Lesson video

Hello everyone, how are you? I hope you're feeling good today.

My name is Ms Afzal and I'll be your teacher for this lesson.

I'm feeling pleased about that because we've got a really interesting topic ahead today, quite a serious topic as well.

Our lesson is called "Understanding the Historical Context of the Scottish Witch Trials." I wonder if you've heard of them before.

They come up in the novel "A Kind of Spark" and our lesson comes from the unit, "A Kind of Spark: Narrative Writing." So it's an interesting topic, it's quite a serious topic and I hope it's one that you'll engage with.

So if you're ready with some energy, focus and enthusiasm we'll begin our lesson now.

The outcome for today's lesson is I can describe the events of the Scottish witch trials and share my opinion about how best to remember the victims in the present day.

I hope that sounds interesting to you.

We have some keywords in our lesson.

I'd like us to go through them one at a time saying them out loud.

My turn, your turn.

Memorial.

Trial.

Early Modern period.

Devil.

Good to hear those keywords out loud.

Let's find out what they mean.

Memorial, this is a structure or statue designed to remind people of a person or event.

Trial, an examination of evidence to decide if someone is guilty or innocent of a crime.

Early Modern Period, the period between medieval and modern times, around 1500-1800 AD.

And the devil, the spirit of evil in Christian and Jewish traditions.

These are our keywords, Memorial, Trial, Early Modern period and Devil.

Let's be on the lookout for them, let's listen out for them and let's think carefully about them.

They'll all be coming up in our lesson today.

Today's lesson is called "Understanding the historical context of the Scottish witch trials" and it has two learning cycles.

Understanding the Scottish witch trials and debating the Scottish witch trials.

Let's begin by understanding the Scottish witch trials.

In this unit, we'll be doing writing inspired by the book "A Kind of Spark" by Elle McNicoll.

In the book, the protagonist Addie wants her village to create a memorial to the victims of the Scottish witch trials that occurred there.

The Scottish witch trials occurred in the period 1560 to 1736 AD.

Here are some other events that happened in Britain around that time.

The reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603 and the life of William Shakespeare, 1582-1616.

The beginning of the slave trade in Africa, led by Spain, Portugal, England and France.

The Great Fire of London, 1666.

Let's have a check for understanding.

Which are correct? The Scottish witch trials occurred, choose from this selection.

A, after the Romans came to Britain.

B, before the Second World War.

C, at the time of William Shakespeare.

D, during the Tudor period.

Pause here while you decide.

Which are correct? Well done if you selected all of them.

These are all true.

Elizabeth I was one of the Tudor monarchs along with Henry VIII.

However at the time Scotland and England were separate, with separate monarchs.

During this time, the early modern period, religion was extremely important to people's everyday lives.

Most people in Scotland were Christians, and they believed that both God and the devil could impact their daily life.

People also believed that some people were witches who could use magic to influence people in good and bad ways.

In 1484, the Catholic Church in Rome declared that witchcraft was real and that witches could do real harm to people guided by the devil.

Because witches were seen as getting their power from the devil, they were also heretical against Christianity.

This was seen as very bad.

Let's have a check for understanding.

Why would witches have been feared by people in the early modern period? Pause here and share your ideas with someone.

Thanks for sharing.

Perhaps you said something like this.

People were very religious, so they would have believed that the church told them.

The church linked witches to the devil, who people believed was able to affect their daily lives in negative ways.

The church said that witches were capable of doing real harm to people, so they would have believed this.

Witches were seen as going against God, which was seen as a terrible thing.

The fear of witches spread across Christian Europe and witch-hunting became widespread.

This book, the "Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches," was written in 1486 and explained the author's views about how to spot and punish witches by killing them.

It was very popular all over Europe.

King James VI of Scotland, 1566 to 1625, believed that witches had tried to kill him by creating storms when he was at sea.

Several witches were punished for this.

Let's have a check for understanding.

Do you agree with Jun? Why or why not? This is what he says.

"It's crazy that people believe this stuff.

There's no way I would have fallen for it." Pause here and share with someone, do you agree with Jun? Why or why not? Here's Laura.

"In the early modern period, the church was powerful and it was saying that the devil could use witches to hurt you, so you probably would have believed that.

Also imagine if your king was telling you they were real, like James VI in Scotland.

There were also fewer good explanations for why bad things happened, so using witchcraft to explain them made sense." That's a really great answer from Laura.

I wonder if you said something like this? There was a desperation to get rid of anything linked to the devil.

This atmosphere led to the Scottish witch trials.

In 1563, the Witchcraft Act was passed in Scotland, making practicing witchcraft a crime impunishable by death.

A series of bad harvests meant life was very difficult and a scapegoat was needed.

