Empowering

Global Citizens

2
 Empowering
Global Citizens
A World Course

FERNANDO M. REIMERS,
VIDUR CHOPRA, CONNIE K. CHUNG,
JULIA HIGDON, AND E. B. O’DONNELL

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© 2016 Fernando M. Reimers, Vidur Chopra, Connie K. Chung, Julia Higdon, and E. B.
O’Donnell. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1533594546
ISBN 13: 9781533594549
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016909491
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina

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Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of
International Education and the director of the Global Education Innovation
Initiative and of the International Education Policy Program at Harvard
University.

Professor Reimers is an expert in the field of global education policy and

innovation. His research and teaching examine how education policy,
leadership, instruction and innovation empower children and youth to develop
the skills they need to thrive in the twenty-first century. He directs the Global
Education Innovation Initiative, he and his colleagues recently finished a
comparative study of the goals of education as reflected in the curricula in
Chile, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States. These findings
are presented in the book Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-first Century:
Educational Goals, Policies, and Curricula from Six Nations published by the
Harvard Education Press. This book is also available in Chinese, Portuguese
and Spanish language editions. Another recent book, Fifteen Letters on
Education in Singapore examines the lessons that can be learned from
Singapore’s efforts to build a robust teaching profession, and is available in
paperback and as an e-Book. He has authored, edited, or coedited fourteen
books and ninety research articles and chapters on education.

He teaches graduate courses on education policy and educational innovation at

the Harvard Graduate School of Education. These courses are also offered
online via the Harvard Extension School. He is also the faculty chair of a
number of leadership development programs offered by the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, including an annual program for education leaders
interested in advancing global education.

He advises governments, international development organizations, universities,

public and independent schools, foundations and other educational institutions.
He is a member of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, where he
chairs the strategic planning committee, which works with all public
universities in the state to align their strategic plans with the state’s Vision
Project.

He is a member of the US Commission for UNESCO and advises policy makers

in the United States, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

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In recognition of his global education leadership, he was appointed as the CJ
Koh Visiting Professor to the National Institute of Education in Singapore and
received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Emerson College. He
received a BA in psychology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and an
EdM and EdD from Harvard University.

Vidur Chopra is an advanced doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate

School of Education, where he focuses on adolescent and youth civic agency in
the developing world and particularly in post-conflict countries with large youth
bulges. He is interested in the role of formal and non-formal educational
opportunities in young people’s imaginings of their roles in rebuilding conflict-
torn societies and in the potential and promise that education holds for peace
building. He has policy-based experience from consulting for United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund and the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees and practice-based experience from working
for international organizations such as Save the Children and RET International.
He has also worked on early childhood development issues in the developing
world and has had international work experience in Bhutan, Burundi, Ethiopia,
India, Lebanon, Rwanda, Syria, and the United States. Vidur also has an EdM in
international education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
an MA in international and development economics from Yale University, and a
BA in economics from the University of Delhi in India.

Connie K. Chung is the research director for the Global Education Innovation
Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a research-practice-
policy collaborative that works with education institutions in seven countries.
Her field of research is in education for the twenty-first century, civic education,
and global citizenship education. She works to build the capacity of
organizations and people to work collaboratively toward providing a powerful,
relevant, rigorous, and meaningful education for all children that supports not
only their individual growth but also the development of their communities. She
is the coeditor of the book Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-first
Century: Educational Goals, Policies, and Curricula from Six Nations.

In pursuing her research interest in ways in which people from diverse

backgrounds can learn to work together and to leverage their collective power
for positive change in their communities, she was involved in a multiyear,
multisite study of education reform and community organizing in the United
States, the results of which were published in the book A Match on Dry Grass:
Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform (Oxford University
Press, 2011). She has worked as a staff member, consultant, and speaker with

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various human-rights and civic-education organizations. She currently serves on
the board of two nonprofits, including Aaron’s Presents, an organization that
offers grants to students in grades eight and below to encourage positive
development in those students and in their communities. A former public high
school English teacher, she was nominated by her students for various teaching
awards. She has taught as an adjunct lecturer on the topics of nonprofit
management and multicultural education and also was a curriculum consultant in
the development of a kindergarten-through-twelfth grade global citizenship
education curriculum. Dr. Chung received her BA in English literature from
Harvard College and her master’s degrees in teaching and curriculum (1999)
and in international education policy (2007) from the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. Her doctorate is also from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education.

