Thoughts about session 2

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Hi everyone,

As a part of your seminar requirements, we ask that you post a short evaluation of each seminar session.

Please reply to this message and share your thoughts about our second seminar session on April 13 by Clayton Dube. React to the ideas presented during the session and discuss how these ideas can be effectively shared with your students. You are encouraged to respond to others' posts as well.

Feel free to post as many responses as you'd like to a specific seminar session - they will all count towards your 30-posting requirement total.

-Xin[Edit by="xjiang on Apr 15, 6:07:26 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Thoughts about sessions 1 and 2-
We run out of time.
The dynamic of having too much information and not enough time is part of what we are trying to overcome all of the time. As educators prioritizing what information is going to be presented is exactly what we will have to do to even be able to integrate the information we are currently learning. In Long Beach curriculum is more a department decision. Teachers share tests - will a teacher skip something that will be tested to include information about East Asia since 1800?

Movies-- The first movie I watched was "Springtime in a Small Town" a film by Tian Zhuanghuang. It was wonderful. It takes place in China after the Japanese have bombed in the 1940's. It shows the devastation of the war. It shows the contrast between traditional and modern life in China. We see examples of honor and duty. Can I show it to my class? No.

So I rented another movie. "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." I loved it. It shows re-education. Rules of Mao. Books being burnt. The value of literature. It does however show sex and an abortion. Once again, can I show this to my students. No. I highly recommend both movies for the teachers!

This experience led me to find out about the movie policy in LBUSD. The policy is very restrictive. No "R" rated movies. Even PG 13 movies are not automatically approved. Movies must be on the accepted list. A two hour movie is considered excessive due to the amount of teaching time lost.

I talked to the Office of Multimedia Services. They were very kind. One of the high schools bought some movies in French but since no one spoke French they could not be approved. They do a bit better with Spanish.
I have been referred to a teacher that teaches Mandarin and also a teacher that teacher Film Analysis.

So what ever district you work in -- find out the policy before you show a movie. Hope you have better luck than me.

[Anonymous]

As far as meeting #2, I feel bad that I had to leave early, because we were going over so much information so quickly, I regret missing the last 40 minutes of class. Looking at the geography of Japan and China was very useful, and the demonstrations on the difference between population vs. habital area from Japan, to China, to the U.S. was mind boggling. It made me think about how uncomfortable I felt the first time I was in New York City, because people have a much more tollerant personal space buffer zone there than they do here. It takes some getting used to, but I think the New Yorker attitude is much more intimate than the Los Angelian attitude. In Los Angeles we seem to do whatever we can to avoid any human contact at all. Whereas, in New York there is no sense in even trying to avoid almost constant human contact, so people do a better job of dealing with each other. I bet it is similar in the really crowded East Asian countries.

[Anonymous]

So I just read Ebrey's "Ridding China of Bad Customs" and have all kinds of responses. First of all, it gives great glimpses into one of the hottest and most controversial topics we cover in ancient China, and that is the typical Chinese view of women, or the daughter. The young girls in my class are always mortified to hear that girls were seen as inferior to boys because "girls are eventually someone else's property." I found this essay to be very insightful into this aspect of Chinese culture.

I was also interested in the three "customs" that brought particular attention from the West in the early 1900's: "footbinding, opium smoking, and the sale of girls as bondservants." I have often found it interesting that for all of America's greatness it has typically been behind Europe in the area of human rights. For example, slavery was ended and women achieved sufferage earlier in England than in the U.S. It seems within 5o years of these issues finally being dealt with in the U.S. they were also being confronted in China.

Perhaps the most fascinating similarity between the banning of the three evils in China and their equivalent in the U.S. is the banning of opium in China, coinciding with the banning of marijuana in America. The article states that "By the end of the century, addiction was prevalent among all classes and opium was the largest item of interprovincial trade." It is arguable that the rampant use of opium, throughout Chinese society, largely contributed to China taking so long to catch up to the rest of the world in other areas of civilization. Similarly, was it the smear campaign of William Hearst in the 1920's and 30's against marijuana, for the sake of the cotton industry, that inspired the US to become the industrious, capitalistic civilization it became?

