Freedom and justice

2: Importance of freedom

Required Resources

• Student Worksheet 2

Delivery

• Pair students and ask them to discuss their right to freedom and social justice in Britain. How important do they think it is? Do they think they have total freedom? If not do they think that they should? What institutions or elements of British society put a constraint on their freedom? What institutions do we have which ensure a level of social justice?
• Ask students whether they feel they would have the same freedom and social justice if the war against Germany and the Axis powers, which included The Battle of Britain, had not been won? How might things in England be different today?
• Ask students to use Student Worksheet 2 to make a list of things which they think might be different if we had not fought to preserve our freedom.
• Look at conditions during the War such as blackouts and rationing. Ask students whether they think it's justifiable to curtail certain freedoms in the short term in order to protect a more important freedom in the long term. Do they agree with some critics who claim that with each minor curtailment we lose a little more freedom for good (for example 42 day anti-terrorist laws proposed in 2008)?

Differentiation

Lower Ability:

Lower ability students might benefit more from a teacher-led class discussion about the concepts of freedom and social justice instead of pair work.

Higher Ability:

Students can be asked to consider the existence of social justice and freedom in recent dictatorships such as Ceausescu's Romania, Mugabe's Zimbabwe or Milosevic's Serbia.