Competency: Provide a concrete example of how knowledge can influence a leader and the course of history

 

Linked Core Abilities:

• Take responsibility for your actions and choices

• Do your share as a good citizen in your school, community, country and the world.

This class is based on the Emmy Nominated Documentary.

Retrospectives on the 20^th century usually focus on war and the value of tanks, missiles, and bombs in modern military arsenals. The dangerous and incorrect lesson imparted is democracy and power flow only from the barrel of a gun.

 

A Force More Powerful is a three-hour documentary series focused on one of the 20th century’s most important but least understood stories – how millions chose to battle the forces of brutality and oppression with nonviolent weapons – and won. With archival footage and interviews with witnesses and survivors, A Force More Powerful tells six stories of successful nonviolent movements which used strikes, slowdowns, boycotts and massive demonstrations to topple dictators, foil military invaders, establish democracy and win human rights. Here are the heroes, some known, some unsung, who changed the course of the 20th century. Their power flowed from discipline and shrewd tactical planning.

 

Part One chronicles how Gandhi refines and expands the nonviolent “weaponry” he discovered in South Africa as he leaders India’s campaign for full independence from Britain in the 1930s. It also reveals a new angle on the American civil rights movement in 1960 as students desegregate Nashville, Tennessee.

Part Two follows striking ship workers in Poland as they band together in Solidarity to fight communism head-on in 1980, and then moves to South Africa where activists use boycotts to help dismantle the decades-old apartheid system.

Part Three recounts how Danish citizens resist the Nazi Occupation during World War II. The series concludes in Chile in 1988 where seven million citizens overcome their fears of dictator Augusto Pinochet to participate in a special election which throws him out of office.

LESSON PLANS

Click here to access 3 A Force More Powerful lesson plans.