This often led to witches being hunted down.

The vast majority of those accused of witchcraft were women, usually older women, who had built a reputation for witchcraft over the years.

Sometimes a woman had cursed a local person who had then received some bad news and blamed the witch, leading to a trial.

Most of the women who were accused were illiterate and they often lived alone.

Let's have a check for understanding.

Do you agree with Andeep? Why or why not? "It sounds like the women brought it on themselves by cursing people." Pause here and share if you agree with Andeep or not and give your reasons.

Thanks for sharing.

Let's hear from Sofia.

"These women sounded quite vulnerable.

They were older, they lived alone, and they couldn't read or write.

If people were looking for someone to blame for all the bad harvests and for bad things that happened to them, they were easy targets.

Maybe they used curses to try and have a little power in the community, but it obviously backfired." Thanks for sharing that answer.

When people were accused of witchcraft, the trials took place.

The suspects were often tortured until they confessed to witchcraft, most of them by depriving them of sleep.

Neighbors of the suspect were called to give evidence, telling the court about misfortunes they'd suffered at the hands of the witch.

Suspects were pricked with a needle.

If they didn't bleed, they were a witch.

Suspects had their bodies searched for the devil's mark, any blemish or birthmark that showed they'd been touched by the devil.

Around 5,000 people were tried for witchcraft in Scotland, leading to an estimated 2,500 being executed, mostly by burning.

I'm noticing that I've got quite a few feelings coming up as we learn about what happened to some women at this time.

I'm feeling quite sad and quite angry about some of it.

I wonder if any feelings are coming up for you as you learn more about this.

Let's have a check for understanding, true or false, everyone accused of witchcraft was executed.

Pause here while you decide.

Is this statement true or false? Well done if you selected false and now I'd like you to justify your answer by choosing from one of these two statements.

A, because methods of identifying witches were reliable, many suspects escaped execution.

B, although some of the methods used to identify witches were very unfair, many escaped execution.

Pause here while you decide which of these statements justifies your earlier answer.

Well done if you selected statement B.

This justifies your earlier answer.

And now it's time for your first task.

Imagine you were alive during the early modern period and that you are accused of witchcraft.

Put the arguments below in order, from most persuasive to least persuasive, as you try to defend yourself.

Remember, some arguments might be very persuasive now, but they might have been much less so in the early modern period.

Witchcraft isn't real, I was just pretending to curse them.

The neighbor who accused me is known to be a liar.

There is no devil's mark on my body, you can check.

The devil doesn't even exist.

So pause here while you put these arguments in order from most persuasive to least persuasive, as you try to defend yourself.

I'll see you when you're finished.

Good to be back with you.

Izzy thought these two arguments were most persuasive.

The neighbor who accused me is known to be a liar.

I think this is the best argument because if you can show they lie a lot, the court might doubt their evidence.

Maybe you could get other neighbors to help you.

There's no devil's mark on my body, you can check.

This would be a really good argument if it worked, but the trouble is that everyone who will have some kind of blemish or birthmark somewhere on their body, it's too risky.

Izzy thought these two were least persuasive.

Witchcraft isn't real.

I was just pretending to curse them.

The trouble is that people were very religious in early modern times and the church had told them witchcraft was real.

I'm not sure they'd believe this.

The devil doesn't even exist.

This one's even worse.

Everyone would have believed in the devil and the idea he could affect their lives.

I'd be going against everything the church said, which would have been even more dangerous.

Well done for having a go at this task.

Now on to our next learning cycle, debating the Scottish witch trials.

We probably all agree that the Scottish witch trials and executions were wrong, very wrong.

However, the reasons we give for this might vary depending on our own beliefs and experiences.

If you believe in God or in a devil, you might have a different explanation to someone who does not.

If you believe that witchcraft is real, you might had a different explanation to someone who does not.

If you are someone, or know someone, who might have been vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft, you might have a different explanation to someone who is not.

Let's have a check for understanding.

What reasons would you give for why the execution of witches in Scotland in the early modern period was wrong? Pause here while you share your reasons.

Thanks for sharing your reasons, let's have a look at some.

Witchcraft isn't real.

People were just using vulnerable people as a scapegoat.

It's like bullying.

They used religion to justify something terrible.

I believe in a God, but God is loving and wants us to treat people well.

This was the opposite of that.

This isn't the religion I believe in.

The methods they used were just unfair.

It was rigged against them.

It's horrible to think of people being tortured and having no way of arguing back.

We often look back at things that happened in the past and try to learn lessons from them and change things in the present.

Britain tried to make peace with Hitler before the start of World War II instead of fighting him.

I'd like you to discuss what lessons can we learn from this? What changes can we make? Pause here while you have this discussion.

