Page 169 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 6 How Can I Teach Geography and Anthropology Powerfully? 141
for people who live in sharply contrasting climates or physical environments. Activities related to this idea would help students develop appreciation of the influences of natural environments on cultural developments.
The second approach would involve developing and charting information about how people meet their needs for food, clothing, and shelter in the home community and in cities located in nations from which your students’ families or ancestors migrated (e.g., Juarez, Hanoi, Lagos, Frankfurt). This might be the core of a unit that also would include map and globe activities, videos or other audiovisual input, Internet activities, or class- room visits by parents or others who could show and tell about the other nations’ cultural artifacts and practices. We provide a sample chart below.
Food Shelter
Clothing Transpor- tation
Our Family
Family in Lagos, Nigeria
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Note: Variation within groups will depend on religious beliefs, economic resources, per- sonal preferences, and so forth.
Older students might conduct inquiry into questions such as, “Why did the people who lived in what is now southern Arizona (or some other purposefully selected loca- tion) at different points in history develop specific economic, and cultural activities at the time?” Scaffolded research and discussion relating to this question could help stu- dents begin to appreciate that technological, economic, and cultural developments within the region and even the world at a given time can lead to new uses for and even physical reshaping of particular locations. In this case, the same local environment has been used primarily for subsistence farming by the pueblo tribes, for mining and ranching by European-Americans in the more recent past, and for retirement communities, tourism activities, and military and technological purposes today.
Anthropologists often speak of using examples of cultural diversity to “make the familiar strange” and “make the strange familiar.” This involves helping students appreciate that, not only are many things done very differently elsewhere than they are here, but in some cases our way is unusual (e.g., our non-metric weights and measures and our relatively large cars and houses). Some people in some places use chopsticks instead of forks, wear white instead of black at funerals, or bow rather than shake hands. Most such differences are merely means for accomplishing the same ends (e.g., bringing small pieces of solid food to the mouth, expressing grief and sympathy at a funeral, performing a greeting ritual as a prelude to social interaction). Many are not arbitrary but explainable with reference to resources and economic or cultural practices.
Whenever you teach about culture, it is important to try to convey an “insider’s per- spective” by helping students to view cultural practices as their practitioners do, as well as to convey a large and balanced picture of the culture rather than overemphasize the exotic. As Merryfield (2004) put it, “If Japanese students made quilts, ate Southern fried chicken and Boston baked beans, and sang ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ would they have acquired information that leads to understanding of Americans today?” (p. 270).
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