception. These games exert a tremendous pull on some children. While many games purport to be educational and even to promote children's mathematical learning, there is little research to support these claims. Researchers are beginning to get a handle on the conditions under which students learn mathematics in school, yet almost nothing is known about how computer game-playing can support and extend children's knowledge of mathematics. In addition, researchers and software developers have paid little attention to the disparities between boys' and girls' involvement with these games. While computer games could provide the opportunity for increased mathematical learning by both boys and girls, the reality is that girls are not benefiting from the potential of computers to promote math learning. For girls, the computer's screen seems to be a kind of glass wall. They are allowed to glimpse its worlds from a distance, but are not invited inside. We explore these questions through research with elementary and middle school students, and draw on the fields of mathematics education, informal learning, children's play, and gender issues. We call our project Through The Glass Wall to emphasize that one of our goals is to help girls break down the "glass wall" that the computer screen sometimes represents: a wall that keeps them from acquiring important knowledge about technology.

http://www.terc.edu/mathequity/gw/html/papers.html

Section 1: Introduction

Introduction

I will be trying to do three things in this seminar.

(1) I will be looking at developing a strategy for making teaching about the Cold War an exciting activity for school students.

One only has to look at popular culture to discover that people like mysteries. This is also true of children. In the late 1970s a few history teachers established Tressell Publications. Our intention was to produce materials to support the Schools History Project. We soon found out that books based on mysteries: “The Mysterious Case of the Mary Celeste, the Bermuda Triangle, the Assassination of JFK, etc. were very popular with both teachers and students. Although Tressell is no more and these books have been out of print for many years, information from the Photocopying Agency reveals that these materials are still being used in schools all over the UK.

I suspect that students like mysteries for the same reason that I do. With mysteries you are not a passive observer of events. You are no longer doing what Douglas Barnes described as “filling in the blanks” (From Communication to Curriculum: 1975). As Barnes points out students very quickly get bored with “guessing what is in the mind of the teacher”. Mysteries allow students to play an active role in their learning. In a well-organized mystery, the student gets an opportunity to test out his or her theory by studying the evidence. It works best if the teacher has not already decided that he/she knows the answer of the mystery. If this is the case, the students is once again reduced to filling in the blanks.

I will be arguing that it is possible to teach the Cold War as a series of mysteries. Some of these mysteries cannot be completely answered by looking at the available evidence. As a result, they leave plenty of room for speculation (the development of theories).

(2) I will be looking at the problems of using primary sources to teach about the Cold War. This will involve an examination of why certain sources are difficult if not impossible to use. Why some are unavailable and others are unreliable.

The use of primary sources to study the Cold War creates particular problems. Some of the most important sources are located in the archives of MI6, KGB, CIA and other such agencies, and therefore are not available to the historian. Even those that have been released, are not always to be trusted. Both sides in the Cold War were involved in disinformation campaigns. This included agents posing as defectors. For example, we still do not know if Yuri Nosenko or Anatoli Golitsin were telling the truth. What we do know that if one was, the other one was not? Even if the CIA or some other agency agrees to release a secret document, how do we know that the document itself contains the truth? Is it possible that the document itself was part of some disinformation campaign?

As a result of the United States Freedom of Information Act it has been possible to get hold of important information about the Cold War. In November 2003, tapes of private conversations between President Kennedy and his advisers reveal that secret negotiations were going on between the US and Cuba in the summer of 1963. What is so striking about this information is that Kennedy was trying to keep these negotiations secret from the CIA. As Arthur Schlesinger, one of Kennedy’s political advisers, recently admitted, in the early 1960s, the US government and the CIA had different foreign policies. Other released documents show that Kennedy failed in his attempt to hide his new foreign policy from the CIA.

(3) I will also be looking at how the latest technology can be used to involve the students in the research process.

The arrival of the internet has changed the way the historian works. This does not only mean that the historian uses Google to search the archives. More importantly, the historian uses this technology to find those with information about the past.

At the beginning of the year I began producing online materials about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My main objective was to create a research resource for students and historians. This included the creation of 256 biographies (with relevant primary and secondary sources) of people associated with the case.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

Much of my research has taken place via the web. One of my main strategies has been to make contact with these people (or their friends and relatives).