Her greatest sense of satisfaction has come from working with young people,
one of whom wrote the following to her at the end of a school year: “I think I
learned more about life in this class than in any other part of high school. Thank
you for not only teaching us to think critically but also humanitarianly as a
citizen of this world. When I talked about my vision of a mentorship program,
you really listened. I feel encouraged to make it happen before the end of my
senior year and to make things happen for the rest of my life.”

Julia Higdon received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education in May 2015. In her dissertation, Julia used data from the 2009 IEA
ICCS (International Civic and Citizenship Education Study) to examine
determinants of intercultural attitudes among adolescents (n=16,847) in seven
countries across Europe—the United Kingdom (England only), Sweden,
Switzerland, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, and Greece—focusing on cultural
contexts and school climates. Julia established the measurement invariance of a
variety of measures of intercultural attitudes to support the validity of cross-
cultural comparison, using a novel approach in the Bayesian framework. Julia
also examined the ways in which intergroup contact, gender, and school
climates were associated with intergroup attitudes across these seven countries.
She found limited evidence of an association between native-born and
immigrant contact and positive intercultural attitudes. However, she found that
positive intercultural attitudes were consistently associated with positive and
democratic school climates, as well as with gender and attitudes toward gender
equality. Julia was working on her dissertation at the time of the writing of this
book.

Julia is interested in issues of measurement and promoting the use of cutting-

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edge statistical methods in applied educational research. Julia is currently a
Senior Research Scientist on the Tiger Works Research and Development team
at Avenues: The World School.

E. B. O’Donnell is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of

Education and an education consultant. She has over ten years of experience
working with nonprofit organizations, international nongovernmental
organizations, and schools. Her particular areas of interest and expertise include
curriculum development, global education, parental beliefs, early childhood
care and education, and emergent literacy and numeracy. She earned a BA in
international studies and French from Washington University in Saint Louis,
Missouri, and an EdM in international education policy from the Harvard
Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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 Praise for Empowering Global Citizens

I n 2015, the international community charted a new course for people, planet
and prosperity, set out in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Together,
they add up to a universal agenda solidly anchored in human rights that calls
upon everyone’s spirit of solidarity and responsibility to leave no one behind.
Education – the fourth goal – is the most transformative force for nurturing the
mindsets, values and skills that we need to shape our common future, grounded
in awareness of our common humanity, respect for our formidable diversity, and
the certitude that, at all ages, we have the capacity to initiate beneficial actions
for self and others. It is not by chance that global citizenship education is
included in this goal. UNESCO has been leading action to clarify the concept
and demonstrate its crucial importance across all societies for learning to live
together. Our challenge is to bring this concept to life in 21st century
classrooms, in teaching practice, in schools and communities. In this spirit, I
congratulate Professor Reimers and his team wholeheartedly for showing how
this can be done with this “World Course” that provides a stimulating,
interactive and project-based curriculum running the full school cycle, from
kindergarten upwards. Its international perspective, humanist approach,
historical insight and creative multidisciplinary activities provide an extremely
rich and comprehensive resource for educating global citizens who have the
values and cross-cultural competences to be artisans of peace and sustainable
development. I hope that it will be widely shared and inspire further global
collaboration.

Irina Bokova, Director-General, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and

Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Schools increasingly need to prepare the young for an interconnected world

where they will live and work with people from different backgrounds and
cultures. This book contributes to this noble endeavour, laying out the basis for a
comprehensive curriculum to form global citizens to address the challenges and
opportunities of the 21st Century. We welcome this initiative to reinforce the
attitudes, values and knowledge of future generations on global issues—
something the OECD is itself actively promoting in our PISA studies and
through our Global Competency for an Inclusive World initiative—so our

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children can thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Angel Gurría, Secretary-General, Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development

More than ever, our world needs citizens and leaders who are capable of
informed empathy. This means that a modern education must go beyond
providing students with the knowledge and technological skills they need to
operate in an increasingly connected world. We must also help students develop
social and emotional capacities to listen to the perspectives of others and
approach problems in collaborative, conscientious ways. Empowering Global
Citizens: A World Course is a wonderful tool that educators can use to create
this kind of learning environment for their students. It is heartening and exciting
to imagine what a generation of students equipped with this kind of education
will be able to accomplish in the future.

Yo-Yo Ma, Cellist

The future of industry and business depends increasingly on talented individuals

who can understand and create opportunities amidst the complexity created by a
deeply interdependent and rapidly changing world. This provocative book
explains how such talent can be systematically cultivated, from an early age,
with innovative global education programs. Anyone interested in the future
competitiveness of industries and nations should read this book.

