Pedagogical Strategies
The unit will focus on four cultures: South African, Irish, Afghani and Chinese. Each culture will be taught from a cross curricular approach to learning. Interdisciplinary lessons reach a greater range of students and allow them to demonstrate mastery of some aspect of each lesson. Some lessons will include active projects that will engage kinesthetic learners. Other lessons will focus on listening activities for auditory, visual and existential learners. The development of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills will receive special attention. There will be several cooperative group assignments to encourage the concept of teamwork. The final demonstration of learning will require the student to teach a brief lesson about an American social concern using the skills they have developed throughout the unit.
The process for creating global social consciousness begins by introducing students to an issue related to the family unit, and then examining nonfiction and film that pertain to the same issue. I want students to view a film and learn to ask themselves questions like: What do I learn about this culture from this film? What techniques did the filmmaker use and how effective were they? What aspects of the film were important or interesting? How do I evaluate the director's choices? In order to analyze film the method employed for our purposes will involve looking at the film in six steps with several questions inherent in each category.3 These six steps encompass landscape, language and people, situations, values, traditions and narration.
First, landscape is an especially significant aspect in foreign films and suggested questions include: Why is it shown this way? What does it mean to people? What do things look like in other places? Is this a realistic depiction of this place? As we progress through our film, we will note the vast differences between the barren urban landscape of South Africa and the chaotic city in China. Students will question if Ireland really looks that lush and rural or if the idyllic scenery is demonstrative of a bias on the part of the filmmaker. Higher-level students may note the political and ideological significance of landscape in Ireland, a sort of nationalistic representation of Irish identity that celebrates pastoral beauty at the expense of urban malaise.
The second avenue to approach understanding a film is the language and people of film. Students should note how the people interact with the landscape and ask themselves what do the people look like? What kinds of people are shown? Is there one or more languages demonstrated here? There are multiple languages represented in each of the films and students will become more aware of the culture of different peoples as they recognize the different languages they speak. Students will note that Chinese people have a different appearance from most Americans, including dress and body posture; there are also differences among various Chinese visible in certain films. This can lead to a discussion of class in China.
The third category is situations, commonly called plot in literary terms. How do the people come together? What situations is the filmmaker showing? Students will create a plot diagram for each of the films to develop a basic understanding of the story elements. The plot diagram will specify exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. A thorough understanding of the plot will enable students to progress to an opinion about the social statement each film is making.
The final three categories are more abstract and students will require more assistance and prompting to arrive at valuable conclusions. The first of these is values, which can be stated or inferred. This category poses the question: What do people care about versus do we care about it. From possessions to concepts like family honor, and the importance of education, each film affords an opportunity to compare student value systems with those of characters in the films. Students may find it particularly difficult to empathize with cultures whose values are dramatically different from their own. It is essential to point out the basic human similarities in these circumstances to encourage multiculturalism as opposed to prejudice. Definitions of sacred and secular differ greatly among different cultures, but each is worthy of our respect.
The next category is "traditions" and we ask ourselves questions like: What is the history or religion of these people? How do they tell stories? What brings this film to be structured the way it is? How does this film or these people relate to other cultures? The way in which different cultures tell their tales is distinct and may vary from the standard Western tradition. Focus on point of view, narrative devices, and plot structure will help explore the question of storytelling. Higher-level students will likely engage in discourse about the confluence of history and religion in Afghanistan, and how culture is expressed through traditions.
Finally, students should look to narration to determine how stories are delivered and what tone is used. Students will differentiate between if the stories told in a fragmented or a linear manner. Then they can approach the question of the purpose of the protagonist and how they identify with him. Once we look to issues of details that support the theme and the symbols or images that define them, we can begin to explore tone. Tone is universally difficult for all of my students to comprehend in text. The use of film is a unique opportunity to delve into the difference between mood and tone. The vagaries of tone in different scenes will also help students identify and understand the term so that they will be better able to apply it to literature in the future.
Examining landscape, people, situations, values, traditions and narration is a procedure that allows students to break down their subconscious understandings and assumptions about a film. It provides them a systematic methodology that can apply to any film they encounter. The tools of film narrative will allow students to have a conversation about how the film elicits an emotional response in the audience, how accurately it represents the land and people and whether the film influences cultural change.
This unit may be the first exposure to foreign film that students will experience, which requires them to read subtitles and completely immerse themselves in a foreign cinema. The way in which other cultures tell their stories varies significantly from the American model. Hollywood tends to produce movies that focus on a single narrative, threaded through a weave of subplots, and utilize editing to manipulate time. Foreign cinema can be vastly different and express the cultural traditions of the society through their film. This may be the first introduction students have to foreign film and it is important to explain differences from Hollywood stylistic conventions. I will "acknowledge the role that film plays in defining and transmitting a particular culture and in shaping encounters between cultures."4 In this manner, students will gain appreciation and patience for foreign films and the wealth of information and entertainment they possess.
Just as I will not prepare explicit lectures about film analysis, only procedures that enable students to create their own understandings, there will not be any direct lectures about the history of an issue or region given to the students. The process involves a discovery learning approach where students create their own insights based upon the films and the nonfiction readings. I will provide brief mini-lessons about a particular history when necessary, but the aim of this unit is for students to draw their own understandings and conclusions based upon the readings and the films. The unit empowers the students to understand the world and cultures and find commonality and beauty in the human spirit in our pluralistic society.
In order to unite the various countries and cultures we will be exploring, there will be three large displays in the room that will remain throughout the nine-week unit. These displays will connect the film studies with the nonfiction literature and create continuity in our process. The first display will provide statistics about each country. A statistics board based upon UNICEF information that will expand to include America and all four nations will tie lessons together. These statistics will include facts about income, literacy and family life, providing a basis for comparison between diverse countries. Creating this chart will help students with their reference and research skills as well as draw attention to disparities between certain basic indicators. One startling example is that life expectancy in China is 72 years of age, 78 in Ireland and only 47 in South Africa and 46 in Afghanistan.5
The second will be a multicultural identification chart providing an opportunity to emphasize distinctions in each culture. The multicultural identification chart will be a useful summary tool as we complete each segment of the unit. The left axis of the chart will list six categories, while the four nations are listed across the top of the chart. The six areas relate to issues of family (who is in the family, who is in control of the family and what rights do family member have); communication (how do people greet one another, what posture or gestures are significant and which languages are used); religion (what is sacred vs. what is secular, what religious authority is recognized and what is their influence); traditions (what forms of art are valued, does dress have symbolic significance); education (what is the purpose of education and are there different expectation of different groups) and discipline (who does the discipline and in what way, are there different expectations based upon gender or age and who has authority over whom).6
There will also be a world map featuring neon cutouts of each country and city from the unit. Manipulating the neon cutouts will allow students to develop a familiarity with world geography and comparative size. These three displays will form the matrix for comparison and contrast as we progress to ideas that are more complex. Each display will remain in a prominent position in the classroom and expand to include more data as we explore each nation.
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