For example, I wanted to interview Nathaniel Weyl about his role in the CIA misinformation campaign following the assassination of JFK. I was told by a historian, who had recently written a book about the subject, that as he was born in 1910, he was probably dead. However, a search via Google led me to a book review by him on the Amazon website. I sent him an email. He replied and willingly answered my questions about his relationship with the CIA.

In many cases witnesses and suspects have made contact with me. For obvious reasons they make regular checks via Google to find out if people are writing about them. As a result of the Google ranking system, it will not be long before they discover my web page on them. They often make contact to point out factual mistakes, to question my (and others) judgement of them and offering to supply additional information. This includes photographs (as one person pointed out, the photograph I used made her father look like a criminal). Images are indeed powerful and having the right photograph is important to the people you are writing about. New technology is therefore changing the relationship between the writer and the subject. The information being provided for the reader is the result of what one could call negotiated truth.

I believe it is important that others should have access to these witnesses of history. Therefore I attempt to persuade them to join a forum on the assassination. This is a place where students and historians can question the witnesses and suspects. At the same time, students and historians can post details of their theories. These can be questioned by other researchers.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=126

This is what Pierre Levy, has called “collective intelligence”. Levy claims we are in the early moments of an historical paradigm shift of the magnitude of the Renaissance. In his book Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (1994), Levy argues that the “unfettered exchange of ideas in cyberspace has the potential to liberate us from the social and political hierarchies that have stood in the way of mankind's advancement”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

http://www.arenotech.org/Levy/Levy_-Ottawa/

Others, including Tom Atlee, prefer the term “community intelligence”.

http://www.community-intelligence.com/

It was this idea of collective or community intelligence that inspired Tim Berners Lee to create what became known as the “World Wide Web”. In 1980 Berners-Lee joined the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). His main role was to support CERN’s community of physicists in the retrieval and handling of information. CERN is a vast organisation doing research of unimaginable complexity. The physicists were based in several different countries. Berners-Lee’s task was to create a system which CERN could consolidate its organisational knowledge. He set out to create a system that would allow individual scientists to access data being created by other members of the CERN team.

http://www.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/in...c/proposal.html

Although scientists were the first to benefit from the web. It soon became clear that this new system had to offer the historian. It has also the potential to change the way all students learn.

Anyway, with this line-up below, I do believe the common denominator is JM/WAVE.

For more information on JM/Wave see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjmwave.htm

From this page you will get links to many of those people illustrated in James Richards' photograph. The rest will be added over the next couple of days.

In another thread Maggie Jarvis, a science teacher, has criticised those historians who have spent a lot of time studying the assassination of John F. Kennedy: "I cannot support the level and type of discussion that you are all so keen on. Why do you not pool your collective intelligence and tackle something more relevant to today - the atrocities that are taking place at this very moment could do with serious investigation. Perhaps that would lead to fewer people alive at this moment losing them before they should! I repeat - John Kennedy is dead."

The study of history is always about the present and not the past. Historians help us understand the situation we find ourselves in. It is because we need to understand the situation in Iraq today that we need to study events like the assassination of JFK.

Here are a few quotations that make this very important point:

“The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.” (James Joll)

“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.” (G. K. Chesterton)

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” (H. G. Wells)

“More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.” (John Barth)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” (Voltaire)

Over the last few years I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to understand current events without understanding our “secret history”. Since the emergence of democracy and the mass media it has become vitally important for those in power to hide certain information from the public. The intelligence services have played a very important part in this attempt to conceal this information from the public. So much so that they have become an important political force. In fact, they have become a crucial aspect of what Dwight Eisenhower called in January, 1961 the military-industrial complex.

I am afraid most of the general public have not grasped this point and still believe the information provided by the government. I think there are psychological reasons for this desire to believe that our government tells us the truth. If the government is using the intelligence services to manipulate the truth, do we actually live in a democracy?

The war in Iraq is a good example of this. Blair would never had been able to order troops into Iraq if the British people had the full facts about WMD. Anybody who has spent anytime at all in studying this issue will be aware that MI5 and MI6 worked closely with the Blair government to conceal the truth about WMD. The CIA and FBI did similar things in the United States.