Jorge Paulo Lemann, Swiss-Brazilian Businessman

Empowering Global Citizens. A World Course is the kind of curriculum that the
world needs to realize the Sustainable Development Goals for all and achieve
peace. The curriculum promotes so many characteristics that students, who are
our future world citizens, need today--critical thinking, cooperation, ethics,
intercultural competency and awareness and so much more. It should be a
required curriculum for every student in every school.

Sakena Yacobi, Founder and Director, Afghan Institute of Learning

As the world continues to become more crowded, connected, and complex, the
need to teach and understand the principles of Global Citizenship will become
the intellectual currency and common language for a greater global good.
Mother nature has no compassion, but human beings do and we must grow that

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capacity! As a Global Teacher Prize Top Ten Finalist and 2016 Project Based
Learning Champion, I believe empathy, compassion, ownership, voice and
choice will drive the next generation of teachers and students, makers and doers,
innovators and iterators, disruptors and change agents towards a more just,
robust and equitable world. Professor Reimers and his team have compiled a
comprehensive blue-print and action plan to educate and empower a legion of
legacy Change Makers for this and future generations; Empowering Global
Citizens: A World Course is a must read for teachers, students and equity
warriors around the world so that together, we can all prosper and grow
something greater!

Stephen Ritz, Green Bronx Machine, Teacher, Public School 55, The Bronx,
New York

As an Internet entrepreneur who has built one of the world’s most popular social
media, I see everyday how important it is to have the 21st century skills of
digital literacy, global citizenship, and social responsibility. I applaud Harvard
Graduate School of Education’s Professor Fernando Reimers and his team for
designing a complete and integrated curriculum on how to develop the
cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills necessary to work in the global
and technological 21st century workplace, and sharing his curriculum free for
all to read and enjoy. This isn’t just a useful guide for educators who want to
educate students to be agents of change. This has been essential reading for me,
and has taught me how to better design corporate training programs for my
employees, as well as to how to broaden my own cultural horizons.

Pony Ma, Founder and CEO, Tencent Inc.

For our society to meet the challenges and realize the opportunities of the next
century, we will need a new definition of citizenship—one that encourages and
equips citizens to think and act beyond their own borders. This volume puts
forth an innovative and comprehensive K-12 curriculum designed to prepare
truly global citizens. It is a timely and essential handbook for educators who
seek to have an impact the world over.

James E. Ryan, Dean of the Faculty and Charles William Eliot Professor,
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Empowering Global Citizens is an invaluable resource for educators who

understand that the only path to an inclusive, peaceful, sustainable world is to

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develop today’s students into leaders who are equipped to work together for
positive change across lines of difference. Professor Reimers and his
colleagues provide the rationale for developing global citizens, as well as
practical tools for developing intercultural competency, ethical orientation, and
the knowledge, skills and mindsets necessary for leading us forward in our
interconnected and challenging world.

Wendy Kopp, Founder, Teach for America and CEO and co-Founder, Teach for
All

Fundamental education reform will determine whether and how we adapt to an

increasingly technology-driven and interconnected global society. Global
citizenship education will be a key component of this reform and The World
Course provides an important and practical path forward for future curricula.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

The immense challenges that we face today require a collective effort that goes
beyond the borders of any one community or country. Global citizenship
education is recognized in Goal 4 of the Agenda for Sustainable Development,
the “education goal”, as a crucial tool in putting learners on the path to meeting
modern transnational challenges and contributing to a more peaceful and
sustainable world. As we embark on a new education agenda, GCE is of
paramount importance. With Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course,
Fernando Reimers and colleagues offer a timely and pertinent contribution in
this regard. Their work not only details the rationale for GCE and the pressing
need for its wide adoption, it also serves as an invaluable guide for those who
seek to translate the principles of GCE into practice at every level of a child’s
education, sowing the seeds for the sustainable, peaceful future we all desire.

Gwang-Jo Kim, Director, UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for
Education

How wonderful to see this thoughtful argument for rigorous education and
detailed curriculum geared to cultivate understanding and much needed abilities
to solve global issues and advance human rights. Making their ideas and
resources available through Creative Commons, the authors inspire engaged
discussion and collaboration.

Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor, Harvard Law

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School

I wish we had this book when I was growing up. Empowering Global Citizens
is a visionary and practical approach to help students understand the
complexities, inter-dependencies and opportunities that exist in our rapidly-
globalizing world.

