Classroom Activities
South Africa
African culture is foreign to American teenagers and the history of apartheid is unfamiliar to our students. Apartheid, which literally means apartness in Afrikaans, was a legal system of classification into racial groups that was a legacy of British colonialism, but legally existed from 1948-1991. In practice, the system of apartheid limited the political influence and access to services such as health care and education for anyone classified as Black, Indian or Colored. Another prominent feature of apartheid was the forced resettlement to distant "homelands," which further reduced the legal rights of non-whites. The lasting legacy of apartheid in South Africa, similar to segregation in America, is a system of inequalities.7
As an introductory activity, students will explain segregation and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. They will write a definition, in their own words, for both racism and prejudice. After students bring their background knowledge to the table, we will read a brief history of South Africa and apartheid. Students will draw connections between the systems of segregation in America and South Africa. Nelson Mandela's Nobel Peace Prize address from December of 1993 will further enhance student understanding. Students will immediately notice the references to Martin Luther King Jr. and be able to understand the similarities in the references to segregation in America. One line of the speech states: "At the southern tip of the continent of Africa, a rich reward is in the making, an invaluable gift is in the preparation, for those who suffered in the name of all humanity when they sacrificed everything - for liberty, peace, human dignity and human fulfillment."8 With this line, we will begin the process of creating a thematic connection between each nation that has to do with acceptance and respect for difference and the promotion of social consciousness above personal prejudices.
The documentary film series Real Stories From a Free South Africa provides an interesting counterpoint to the non-fiction texts because one volume, Nabantwa Bam' (2005) focuses on a family in post-apartheid Soweto. This short film introduces students to a modern family who appears to have a lifestyle similar to their own. What is fascinating in this documentary is the contrast between the older brother, Nhlanhla, who grew up during apartheid and due to an injury and lack of education has an aimless existence, whereas his younger brother clearly benefited from the end of apartheid. The younger brother, Miles, has a five-year plan with definitive goals and a career at Microsoft. Students will find enough familiar elements that they will readily draw connections between this African culture and our own. While watching the film, students will complete a sensory detail chart that asks them to identify tactile, gustatory, olfactory, auditory and visual details they note in the film. Later, students will each select one example of each sense and explain how it expands their understanding of life in South Africa. For example, a student may note that the two brothers enjoy a meal of chicken wings and their gustatory sense was engaged by the meal. Students will likely be surprised at how the familiar food seemed incongruous in a foreign country.
Reading Mark Matabane's Kaffir Boy, set in Johannesburg, South Africa, will provide a look at life during apartheid. I will explicitly teach and utilize active reading strategies to help students gain a deeper understanding of the text. Students will predict, connect, question, and visualize the text as if they were watching a movie in their head. They will evaluate and make judgments about what they read, review the main idea of passages and consider the author's purpose and respond by forming an opinion about the work. Students will illustrate the literature by creating cartoons, which will force them to read for detail. Special attention will be drawn to the mention of a whites-only golf courses and the mother's determination for her son to receive an education to raise himself above the abased conditions of his birth. Students will discuss the biography and understand his themes of the importance of education and the power of knowledge, the common ties that bond all human beings and the amazing ability of the human spirit to overcome any obstacle.
As a culminating activity for South Africa, students will create a found poem. I will distribute previously prepared sentence strips with quotes from all of the texts to groups of students. The students may elect to use all or some of the sentence strips as well as their own words to write a free verse poem about emotions of conflict. Their rubric will require some elements such as a title, use of a symbol, and figurative language.
Ireland
The issue of the Travellers in Ireland is one that will require students to extend their understanding of discrimination. Previously we discussed the concept of racial discrimination in South Africa, which should have been an easy transition for students to extrapolate from America's legacy from slavery. In Ireland, students will be required to expand their understanding to include the discrimination of a group that is racially indistinguishable from the majority. Originally termed "tinkers" due to their metalworking ability, this nomadic group speaks a distinct language that could date back to the thirteenth century and takes pride in their distinct and rich culture.9 The issues of ethnicity, race, and nationality will become key terms in our discussion and understanding of this group.
The maligning and marginalization of the Travellers is a particularly difficult matter because they do not wish to assimilate, despite their gross statistical misfortunes. Inadequate medical care, short life expectancy, inadequate education, limited access to political representation, and poor living conditions are insufficient motivation for the Travellers to abandon their traditional way of life.10 The ostracism they suffer is preferable to assimilation with the mainstream culture of a sedentary lifestyle.