[Anonymous]

Session 2. It was great to have the opportunity to hear about everyone taking the course. I find it very exciting that there are so many teachers from disciplines other than the social sciences who are participating. I think this provides us all with an opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration, and I am very open to developing lessons with members of the seminar.

Asia geography: There are a few things I found very significant. First was the mention of the size of Korea. While it is not a small country, Korea often appears so because of the size of its neighbors. Also, the image of the demilitarized zone really reminded me of the legacies of WWII and the Cold War; pictures really do say a 1,000 words. I also like the point Chris raised about LA/ California culture. Most of us live very isolated lives (car culture) and are accustomed to a large amount of personal space in public places. This of course influences the way we interact with the people around us. My limited experience on subways in New York and Paris don’t even begin to compare. I think students would gain a lot from the exercise demonstrated about personal space. Also, the dark images of western China and North Korea contrasted greatly with the major urban cities and the rest of the region in the satellite map will also be very useful and memorable.

[Anonymous]

In the Ridding China of Bad Customs reading I found the speech written by the Qui Jin very stirring. She speaks strongly against the practice of footbinding and eloquently incorporates the very specific criticism about the male privilege and general misogyny in Chinese culture. She then goes on to challenge the women by telling them these practices exist because women allow them to. An interesting statement considering who is holding power, but this must have made quite a stir. I actually went back and checked the date of this speech because the tone made me think it might be part of propaganda designed to gain female support for the communist revolution. Of course I found it was written earlier, but interesting none the less. The second article on the freeing of slave girls was also quite provocative. Particularly since the author chose solely to criticize women who were exploiting women. Does this seem more like class criticism than a call to justice for women/ slave girls?

[Anonymous]

I really liked the personal space demonstration. It was very effective at getting the point across. All this time I though California was bad! At least I can get on and off a bus okay without needing a professional pusher! 😀

[Anonymous]

Text
First of all, Clay, thank you for keeping my attention for the length of the sessions. Since I have become a teacher, I have become a worst students. Most of the time, after a busy day with my students, as soon as I sit for any length of time, I normally nod off. So thank you for keeping me up with the great information from the class.
I was amazed to find out that 95% of China's population resides on 45% of their land mass! What about personal space! I have always been told that American value their personal space ( I know I do), so how can you have any personal space when people are on top of each other? People always say that LA is crowded. Compared to China, maybe not so much.
I was also blown away by the satellite map. I see that as a great tool to use in the classroom with the students. It would totally help all my student visually understand how many people are living in China.
And the idea of momentum as an explanation of China's 1.3 billion population made totally sense. I'd never thought of that for so the reason just made sense.
It was also interesting to learn that 6 out of 10 Japanese families live in single family dwellings. I don't know what the stats are for the US, but I don't think it is that many.
Well, I can't wait for next weeks class.
See you guys Tuesday.

[Anonymous]

So this foot binding thing is nuts. In Oral Histories from Houhua Village, it is stated that about 80% of the women in the village had bound feet. Only the women from the poorest families (those families who needed their daughters to be able to walk) didn't bind their daughter's feet. The whole village seemed to be poor by our standards, but only the poorest women could actually walk. I wonder if the wealthier girls were jealous of the poor girls because they could walk around comfortably. There is a lot I would give up for that privilege.

The whole foot binding thing becomes even more crazy when I learned about the active part women had in the communist party overthrowing China's emperor. It makes me wonder if that was the actual reason for foot binding to begin with. Were ancient Chinese men pretending to be turned on by little feet, so that they had an excuse to prevent the women from becoming politically activated? Think about it, I don't want to do anything when my feet are sore, let alone overthrow a government. Give women the ability to walk comfortably and they can do all kinds of things... Is that the reason for high heels? You know those were invented by a man.

