Theme 7 - Ambitions and Dreams

Most of the students already know what to study at university and are pretty enthusiastic about travelling round the world. All of them want to study further into university or other types of school .Most of the areas go from aerospace engineering, nursing, biology, medicine, psychology, politics, music, communication, army . We even have one who wants to be Prime Minister and get Portugal right on the track ! All of them want to settle down and have a family . As for their parents, the most interesting point is the fact that they also had their dreams and everyone wanted to have a family .

Summary Theme 6 Healthy lifestyles

This was definitely an interesting theme ! All the students in the Comenius Club took the fitness test including teacher Isabel. We did the test thanks to the precious collaboration of teacher Alberto, a Physical Education teacher. There were different levels of fitness, of course, but in general the results were good ! The slides on the students’ diet were very detailed and suggestive. It seems the students don’t eat as much soup as they should be eating ! Not a lot of fish and already some international food !

Summary theme 5 The environment

The environment offers different perspectives. Our students did search for those different perspectives. They showed the natural environment around Benavente. There are storks, bulls, horses…. Another group interviewed a farmer who pratices the type of agriculture that he believes is less harmful than the one that is practised on other countries. Some of them collected opinions about the situation of the environment in the region. Recycling banks are available but they are not enough and so a lot of people complain about this fact. Another group showed how our school cares about the environment and also interviewed teachers who live in the council of Benavente to express their opinions on the state of the environment in this region. In the end, we get the the perfect notion that young people are much more worried with these problems than the older generation.

Summary Theme 4 - Gender Roles and Family

SUMMARY THEME 4- Gender Roles and family The older generation This topic clearly shows the generation gap as far as decisions, chores sharing, jobs are concerned. In the past, most of the parents interviewed talked about how they had to listen to their parents’ and follow their advice as they were supposed to take them as mandatory rather than optional. Authority was much more ingrained in the family hierarchy than it is now. Most of the women didn’t have a job and were just housewives. Sharing housework was something that was never brought up and the division of tasks according to gender was clear: men worked as breadwinners, did DIY jobs and women were very family-oriented and took care of all the housework chores. There were exceptions but in general that was it. After the revolution in 1974 things started to change and it’s rather interesting that one of the students’ parent claims he was brought up in a very balanced way in terms of decision-making and rules. The present generation Some of the students that applied the survey concluded household chores were shared equally between men and women but that surely doesn’t apply to most of the families. Although women have most of the times a job, they usually bear more responsibility for certain tasks that involve children and running the house. One of the students stated her brother didn’t have to help with housework while it was one of her responsibilities. Things have definitely changed over the past 20 years and the tendency is for men to do housework chores along with women. In general, students’ families have room for independent decision-making and nowadays there’s more dialogue between parents and children.

SUMMARY THEME 3-the MEDIA

For the young generation everything seems to revolve around the Internet as it’s actually the most important medium for them where they do several things involved with school and leisure apart from socializing. H5, Skype and Facebook are some of the Internet applications students mentioned. The Internet is also an important source of information even for online celebrity magazines which shows the print press is losing ground among young people.  Watching series on TV takes a lot of their free time as well and again American series dominate the screen, like Family Guy, American Dad, Glee, Dr House, Grey’s Anatomy. A major comedy show was Gato Fedorento, a national production that was a hit even among young people. The most relevant difference between media for the young and for the older generation is the fact that young people see it as a major source of entertainment rather than information.

The older generation listened to the radio, watched TV and read the newspapers and wrote letters to communicate. There was a lot of illiterate people until the 70’s and 80s on account of the absence of a consistent public education system so the radio was in  fact a medium that could be accessible to everyone and of course later on the television, although its dissemination was just  complete by the 80s. Free time was definitely not for all of the Portuguese. One of the oldest women interviewed stated that she didn’t have much free time as people worked long hours and couldn’t afford to spend money in their free time.

SUMMARY THEME 2 - FREE TIME

Our students are clearly more focused on technology than their parents or grandparents and therefore socializing face to face has lost its 1st place in the ranking of freetime activities.

The top free time activities for Portuguese students are :

• Playing music
• Going  to music concerts
• Sports
• Reading
• Social networks
• Drawing
• Online activities

The older generation socialized much more without any interference from technology at balls, at friends’ homes, in the park; reading and handicrafts were also important especially for girls, as well as watching TV and going for picnics.

Vagab Project - Summary theme 1 - from Portugal

Our school has been recently remodelled. We are very satisfied about it. What once was old, degrading and ugly is now modern, comfortable and big.

For our students,

Our school has around 600 students and it is mainly a secondary school, that is, the majority of our students come to this school to attend the last three years before college / University. 


We also have professional courses attended by students wanting to have a job after 12 years in school. Last but not least,  basic education is also available, from the 7^th year to the 9^th and equivalent professional degrees. Some occasional night classes are available to adults.

In the final project of our group 1 for this theme, there is an example of the timetable of a class from the 12^th grade.

Living in school: pros and cons

Pros

- Big building and modern facilities;

- It is all brand new ;

- Aesthetically pleasant;

- The classrooms have plenty of light and AC ;

- Well-equipped labs;  

- Interactive boards;

- Students get along quite well, everybody is great;

- Our school provides a great support to students with all kinds of disabilities;

- Some say we have the best teachers in Europe (ehehehehehe!).

Cons

- It doesn't have a canteen;

- The auditorium could be bigger;

- The bathrooms are focused all in the same place, there are classrooms really far away from them;

- The library could have a bigger variety of books.

For their parents, school was:

The Crimson Revolution in Portugal (1974) was an important milestone for the parents generations that  could actually feel the differences before and after the fall of the Regime, a dictatorship that ruled Portugal for 48 years and managed to struggle all attempts to turn to Europe and to progress.