In most cases the security services work in the interests of the government of the day. However, on occasions, these organizations have worked independently of the government. In some cases, they have followed a policy that has attempted to undermine the government. For example, we now have evidence that this happened in Britain during the governments of Ramsay MacDonald (1923-24) and Harold Wilson (1964-70) and (1974-76).

It is clear that a similar thing was going on during 1962-63 in America. This resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president. To my mind you could not have a more important event to study. Not because it is vitally important to find out who fired the actual shots. The most important aspect of this case is to find out who ordered this assassination and who was involved in covering it up. Until this is done the CIA and the FBI will not be brought under democratic control. The same is true in Britain. MI5 and MI6 and our corrupt government will not be brought under control until we find out the full facts about how they manipulated public opinion over WMD in Iraq.

In another thread Maggie Jarvis, a science teacher, has criticised those historians who have spent a lot of time studying the assassination of John F. Kennedy: "I cannot support the level and type of discussion that you are all so keen on. Why do you not pool your collective intelligence and tackle something more relevant to today - the atrocities that are taking place at this very moment could do with serious investigation. Perhaps that would lead to fewer people alive at this moment losing them before they should! I repeat - John Kennedy is dead."

The study of history is always about the present and not the past. Historians help us understand the situation we find ourselves in. It is because we need to understand the situation in Iraq today that we need to study events like the assassination of JFK.

Here are a few quotations that make this very important point:

“The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.” (James Joll)

“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.” (G. K. Chesterton)

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” (H. G. Wells)

“More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.” (John Barth)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” (Voltaire)

Over the last few years I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to understand current events without understanding our “secret history”. Since the emergence of democracy and the mass media it has become vitally important for those in power to hide certain information from the public. The intelligence services have played a very important part in this attempt to conceal this information. So much so that they have become an important political force. In fact, they have become a crucial aspect of what Dwight Eisenhower called in January, 1961 the military-industrial complex.

I am afraid most of the general public have not grasped this point and still believe the information provided by the government. I think there are psychological reasons for this desire to believe that our government tells us the truth. If the government is using the intelligence services to manipulate the truth, do we actually live in a democracy?

The war in Iraq is a good example of this. Blair would never had been able to order troops into Iraq if the British people had the full facts about WMD. Anybody who has spent anytime at all in studying this issue will be aware that MI5 and MI6 worked closely with the Blair government to conceal the truth about WMD. The CIA and FBI did similar things in the United States.

In most cases the security services work in the interests of the government of the day. However, on occasions, these organizations have worked independently of the government. In some cases, they have followed a policy that has attempted to undermine the government. For example, we now have evidence that this happened in Britain during the governments of Ramsay MacDonald (1923-24) and Harold Wilson (1964-70 and 1974-76).

It is clear that a similar thing was going on during 1962-63 in America. This resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president. To my mind you could not have a more important event to study. Not because it is vitally important to find out who fired the actual shots. The most important aspect of this case is to find out who ordered this assassination and who was involved in covering it up. Until this is done the CIA and the FBI will not be brought under democratic control. The same is true in Britain. MI5 and MI6 and our corrupt government will not be brought under control until we find out the full facts about how they manipulated public opinion over WMD in Iraq.

This topic has got me thinking about what topics should be covered in a National Curriculum. Is it possible to devise a history course that could be used in all schools? In other words, an International National Curriculum.

I cannot support the level and type of discussion that you are all so keen on. Why do you not pool your collective intelligence and tackle something more relevant to today - the atrocities that are taking place at this very moment could do with serious investigation. Perhaps that would lead to fewer people alive at this moment losing them before they should!

I repeat - John Kennedy is dead.

The study of history is always about the present and not the past. Historians help us understand the situation we find ourselves in. It is because we need to understand the situation in Iraq today that we need to study events like the assassination of JFK.

Here are a few quotations that make this very important point:

“The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.” (James Joll)

“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.” (G. K. Chesterton)

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” (H. G. Wells)

“More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.” (John Barth)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” (Voltaire)

Over the last few years I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to understand current events without understanding our “secret history”. Since the emergence of democracy and the mass media it has become vitally important for those in power to hide certain information from the public. The intelligence services have played a very important part in this attempt to conceal this information from the public. So much so that they have become an important political force. In fact, they have become a crucial aspect of what Dwight Eisenhower called in January, 1961 the military-industrial complex.