John Wood, Founder, Room to Read

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 Table of Contents

Global Education for the Twenty-First Century: Designing a Global

Citizenship Course

The World Course: Kindergarten through Eighth Grade

Kindergarten Our World Is Diverse and Beautiful

First Grade We Are One People with Universal Human Needs

Second Grade Ourselves and Others

Third Grade Understanding Global Interdependence through

Entrepreneurship in Chocolate Manufacturing

Fourth Grade The Rise (and Fall) of Ancient and Modern Civilizations

Fifth Grade Freedom and the Rights of Individuals: Social Change around
the Rights of Individuals

Sixth Grade How Values and Identities Shape People and Institutions

Seventh Grade Driving Change in Society by Organizing as a Collective and

through the Study of Change Makers

Eight Grade Migration

The World Course: Ninth through Twelfth Grade

High School Semester Course The Environment

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High School Semester Course Society and Public Health Course

High School Semester Course Global Conflicts and Resolutions

High School Semester Course Development Economics: Growth and

Development in Latin America

High School Semester Course Technology, Innovation, and Globalization

Conclusion and Beginnings

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Global Education for the Twenty-First Century: Designing a
Global Citizenship Course
Fernando M. Reimers, Vidur Chopra, Connie K. Chung, Julia Higdon, and E. B.
O’Donnell

G lobal citizenship education is essential for creating a world with

sustainable peace—a world without poverty or hunger and where all
have health and education. A world where women and men have the same
opportunities, where all have clean water and sanitation, where we use
renewable energies, where there are good jobs for all, and where there is
economic growth and prosperity created by industry and innovation. A world
where we reduce inequalities and create sustainable cities and communities and
where we consume responsibly and no longer behave in ways that change the
climate or harm life on this planet. A world where we honor and protect life
underwater and on land. A world of peace and justice for all. These are the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the compact adopted by the United
Nations in 2015 to advance sustainable global well-being (United Nations,
2015). Quality education for all is not only one of those goals but also central to
the achievement of all of the other SDGs (Reimers & Villegas-Reimers, 2015).

If the purpose of education is to empower all students to become global citizens,

we must elevate our aspirations of what it means to educate children well. The
urgency to educate all students to become global citizens calls for innovative
curricula that can support new ways of teaching and learning. These curricula
must also provide all students with effective opportunities to develop the
dispositions, knowledge, and capabilities necessary to understand the world in
which they live, to make sense of the way in which globalization shapes their
lives, and to be good stewards of and contributors to the Sustainable
Development Goals. However, curricula are, of course, not self-executing. To
support powerful learning from students through curricula, we need teachers
who are well qualified and prepared to teach them—teachers who have
adequate instructional materials and resources that can personalize learning,
who work in schools and systems that establish adequate partnerships with
parents and communities, and who are supported by effective leadership that
supports cultures of continuous improvement and learning (Reimers, 2009
Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2011 Kay & Greenhill, 2013). All of those elements

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are important because together, they form a system that supports deep learning
and teaching. But a curriculum, while not the only element of such a system, is a
singularly important element of that system. Given that the Sustainable
Development Goals call for a new and urgent conversation on global citizenship
education, such a conversation must begin with a discussion of curricula.

This book presents a global citizenship education curriculum. We present a

comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent curriculum to be implemented from
kindergarten to high school that has intentionally been designed to educate
global citizens. We also provide a rationale for global citizenship education; a
review of its historical roots; and an examination of different approaches to
global education, discussing the role of experiential learning, student-centered
learning, and the relationship between global education and twenty-first-century
education. Finally, we present the conceptual foundations of the curriculum we
developed. It is our hope that this book will serve as a provocation and
stimulate further curricular and pedagogical innovation and adaptations of the
ideas we provide here, which are aligned with the goals and conceptual
underpinnings of our work.

We originally designed this curriculum in the hope that it would be adopted by

Avenues: The World School, an innovative elite school currently operating in
New York City that plans to eventually establish campuses in major global
cities around the world. Following this chapter, we present the curriculum itself
as we designed it before Avenues: The World School began operating. We note
that this curriculum is the foundation for the World Course, which is a prominent
component of an Avenues education. The World Course has been further
developed at Avenues since its opening; however, that development is not the
focus of this book. As we developed this curriculum for a well-resourced
school which would be established in New York City, some of the activities and
resources presented here may need to be adapted for use of this curriculum in
different circumstances. For instance, some activities involve exploring the city
of New York, or visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or they involve
interviewing parents involved in occupations likely to reflect those of parents of
students in the Avenues School. While the same activities may not be feasible in
other geographies, the principles which underlie the choice of these activities
can be generalized, such as drawing on local resources and institutions such as
museums, engaging parents and community members as sources of knowledge
and experience, or exploring the particular cities where the school is located,
whatever those may be. Similarly, the resources listed in this curriculum are all
in the English language, uses of this curriculum in schools where other
languages are used for instruction will necessitate identifying appropriate
resources in those languages.

