Freadom Por que "Incineration"? Book Burning in Cuba Page For Teachers Class Activities For Students Reading : Reflection @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Home Introduction Top Ten Books Burned Class Activities List of Books & Items Burned in 2003 History and Practice of Book Burning About the Project

Why Do Tyrants Burn Books? Teachers & Leaders: Welcome! Following a tradition that started in East Germany after World War II, FREADOM is glad to promote the reading of books that have been burned. While East Germans (and now a united Germany) focused on the books which Hitler had burned, we are updating the tradition to include books that have been burned in our own time. Our first campaign has students and reading groups look at the ideas in the books that were burned under Fidel Castro's rule in 2003. On our activities page are 12 easy-to-implement class activities and questions for reflection related to the burned books this website is focusing on. This unique reading and human rights activity begins with 10 reading and group activities. For each of them there are links to articles by or about the authors whose works were burnt. These professionally-picked resources for the participants are an excellent source for student research, and there is more they can find on their own. If you have 20 or more students in your class, you can assign two students to each title. Or, just have individual students pick out the books and authors which interest them most. To bring the separate activities together for classwide discussion, we have ended with two thematic questions about book burning in general. After students come up with answers related to specific authors, your class will seek answers together for the larger question of why do tyrants, or governments, or various movements seek to burn the books of others? OUTCOMES These activities can be tailored to your own class needs for various outcomes which meet learning goals in history, literature, social studies, and art. For example, students could write papers comparing Castro with previous book burners, write reports on the various authors, or respond to the "dangerous" ideas found in the works that were torched. They could also write their own reviews or news articles It is the type of activity that combines literature, political science and history, and which could inspire a wide spectrum of artistic and literary responses from students. Teachers are invited to email Freadom with new examples of activities they may have developed while doing this project. BIBLIOGRAPHY Freadom librarians have authored and extensive bibliography on book burning in both modern and ancient times. For now, the bibliography is primarilly in English, but we hope to expand that to other languages as the Read A Burned Book Campaign develops.