I am afraid most of the general public have not grasped this point and still believe the information provided by the government. I think there are psychological reasons for this desire to believe that our government tells us the truth. If the government is using the intelligence services to manipulate the truth, do we actually live in a democracy?

The war in Iraq is a good example of this. Blair would never had been able to order troops into Iraq if the British people had the full facts about WMD. Anybody who has spent anytime at all in studying this issue will be aware that MI5 and MI6 worked closely with the Blair government to conceal the truth about WMD. The CIA and FBI did similar things in the United States.

In most cases the security services work in the interests of the government of the day. However, on occasions, these organizations have worked independently of the government. In some cases, they have followed a policy that has attempted to undermine the government. For example, we now have evidence that this happened in Britain during the governments of Ramsay MacDonald (1923-24) and Harold Wilson (1964-70) and (1974-76).

It is clear that a similar thing was going on during 1962-63 in America. This resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president. To my mind you could not have a more important event to study. Not because it is vitally important to find out who fired the actual shots. The most important aspect of this case is to find out who ordered this assassination and who was involved in covering it up. Until this is done the CIA and the FBI will not be brought under democratic control. The same is true in Britain. MI5 and MI6 and our corrupt government will not be brought under control until we find out the full facts about how they manipulated public opinion over WMD in Iraq.

On the day before President Kennedy’s assassination, Mayor Earl Cabell’s Administration made a change in the route that President Kennedy’s motorcade would take. Instead of traveling straight down Main through the middle of Dealey Plaza, which was the route published in the Dallas Morning News on November 21, the motorcade turned right on Houston and went over to the Texas School Book Depository at Elm and Houston. It then turned left and headed down Elm. President Kennedy was shot and killed on Elm. (The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes)

Dates and details of the motorcade route in Dallas seems to be a crucial element in understanding the assassination of JFK. Has anyone worked out the exact chronology of these events.

(1) The date that it was first decided to visit Dallas on 22nd November, 1963. The people involved in this decision. The date when this information was published in the media.

(2) The first time that a map was printed of the proposed motorcade route in Dallas. What was the route published at this time? Who was involved in deciding this route? Did this get national publicity?

(3) When was the route changed? What changes were made? Who was involved in making these changes? When did this new route first appear in the media? Did this get national publicty? Which newspapers in Texas showed this new route?

In recent years JFK researchers have taken a growing interest in William (Rip) Robertson. Born in Texas he joined the United States Marines and served in the Pacific during the Second World War.

After the war Robertson joined the Central Intelligence Agency and became involved in what was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d'état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company.

Robertson became a CIA outcast after he was found responsible for ordering the bombing of a British ship which he had mistakenly identified as Russian. He moved to Nicaragua where he worked as an adviser to the government of Anastasio Somoza.

Robertson returned to the CIA before the Bay of Pigs operation. He commanded the supply ship Barbara J and disobeyed orders by landing in Cuba with Brigade 2506. Afterwards Roberson became a member of staff at CIA's JM WAVE station in Miami.

In the winter of 1962 Eddie Bayo claimed that two officers in the Red Army based in Cuba wanted to defect to the United States. Bayo added that these men wanted to pass on details about atomic warheads and missiles that were still in Cuba despite the agreement that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Bayo had originally fought with Fidel Castro against Fulgencio Batista. He disagreed with Castro's policies after he gained power and moved to Miami and helped establish Alpha 66. His story was eventually taken up by several members of the anti-Castro community. William Pawley became convinced that it was vitally important to help get these Soviet officers out of Cuba. Pawley contacted Ted Shackley, head of the CIA's JM WAVE station in Miami. Shackley decided to help Pawley organize what became known as Operation Tilt. He also assigned Robertson to help with the operation. David Sanchez Morales, another CIA agent, also became involved in this attempt to bring out these two Soviet officers.

In June, 1963, a small group, including Robertson, John Martino, William Pawley, Eddie Bayo and Richard Billings, a journalist working for Life Magazine, secretly arrived in Cuba. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to find these Soviet officers and they were forced to return to Miami. Bayo remained behind and it was rumoured that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.

Robertson was later sent to Vietnam. He died in 1970 from the after effects of malaria.

Sir David King recently wrote an article for the American journal Science criticising the US Government for failing to take global warming more seriously. He wrote: "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."