Into the West (1993) will provide a highly accessible film for the students to look at minority issues in Dublin. Students will be able to connect with issues such as an alcoholic father in a single parent household. The family issues of project-like housing in Dublin and an alcoholic father will allow my students to identify with the film as the engaging fantasy carries them away. Students will produce an essay that focuses on the themes and dichotomies inherent in this film. A gifted student might choose to write about the use of symbolism and metaphor in the film or more complex thematic concepts. A challenged student may choose a simpler approach such as something already discussed in class.
I will focus on literary elements using the film Into the West. Once the students have viewed the film, a lesson will prove how many literary elements the students already know and understand. Students will readily identify protagonist and antagonist, mood, tone, setting, plot diagram, foreshadowing, and humor. I will provide a worksheet with each literary term and definition along with spaces for students to identify the terms as they apply to the film. With prompting, students will realize that the literary terms are not foreign and difficult concepts but ones they already inherently understand. The use of film makes the process more appealing and makes connections for some students who may have had difficulty identifying some literary elements in text. This reinforcement will precede a lesson that forces the students to stretch their understandings by explaining some film techniques and demonstrating how a filmmaker creates different effects. Students will become more savvy consumers of foreign cinema in the future once they are aware of how to look for elements that are indicative of the landscape, people, situations, values and traditions of a specific culture.
We will also read several texts about Ireland as a class. One text, an article in History Ireland will illustrate the historical marginalization and ostracism suffered by the Travellers, who were derogatively termed "tinkers".11 The article looks in depth at the many theories as to the origins of the Irish Travellers. A look at data from the Department of Health and Children in Ireland serves to demonstrate the statistical anomalies between mainstream Irish citizens and Travellers.12 Students will notice the disparity in income, education, infant mortality and life expectancy. Lastly, students will read a propaganda piece by a website that promotes Travellers rights that cites injustices in an attempt to raise public awareness about the group.13 Students will create two-column notes to track the argument in the left column and note the strategy and its effectiveness in the right column.
The culminating project for Ireland will require students to become a storyteller. After a brief mini-lesson about the craft of oral storytelling, students will use a rubric to create a tale of their own. They must seize upon a portion of the texts of film we view to create a five-minute tale. Students will individually select the material and construct their tale. Some stories may focus on the legends and history of Ireland, while others may be contemporary expressions of the social exclusion Travellers experience.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan has a long and rich history of cultural traditions that are foreign to Western nations. It is essential to convey respect for the rich cultural traditions of Afghanistan to the students who may find the unfamiliar daunting or incomprehensible.14 One aspect of this difference is the role of women. Although the 1964 constitution theoretically gave women broad civil rights, in practice tribal law (also referred to as regional customary laws) determined women's rights. The cultural history of Afghanistan's tribes usually equated family honor with female virtue, making female relatives a responsibility for men at best, and their property at worst.15 After the Soviet invasion and occupation from 1979-1989 followed by Civil War, the 1994 arrival of the Taliban was initially heralded as positive change as they restored peace. After about a year, the Taliban altered the traditional practices that demanded women's subservience to male relatives into a series of repressive laws that hampered a woman's rights. Women were no longer able to work in a public place, receive medical care unless from a female physician, receive an education or leave their home unless accompanied by a male relative.
A famous 1985 National Geographic cover image depicts an anonymous Afghan woman whose piercing gaze intrigued the world. The students will view the cover and write a reflective piece about their interpretation of the portrait. I plan to explore the article from 2002, which interviews the mystery woman, Sharbat Gula, and introduces students to the life of a Pashtun woman. Students will complete a worksheet that asks them to explain terms like burka, chador and Islam as well as to identify Afghanistan on an unlabeled map. Some excerpts relating to women from The Wake of War, a travel diary from 2005, will enhance this exploration. An excerpt relating to the burka demonstrates the horror and beauty they represent to a Western observer. "It might almost be a pleasing garment if the anonymity it imposes were not inhuman. Under all those vertical pleats, the shape of the body is no longer apparent, of course; but they also serve to elongate the already unreal silhouettes, which become almost phantasmagorical."16
A screening of the film Osama, (2003) is a dramatic exploration of the untenable situation many women found themselves in due to tribal custom and the rise of the Taliban in Kabul. The film will allow students to examine Afghani culture and the roles of women. From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban exacerbated the tribal customs that limit women's lives to such an extent that basic survival was impossible for many women. In a class discussion about the film all comments will be accepted, however the discussion should lead to comparisons between human rights violations and prejudice against blacks in South Africa, tinkers in Ireland and women in Afghanistan. A great lead-in to this discussion is to freeze frame the epigraph at the beginning of the film attributed to Nelson Mandela "I can forgive, but I cannot forget."17
As a final activity for Afghanistan, students will gather in small groups to utilize the readings and film, as well as outside research, in order to prepare for a debate. Each group will prepare to both defend and criticize tribal culture. Using index cards with specific examples of both the pros and con's students will engage in team debates. The goal is not that students argue more persuasively for one side or the other, but that students understand that there is value and beauty in the traditions of tribal custom in Afghanistan.