[Anonymous]

The thing that struck me most from session 2 was the stark contrast in night lights between North and South Korea. I had no idea there was so little basic infrastructure (I am assuming it's a lack of infrastructure not simply a lack of energy) in the North- and I used to be a bit of an astronomy nerd! I think this is something most people would find interesting, not just my students. Between that and the reading about mass starvation going on (which I had heard about previously- probably on NPR or in the New York Times), I really get a whole different image/mental picture of what N. Korea must look like. Where's the bread and electricity?! They don't even get that. I feel bad for the people of N. Korea. To be starving is ridiculous. The "War Between the States," is over. The wall separating the two Germanys is down, the Cold War thawed out, the Iron Curtain has been lifted, and yet those people toil away in the obscurity of a world perhaps generations behind, not even eating properly. I'm against it.

[Anonymous]

To repeat what some of our colleagues have said, there never seems to be enough time. THe wonderful thing about a seminar that is self selected like this is that everyone is interested and involved in the discussion. The superimposing of maps on one another is quite an effective tool when trying to show perspective, which is one of the skills we are employed to teach in the social studies curriculum. The demonstration with the newspaper is also an eye opener and explains much when trying to explain that the "idea" of personal space is relative.
From the reading on the Treaty of Nanjing, I kept thinking and where does China get anything in exchange? I think that this will be a great lesson if we have students read the document and then discuss who they think were the victors or the "losers." The document makes it very clear that regardless if you know the history or not who was the victor.
On another though, I had just finished the U.S. history unit on American imperialism right before we started class and we read Kipling's poem, we saw political cartoons where racist depictions of new American possessions were advanced. It would be a great place to also look at the Placards from Guangzhou, because the Chinese refer to the English as barbarians. It would be interesting to show the students that the same words were used to describe one another.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend class this week because I was on vacation, but I found the readings and all of your comments very interesting. I was really interested in the discussions about foot binding. I teach 7th grade social studies and this is one subject that my students really get interested in. Some of the 7th graders at my school also read an autobiography by a Chinese woman who talked about foot binding. We looked at pictures and talked about why someone would do this to their daughter. They found it fascinating.

I also thought "Liang Qichao on his trip to America" was very interesting. I love to read so I was especially interested in the part about the difference between American and Chinese libraries. I also thought what he considered the Chinese flaws was interesting.

I teach 8th grade social studies so it was not only a chance for me to read from a Chinese point of view, but it also gave me a little USA history I can use with my 8th graders. I am going to try to find some similar America written passages and see if there is any similarities or differences in the descriptions for my 8th graders to find.

[Anonymous]

Lesson #2 Asian Geography: The demonstration illustrating Japan’s population by cramming 7 people into a square meter was very effective, and information about the white-gloved “professional pushers” was the perfect way to emphasize the point. I hope to figure out a way to use something like that for my chapter on China's geography – any ideas? Although I enjoy learning about all of the East Asian countries, China is of special interest to me, not only because it is part of my curriculum, but also because I traveled there and have developed a great admiration for Chinese art and literature. I am looking forward to being able to use the power point on China’s geography in my classroom. In explaining China’s population relative to that of the United States, I definitely plan to use the information that at the end of the 18th Century, Washington governed 3 million people while China already had 300 million people. [Edit by="nstansbury on Apr 18, 11:08:40 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Lots of great information, thank you! I am learning so much and am so much more aware of the influence that East Asia has on my life. I have been able to talk to parents and students about what I have been learning. I can tell they appreciate my new level of knowledge about their culture. Excited for next class

[Anonymous]

Perfect discussion of geography as well as a clear explanation of the "momentum" of population growth. Loved the demo with the number of folks who can fit in a square meter (those kind of things work well in the classroom). Lots of good information this week.
Also enjoyed placing faces with the names from the previous postings.
Looking forward to this weeks discussion on the early 20th century.

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