Thanks for having that discussion.

Here's what Alex said.

I think this teaches us that sometimes we have to do the right thing and confront people who are dangerous to the world even though we know it will have terrible consequences.

We can try to make sure our politicians keep doing this today as well.

Let's have a check for understanding.

What lessons do you think can be learned from the Scottish witch trials? Pause here and share with someone.

What lessons can we learn? Thanks for sharing.

Perhaps you said something like this.

Here's Aisha.

"I think it shows us that we need to question everything and explore lots of different viewpoints.

People had to believe what the church told them because it was dangerous to believe in anything else." And Jun.

"I think they teach us a lesson about how vulnerable people can be used as scapegoats when things go wrong.

We need to try and look for the real problem instead of just blaming an easy target.

Thanks for sharing your responses.

One way of learning lessons from the past is to build memorials to people and events.

This is a Holocaust memorial.

This is a memorial to Queen Victoria.

Pause here and share with someone, have you seen a memorial before? Is there one in your local area? Thanks for sharing.

Let's have a check for understanding.

How might having memorials like this help people to learn lessons from the past? How might it not help? Pause here and share with someone.

Thanks for sharing.

Let's take a look at this response from Laura.

"In our daily lives we're busy and we're not always able to put aside time to stop and think about the past.

Having memorials gives us a special place where we can think about things that happened and learn from them." Really interesting.

And here's Jacob.

"That's true, but they don't always do a good job of making us think about the right things.

Also, you can just walk past and not think about it and people who do that might be the people who need to learn." Another interesting point.

And thanks for sharing yours.

There has been lots of action in Scotland recently in relation to remembering the Scottish witch trials.

In 2022, the Scottish government made a formal apology to the thousands of people who were accused and executed in the Scottish witch trials.

Campaigners are also seeking all those convicted of witchcraft to be pardoned, meaning that their convictions are removed and they are no longer considered criminals, but instead victims of injustice.

Some campaigners are also seeking a national memorial to the victims. They see their campaign as helpful in highlighting violence and abuse against women in the present day as well.

Let's have a check for understanding, true or false.

Receiving an apology is the same as being pardoned.

Pause here while you decide, is this statement true or false? Well done if you selected false.

And now I'd like you to justify your answer by choosing from one of these two statements.

A, an apology wipes clear your criminal record even if you died a long time ago.

B, being pardoned wipes clear your criminal record even if you died a long time ago.

Pause here while you decide which of these statements justifies your earlier answer.

Well done if you selected statement B.

This justifies your earlier answer.

And now it's time for your next task.

Let's have a debate.

Which of the following do you think is the best way of remembering the Scottish witch trials, or do you have your own preferred way? An apology to the victims. A pardon for the victims. A national memorial to the victims. Take part in a debate in your class and build on other people's answers.

I believe is the best way of remembering the witch trials because.

I agree that because.

And give your reasoning.

I disagree with because.

And give your reasoning.

I love the point made because I think.

And outline your thoughts.

So pause here while you have this debate about the best way of remembering the Scottish witch trials.

I'll see you when you're finished.

It's good to be back with you.

How did you get on with that task? Perhaps you heard some arguments like these in your debate.

I think a memorial is the best idea because it would be a great reminder to people that they need to think for themselves and treat people fairly.

The trouble is a memorial is only in one place.

I think that a formal apology is a great solution because not everyone was convicted of a crime, so they don't need a pardon.

Well, why not do all three? I think a pardon would be particularly good because it sends a message that we care about all kinds of injustice, even ones from a long time ago.

And maybe you came up with some ideas of your own, like these.

I think the best way of remembering the witch trials is to change the way we treat people who are a bit different or who are vulnerable.

Changing our behavior is much more meaningful than just building another statue for people to ignore.

I think a great way to remember the witches would be for all children to learn about them in school.

This would help them to grow up knowing how important it is to think for ourselves and not make scapegoats of people who are easy targets.

Well done for contributing your ideas and taking part in this debate.

In our lesson, "Understanding the Historical Context of the Scottish Witch Trials" we've covered the following.

The Scottish witch trials took place during the early modern period in history.

The trials were motivated by a belief that the devil could act through witches, causing real harm to people.

The trials were encouraged by the church and the king in Scotland.

Around 2,500 people were executed for witchcraft, often following torture or unfair trials.

Efforts have been made to remember these events in Scotland and learn lessons from them.

Well done everyone for taking part in this lesson.

There was a lot that we covered and some of it might have felt quite sensitive.

So take good care of yourselves and let's remember to keep standing up against injustice and learning from the past.

It was great to teach you in this lesson and I hope you took a lot from it as well.

And I look forward to seeing you at another lesson soon.

Bye for now.