What do people think?

I have created a forum for those interested in Environmental Issues. It is hoped to persuade writers to discuss their books and articles in this section.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=137

I have been asked to create a forum for those interested in Environmental Issues. It is hoped to persuade writers to discuss their books and articles in this section.

I am involved with a group of European teachers in creating an oral history database on Black History. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts on important events in the struggle for equal civil rights. This material will eventually be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is created.

To see how this works see the section on the Cold War.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=140

I am involved with a group of European teachers in creating an oral history database on the Cold War. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts about important Cold War events. This will include people’s accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the building and pulling down of the Berlin Wall, Prague Spring, the reunification of Germany, the decline of communism, etc. It is hoped that people will post their recollections from all over the world. This material would then be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is produced.

I am sure members of the JFK forum would have something to say about these issues. If you start off with your personal recollections of these events and then go on to express your long-term views on these subjects. If you were born after these events, maybe you could comment on them as a historian, researcher, etc.

Could you always add your name, age, etc. at the time the event took place. If possible, add a picture of yourself at this date. If it is an interview use the name, age, photograph, etc. of the person being interviewed.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=140

I have started a couple of threads to show you how I hope it will work.

John

I have added a new page entitled Cold War Oral History Project. It reads:

The History Department of the European Virtual School is launching a Cold War Oral Project. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts on important Cold War events. This will include people’s accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the building and pulling down of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, etc. It is hoped that people will post their recollections from all over the world. This is something that students could get involved in by interviewing parents or grandparents about these events. This material could then be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is produced.

Could you always add your name, age, etc. at the time the event took place. If possible, add a picture of yourself at this date. If it is an interview use the name, age, photograph, etc. of the person being interviewed.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=140

Please contribute to this website. I thought Dalibor might want to start a thread on the Prague Spring. Anders must some interesting stories to tell about his role in trying to overthrow capitalism. I am sure we all have something to say about the Berlin War, Fall of Communism, etc.

Did anyone create a page called "War". I could not really see the point of this as it appears to link sideways to other projects. My understanding of the system is that this index page will be created automatically by Contens.

John Simkin, aged 18, apprentice bookbinder in a printing company in Barking, Essex.

I first began to get interested in politics at the age of eighteen. Bill Parrish, the FOC (father of the chapel of our union) had been going on about politics during every lunch-time since I started at the factory three years earlier. It was the arrival of Bob Clark that changed my views on politics. Not that he was particularly political. He voted for the Labour Party but was not a member. What he did was to ask me what I thought about political issues. It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked me questions like that. It took me by surprise. It also made me realise that I virtually had no political knowledge. Although this did not stop me expressing my thoughts on a wide-range of different political subjects. One of the main issues at the time was the growing escalation of the war in Vietnam. Bob took the view that American action in Vietnam was an unpleasant necessity. Like on most issues, Bob seemed to talk a lot of sense and it became my point of view as well.

Bob suggested I joined the local Labour Party Young Socialists. My mother always voted Labour (although she never talked about politics). She also said my father had been a Labour supporter before his death in 1956. My new girlfriend’s mother was also a party member. I therefore asked her to find out where the local YS met. This she did (she later claimed it was one of the worse mistakes of her life).

I was deeply shocked by my first YS meeting. It was dominated by a discussion on the Vietnam War. Their views were very different from those of Bob Clark and my girlfriend’s mother. They saw the Vietnam War as a crime against humanity. However, their anger was not really directed against America but against Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, who was refusing to condemn the actions of the US military in Vietnam.

For the first few weeks I tried to defend Wilson. Despite being well briefed by Bob Clark I had great difficulty arguing my case. The main problem was that they were so well-informed. They were also very aggressive towards me (they probably thought that a was a spy sent by central office). One member, Jim Smith, was more sympathetic to my plight and suggested that I start reading the Guardian newspaper. He explained it was part of the capitalist press but was liberal enough to allow opponents of the war to write articles for the newspaper. I took his advice but found the newspaper difficult to read. The main problem was the paper assumed that the reader had acquired a certain amount of background knowledge about the events it was reporting. I told Jim about this problem and he suggested that I joined the local library. This was my introduction to history books. It was no long before I was also a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. Not that I shared all the views of my YS comrades. For example, I never developed their love for Leon Trotsky.

