Can Liberty Fit Into An ESL, EFL, ESOL Lesson?

ESL, EFL, ESOL teachers live in the reality of their students’ everyday lives. With our students we rejoice when there’s a holiday – just as much as they do – especially if it’s a beautiful spring day! 

Liberation Day!

April 25 is one of those special days! Today we recall how precious the gift of 

British POWs near Nettuno, south of Rome, 1944

freedom is: 2o1o makes the 65th anniversary of the overthrow of the Mussolini government and the beginning of the fall of the Nazi regime in Italy. Today we remember all those who fought, suffered and died for the liberation of Italy from tyranny. 

As the President of the Republic laid the wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, The Altar of the Country, at Piazza Venezia in the heart of ancient Rome this morning, we remembered all the victims of that horrible occupation and war: the foreign soldiers who sacrificed their mind, bodies and lives that the Italian people might be free, the Italian Resistance movement, the many civilian deaths, victims of atrocities, friendly-fire and bombings. 

World War II – Echoes in Everyday Life

The Ardeatine Cave, Rome

But World War II is not just a memory in a history book – the scars of that bloody war are still with us: every year many unexploded ordinances are still being unearthed; whole sections of cities have to be evacuated as the deadly bombs are diffused and removed. And here in Rome and its environs we have the sharpnel walls of the buildings on Via Rasella, the Ardeatine Caves  where the horrific massacre ordered by Hilter of 335 Italians was carried out in 1944 and many military cemetaries to remind us of the horror of aggression and war – and the cost of our freedom. 

ESL, EFL, ESOL Lessons  Bringing in History with Social Media

For an EFL/ESOL teacher days like April 25 are an opportunity to bring in photos, film footage, old press releases of the BBC and BBC radio broadcasts - all of which are available for free online. 

On YouTube there are several videos of actual footage from the WWII period that bring those past events to life again and commemorate the value of freedom. 

Here is one with US General Mark Clark who explains the hardships of the Italian campaign and dedicates a documentary by John Huston to the memory of all those who fought for freedom.  

For classroom discussions, teachers can talk with their ESL, EFL, ESOL students about their families’ memories of these events and the value of freedom. They can write in their e-notebooks or publicly blog about those family stories and the liberties that they are now enjoying. 

In our modern consumeristic world, we have perhaps gotten a bit soft. We take the freedoms we have for granted…. we forget the liberties we now enjoy were bought at a horrific price: the lives of thousands of people who sacrificed what was most precious - their lives - so that we may be free. 

And you, my reader - what days do you want to remember and thank those who sacrificed their lives that we might be free?

Happy Liberation Day to all – may we also prize and protect our freedoms from any tyrant….  

Eileen