China
Thus far, we have transitioned from apartheid in South Africa, to the discrimination against Travellers in Ireland, to the oppression of women in Afghanistan. We will now depart from the realm of personal, institutional and governmental oppression of a single group to a law in China that limits the number of children a couple may have. This topic readily leads students to expand their social awareness to what many perceive to be an infringement of human rights. Entire countries have engaged in policies that marginalized the personal freedom of a single group, now we will examine a nation enforcing a law that infringes upon the reproductive rights of the entire populace.
The focus on China is predominately about the one-child policy. The People's Republic of China's unofficial policy mandating that each couple only have one child has significantly manipulated family life in Chinese cities since 1979. This policy, though applied inconsistently, led to abortions, female infant abandonment and other socially undesirable side effects. This policy became law when it went into effect on Sept. 2, 2002, declaring that it was a criminal act to have more than one child, and provided legal incentives to reward couples with only one child. The law is seen as necessary to control the burgeoning population in China and features articles that make sex selective abortion illegal, provide free family planning services to couples, make family planning the responsibility of both partners and prohibit the abandonment and devaluation of female infants.
Before presenting any material, students will meet in small groups to answer the following prompt: If America adopted a law that stated urban dwellers could only have one child per married couple, what pros and cons would you predict and what possible reactions might potential parents have? Students will read a translation of the actual Law on Population and Family Planning as well as a denunciation by Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees and migration, about how the policy is coercive. A discussion of the remarks will likely draw parallels to the conditions in the other nations of the unit, especially if one considers a line such as, "respect for the inherent worth and human dignity of the girl child, from conception through adulthood, is an essential element of a just society."18 This could lead to an interesting class discussion about the nature of a "just society" and how one honors cultures and traditions while still maintaining liberty and justice in the face of modern concerns like population control.
Students will view a PBS documentary, Precious Children, which will provide a glimpse into the reality of modern life in the People's Republic of China and how the one-child policy affects economics and culture in Beijing. One important lesson I hope my students draw from this video and the prior lessons in the unit concerns potential and harmful bias based upon race, disability, gender or social class.
After reading several documents pertaining to the Law on Population and Family Planning, students will revisit their initial small groups to determine how their list compares with the reactions and problems evident in China. Students will become aware of the potential for human rights violations inherent in the law and the side effects, such as orphans. Students will utilize the writing process to draft a letter to the Chinese embassy in Washington stating their opinion of the policy.
Excerpts from the comedy, The Great Wall (1986) should provide my students with an understanding of the culture through the eyes of the teenage American son whose father moves the family back to China. Students will also view the entire film Cala, My Dog!, (2003) a political satire masquerading as a simple tale of a man whose dog is impounded because it is not licensed.19 Students will explore the depressing existence of the protagonist who must rescue his dog if he is to rescue his basic human dignity. Higher-level students will draw the conclusion that the pleasure he receives from his pet is a substitute for the fact that he has only one child. Students will use their newfound skills to analyze the depiction of China, specifically Beijing, in the film by following the steps outlined in the pedagogy section. Students will answer questions such as why and how the director chose to depict the landscape or what can we determine about the culture of these people based upon the film.
In order to clarify their thoughts and feelings about the law as juxtaposed against the concerns about overpopulation that led to it, students will create a collage that expresses their thoughts and feelings. Students will group themselves with like-minded individuals who share similar opinions on the issue. The collage will include images, words and any medium the students select to express their ideas.
Culminating Activity
As a final demonstration of understanding, the students will each examine America through new eyes. Students will be asked to imagine that they are a teen from another nation who has recently moved to America. Students will create a specific persona that includes age, gender, a nickname, family, hobbies and culture. They will keep a journal for one week expressing the thoughts and reactions of that persona. Students are encouraged to write, draw and collage their daily journal as if it were a scrapbook. In the course of their exposure to food, music, advertisements, television and school, what social issue would they think represented a concern in America. What sources led them to think this was a concern in America? Students will create a one-page advertisement suitable for publication that informs and persuades the reader to take a stance on the issue. Students will present the advertisement to the class along with the rationale, sources and journaling that led the student to select that particular social issue. This advertisement is discussed in further detail in the Lesson Plan.
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