GCSE Coursework (Multiculturalism and Castles)

Having finished our study of the American West, we now turn our attention to your coursework, which will remain our focus for the remaining few months of Year 10. Your coursework questions account for 25% of your final GCSE grade, it is therefore vital that you devote your energies to the learning involved in the forthcoming weeks and to the writing of the coursework itself. What follows below is a quick run-down of the themes explored in lesson (beginning with April 19th).

Multiculturalism

We begin this Unit by studying the reasons why people emigrated to Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This will be the focus of your first coursework question......which is only weeks away!!

Thursday April 19th 2007

We studied events in Russia beginning with the assassination of the Russian Tsar in 1881 and how this was used as a pretext for the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation (The May Laws of 1882) and a number of violent pogroms (attacks) against the Jewish population. We discussed how these events help us understand why Jewish people might choose to leave Russia, but not why they would specifically come to Britain! We then examined an English source passing commentary on the May Laws, and discussed what the attributes of the source were, and whether there were any problems with the source. Statistics were then shown showing the influx of Jewish immigrants into Britain during this period, most significantly between 1880 and 1905. We finished the lesson by ascertaining that the factors considered were ‘Push factors’ which once again help explain why the Jewish people would leave Russia, but that next we would have to consider the ‘Pull factors,’ which would help us understand why they specifically chose the UK as their new home.


Monday 23rd April 2007

We began the lesson by once again examining the reasons why Jewish people were attracted to life in Britain - better standard of living, freedom of religion, employment prospects, better communication and transportation, stronger economies etc. We then considered which was most important in explaining Jewish immigration - push factors (pogroms, anti-semitic laws etc) or pull factors (better economy etc). Next we looked at the reasons why many Poles came to live in England in 1939 (Hitler had invaded Poland), their contribution during the war and why they stayed in the country after the war. We then went onto look at the post-war labour shortage and how immigrants were encouraged to settle and work in the UK after 1945. Again we did this by first looking at the reason why they left their own homes, and then examining why, and how, Britain appealed to them.