Page 166 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

138 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
Chinese New Year, and people from other cultures may borrow the practice. Members of distinctive cultural groups living in the local community and school librarians and bookstore employees with specialized knowledge in children’s literature can be helpful in guiding teachers to materials that will help students develop authentic understandings and appreciation of cultural diversity.
Teaching about the United States might emphasize that its history as a land of immi- grants has made it a more diverse and stimulating place to live than places with more homogeneous cultures. Furthermore, instead of stressing differences and focusing on what strikes American children as bizarre, teaching about other cultures can place more emphasis on parallels that reflect the commonalities of human nature. Using food pyra- mids, typical meals eaten in different societies can be compared to illustrate similarities in food groupings. Different forms of bread can be shown with emphasis on the fact that they are all variations on the same basic food, and other food-related parallels can be noted as well (e.g., sugar and honey as alternative sweetening agents; chopsticks and sil- verware as alternative eating implements). Food pyramids can help students understand that people everywhere have the same basic needs but satisfy them differently due to dif- ferences in available resources, cultural traditions, or personal preferences. Geographical and climatic aspects of the areas in which people live, the major economic activities engaged in their societies, their forms of government, and other local factors may help explain their behavior.
In particular, it is important to help students see each culture through the eyes of its own people rather than through outsiders’ stereotypes, to emphasize cultural universals and similarities in purposes and motives more than differences, and to show that what at first may seem exotic or bizarre upon closer inspection usually can be seen as sensible adaptation to the time and place or as parallel to certain features of our own culture.
NCSS Standards Relating to Anthropology
The National Council for the Social Studies (2010) Curriculum Standards call for experi- ences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity. In the early grades, this means experiences that allow students to explore and describe similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures address similar human needs and concerns; give examples of how experiences may be interpreted differently by people from diverse cultural perspectives and frames of reference; describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence the behavior of people living in a particular culture; compare ways in which people from different cultures think about and deal with their physical environment and social conditions; and give examples and describe the importance of cultural unity and diversity within and across groups. Culture-related activities in the middle grades should call for students to compare similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures meet human needs and concerns; explain how information and experiences may be interpreted by people from diverse cultural perspectives and frames of reference; explain and give examples of how language, literature, the arts, architecture, other artifacts, traditions, beliefs, values, and behaviors contribute to the development and transmission of culture; explain why individuals and groups respond differently to their physical and social environments and/ or changes to them on the basis of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs; and articulate the implications of cultural diversity, as well as cohesion, within and across groups.
Guidelines for Teaching Anthropology
The geography teaching guidelines that deal with human adaptation and cultural devel- opment also apply to the teaching of anthropological content. More specifically, when
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