Later that year I attended my first anti-war demonstration. This in itself reinforced my views on the subject. The fact that the police charged at us on horseback only helped convince us we were right.

The most important aspect of my first demonstration was the journey home. During the police charges I got separated from the others. On the train I sat opposite an elderly couple. He asked me if I had been on the demonstration. When I said yes he replied that his wife and himself had also been on the march. I was shocked as he looked too old to be taking part in such activities (he admitted later he was nearing his 90th birthday). The couple had been Christian missionaries in China and were committed pacifists. Until this meeting I always associated radicalism with youth. I had already heard the quotation that if you are 18 and are not a socialist you have not got a heart, but if you are a socialist at 30, you have not got a brain. Yet here was a couple approaching their nineties who still felt strongly enough about their political principles they were willing to risk their lives on the streets of London. I went to bed knowing that this was not the last demonstration I would be attending.

John Simkin, aged 16, apprentice bookbinder in a printing company in Barking, Essex.

At sixteen I had no interest in politics. However, I used to listen to the older men discussing political issues while we ate our sandwiches at lunch-time. In October, 1962, the men started talking about the conflict between John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev over the issue of nuclear missiles being placed on the island of Cuba. One man, Bill Parrish, felt very strongly about these events and claimed it could mean the end of the world. He was a supporter of CND and the rest of us didn’t take his warnings very seriously. After all, he was a fervent football fan and his claims that West Ham would win the league had always been wrong (that year they had finished 8th).

I remember one cartoon at the time showing Kennedy and Khrushchev dressed as cowboys and facing each other as if they were about to take part in a gunfight. Kennedy, who looked like a film star, was wearing the white hat and was obviously going to win. Khrushchev looked old and overweight and appeared to pose no threat to our man. In 1962 the good guys always won in Hollywood films.

Kennedy did not look like a politician. Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister at the time, looked like my grandfather (he was 68 in 1962), whereas Kennedy looked like an older brother. We were surely safe in his hands.

It was no great surprise when newspapers and television stations broadcast details of our great victory. Once again Bill Parrish was forced to eat his words. However, West Ham did win the cup final in 1964. This was the year I began to take a keen interest in politics. It was not long afterwards that I discovered that Kennedy did not have a clear victory over Khrushchev. In fact a deal had been done. Three months after the Cuban Missile Crisis the United States secretly removed all its nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. Kennedy had also promised never to invade Cuba.

Later, much, much later, I discovered that in November, 1963, Kennedy was using a female reporter, Lisa Howard, to secretly negotiate “the normalisation of relations with Fidel Castro”. This was so secret that the CIA was not even told about these talks (although they knew as a result of bugging the telephone of William Attwood, an official at the UN and the link man between Howard and Kennedy). Not that these talks were ever concluded. Kennedy was assassinated on 22nd November, 1963. Howard continued her talks with Castro but Lyndon Johnson took CIA advice and broke off all contact with her. Howard, aged 35, was herself to die in suspicious circumstances on 4th July, 1965.

I visited Cuba in 1988 in order to research a book I was writing about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States was still maintaining its economic blockade of Cuba and I had to take the long journey via East Germany and Canada. The Cuban official at Havana airport, declined to stamp my passport as he claimed it would prevent me from entering the United States in future.

The Cuban people were extremely friendly. This was a time when English speaking visitors were a rarity. When people heard me speaking the English language they would come over and shake me by the hand and thank me for visiting their country. The only time I encountered any aggression was when a teenager mistook me for an American and I got a mouthful of abuse. In turn, an old man in his seventies, shouted at the boy in Spanish. He called the boy over and although I could not work out what he was saying the result was the boy walked off with his head bowed.

I have often wondered what the old man had said to the boy. Did he realise I was not American? I doubt it. I suspect he was just doing his bit to bring an end to the Cold War.

Demos, the influential UK think-tank, has just published a report urging schools to organize weekly “safaris” for its pupils. The report’s authors, Gillian Thomas and Guy Thompson argue: “Out-of-classroom learning should not just be about one-off excursions to museums or galleries, though these are clearly also of value. School safaris should occur on a weekly basis in all schools, and could involve children learning about trigonometry by going on fun-fair rides, or doing a geography lesson within an airport arrivals lounge.”

