21st year of international knowledge contest

Dear Sir or Madam,

Let me introduce the 18^th international online knowledge contest “Lidice for the 21^st century”, which starts in January 2023.

It is a knowledge contest organized by the Lidice Memorial, a semi-budgetary organization of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague and held under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic.

The international knowledge contest "Lidice for the 21st Century" aims at supporting interest of young people in modern history and adding to their knowledge substantial and interesting events connected to the WWII period and historical events that followed. Another purpose of it is to help preserve the memory of the people from the village of Lidice, who were murdered by German Nazis in 1942, and deepen awareness in the youngest generation of historical events related to WWII, other totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and the transformation of the after-war legacy of Lidice up to the early 21st century.

The contest may be a suitable method for teaching history and building democratic values in your pupils. The contest also supports education in language, style and literature and contributes to the media literacy of young people.

The contest takes place at the website www.lidice21.cz, where you can find complete information on the contest, an entry point for the registration for the contest, information on its progress as well as on previous years of the contest.

The 18^th year of the contest is meant for pupils from 10 to 19 years of age. They can compete in one of four languages, Czech, English, German and Polish; the essay may also be written in Slovak language.

The contest consists of two rounds. The entrants are divided into two age categories: 10-14 and 15-19 years of age.

The 1st round has a specific knowledge test with 15 tasks for each category. The entrants have several weeks for completing the test, they can go back to it repeatedly. The purpose of this part of the contest is to teach student to work with sources and search for information. Then the entrants will write an essay on a given theme in a genre of their choice within 3,000 characters. The top 21 contestants in each category will qualify for the second round.

In the second round, the finalists complete another knowledge test; then the contest committee evaluates the content and literary quality of the essays by the finalists by assigning points. The final placings of the entrants is defined by the sum of their scores from the 1st and 2nd rounds.

All entrants qualifying for the 2nd round will be invited to the results announcement ceremony with varied side events. All finalists will receive a certificate of participation and material prizes.

Included is also the competition of schools, "The most active school".

In preparation for the contest, pupils can use some of the webinars and online educational programmes of the Lidice Memorial as presented at: https://www.lidice-memorial.cz/vzdelavani/webinare-a-on-line-kurzy/.

We are looking forward to participation of your school and your students in the contest.

Mgr. Kamila Varaďová

Director of the contest