I tried following the directions and posting my film review under the "Teaching About Asia" forum under "film festival", however it says that I can't post in that forum.
This National Geographic Documentary hosted by Lisa Ling provides incite into China's growing population problem and the "one child"policy. This documentary could be shown in my Geography class after reading USA today's article "World Population hits 7 Billion". In the article and the documentary both mention the upcoming changes to culture and population as many more people around the world and China are projected to live in cities. The documentary presents a stark contrast between families in the city and the country. The documentary mentions that many more girls are left, abandoned or aborted in the countryside. This is due to the feudalistic culture that a male will provide more labor and take care of the elderly, and a girl will "marry and move". The documentary presents very serious statists that between 2020, 40 million marriage aged men will have no one to marry. The consequences to the disproportional male to female ratio is that crime rates, forced marriages and abductions will increase.
This is a great documentary to show in my geography class as it could be incorporated into many different debates, discussions, philosophical chairs, and socratic seminars. After viewing the documentary students would engage ins mall groups to finding alternative solutions to the "one child" policy and research Chinese-American adoption procedures. The "5 Themes" of Geography are present in the documentary; location and the impact of resources available to families, place (physical and human), human environment interaction, culture, movement, and region. In class I would particularly focus on Themes 4 and 5. Movement could be discussed based on the adoption rate of Chinese girls to American parents and the effects of living in different regions on the way in which girls are viewed and treated.
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