This report comes at a time where formal school visits and field trips in the UK have declined in popularity as a result of increased insurance premiums and union advice to teachers to avoid them because of fears of accidents and litigation.

http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/achildsplacebook/

Message from Chui Hsia

I have been advised by our Web developer, Bart, that the reason your gif images were not successfully inserted into Contens was because the name of the image file contained a special character, namely the letter O with an umlaut.

Names of files should not contain characters with accents, just "English letters", as he put it. Bart will fix the ones that are currently in the system, but please remember this for the future.

The History Department of the European Virtual School is launching a Cold War Oral Project. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts on important Cold War events (experiences and opinions). This will include people’s accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the building and pulling down of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the Fall of Communism, Communism in the Soviet Union, etc. It is hoped that people will post their recollections from all over the world. This is something that students could get involved in by interviewing parents or grandparents about these events. This material could then be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is produced.

Could you always add your name, age, etc. at the time the event took place. If possible, add a picture of yourself at this date. If it is an interview use the name, age, photograph, etc. of the person being interviewed.

The History Department of the European Virtual School is launching a Cold War Oral Project. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts on important Cold War events. This will include people’s accounts to events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the building and pulling down of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, etc. It is hoped that people will post their recollections from all over the world. This is something that students could get involved in by interviewing parents or grandparents about these events. This material could then be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is produced.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=806

Could you always add your name, age, etc. at the time the event took place. If possible, add a picture of yourself at this date. If it is an interview use the name, age, photograph, etc. of the person being interviewed.

The History Department of the European Virtual School is launching a Cold War Oral Project. The plan is to start threads where people can provide first-hand accounts of important Cold War events. This will include people’s accounts of Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the building and pulling down of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, etc. It is hoped that people will post their recollections from all over the world. This is something that students could get involved in by interviewing parents or grandparents about these events. This material could then be used as a teaching resource. For example, I plan to create some teaching activities based on the material that is produced.

Please post at:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=140

Could you always add your name, age, etc. at the time the event took place.

I absolutely agree, Maggie. I am not going to be driven away, and I apologise to any JFK fans who felt hurt, as my criticism wasn't about their right to post but about whether there was a better way of organising it. Now that I've had it explained to me how to go straight to what I'm interested in, that's fine. I didn't need to be told that I was just like all other teachers! However, I will try not to take it personally and continue to post on topics which interest me.

The last thing I want to do is to drive anybody away from this forum. The reason I made this posting was to prevent the JFK researchers from being driven away.

One of the interesting points about this forum is that the most popular threads are those where contributors strongly disagree about the subject (it is the main reason why the JFK part of the forum is so popular). This is not surprising as most people are intellectually stimulated by disagreement. (I think Marx had some interesting things to say about this.) It is also very educational. Not so much for the contributors who often hold fixed positions but for those observing the debate.

Most people are confident enough of their views to defend them on the forum. There are others who hold positions for emotional rather than intellectual reasons. They will always find debate difficult on the forum and will eventually decide to leave. It is also inevitable they will make some sort of statement when they leave about being driven away. However, the truth is that they are leaving because they are intellectually unable to defend their position.

Larry, Lee raises the point: "Why on earth would Clay Shaw implicate himself by recommending council for LHO, unless he himself was unaware of the conspiracy?"

This is something that has always puzzled me. If he did do this, I think we can safely say that Clay Shaw had nothing to do with the conspiracy. I suspect he didn’t. Why then did Jim Garrison make him the target of his prosecution? I know David Ferrie and Guy Banister were dead by them so they could not be brought to court. But everybody agrees that his case against Shaw was very weak.

Those behind the conspiracy would have been very concerned about Garrison’s investigation. If I was involved in this conspiracy I would have probably reacted in the following way. I would have used whatever influence I had to smear Garrison so as to undermine his credibility. The second strategy would have got someone into his investigation to direct him towards someone who had links to Ferrie and Banister but was completely innocent of the crime. I suspect this could have been the role of Dick Billings, the reporter with Life Magazine, when he arrived on the scene in January, 1967. Billings was of course, along with Hugh Aynesworth, was also involved in the smearing of Garrison (September, 1967).