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The goal of this book is to make this curriculum widely available to educators
around the world in the hope that they will use it in whatever way they find
appropriate as they seek to support their students in becoming global citizens.
We believe that we are at the dawn of a new era, one in which global education
will be a part of the significant transformation that will take place in education
in the twenty-first century. Such a transformation will require not linear
extensions of what has been taught in the past or of the ways in which it has been
taught but a fundamental rethinking of the teaching and learning enterprise.
Innovation of such a reach and depth will require the efforts of many different
individuals and organizations. We hope that many of those educational
innovators will work to create more effective and relevant modalities of global
citizenship education. To facilitate such creative elaboration upon our work, we
have used the least restrictive Creative Commons license and published this
book in paperback and as an e-book. We expect that those using this curriculum
will make adaptations and modifications to what we propose here to best serve
their local contexts, as the educators who first received this curriculum have
done. We fully expect that wide global use of the World Course will require
adaptation to particular contexts, as well as updating of the instructional
resources included in this book as new resources become available. Our goal in
presenting a fully developed curriculum which reflects the principles articulated
in this chapter is to illustrate a rigorous and coherent curriculum, designed on
the basis of clear curriculum mapping aligned with the goal of developing
global citizens. We see these principles as generative to allow others to develop
a curriculum appropriate to their particular settings and circumstances, drawing
on what we have offered, but adapting and reinventing as necessary.

1. The Long Roots of Education for Cosmopolitanism

The idea that schools should help students learn about different people and
cultures is as old as the field of education itself and can be traced through
history and modern education. Historically, education aimed to help people
transcend their own immediate circumstances in order to adopt a more
cosmopolitan outlook. Cosmopolitanism is the notion that humans are bound by
a shared set of values—that is, by commonalities that transcend other socially
constructed aspects of our identity. This idea is at least two thousand years old
and is expressed in the statement “Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto”
(Nothing human is alien to me) by Terentius, a playwright in the Roman
Republic.1

The resistance of various religious leaders to the violent colonization of Latin

America by the Spanish conquistadores further developed this interest in
cosmopolitanism. For instance, Dominican friars Anton de Montesinos and

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Bartolome de las Casas challenged the violence against the indigenous
populations on the grounds that indigenous people had the same rights and
dignity as the conquistadores. Montesinos’s sermon, “I Am a Voice Crying in the
Wilderness,” given in the Dominican Republic in 1511, nineteen years after
Columbus had landed on the island, influenced changes in the New Laws of the
Indies so much that the crown censored and punished the abuse, enslavement,
and murder of indigenous people (Fajardo, 2014; Jay, 2002). De las Casas, who
witnessed Montesinos’s sermon and was influenced by him, challenged the
institution of slavery and the violence against indigenous people and argued that
all mankind was one (Hanke, 1994; Huerga, 1998). The notion of “natural
rights” of different people and the idea that all humanity is one, which was
advanced in the early sixteenth century, are cornerstones of the idea of human
rights.

Both the cosmopolitan aspiration to construct humanity as one and the entire
idea of human rights benefitted from a new impetus during the Enlightenment, the
philosophical movement that advanced the notion that individuals could
improve their circumstances individually and collectively as a result of the
cultivation of human reason and the development of science (Reimers, 2013a).
These ideas were foundational to the creation of democratic societies, which
recognize the rights and responsibilities of individuals, and were central to the
creation of public education. During this era, Hobbes argued that the state had to
justify the exercise of power to each member of the polity, and Locke saw
human rights as protections that individuals needed against abuses by the state
(Reynolds & Saxonhouse, 1995; Goldie, 1997). Rousseau, the first
Enlightenment philosopher to write explicitly about human rights, argued that
since humans are naturally free and equal, the social contract should preserve
that equality among all people (Rousseau, 1974). Kant proposed the need for
cosmopolitan law to prevent war, an idea that is ethically based on the shared
right of humans from different jurisdictions to natural resources (Kant, 1795).

In the twentieth century, the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis caused, at the end
of World War II, two important developments in the quest for cosmopolitanism.
The Nuremberg trials of the perpetrators of the Holocaust brought forth the
notion that there are ethical obligations to humanity that transcend national law;
this notion was the foundation of the idea of crimes against humanity. These
views on shared obligations and the human rights that people have above their
rights and duties to nation-states and national legal canons formed the foundation
of the creation of the United Nations and of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.

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The United Nations, the global architecture built after World War II to advance
peace and security, is a clear cosmopolitan expression that recognizes that the
advancement of human rights and peace is an undertaking that calls for
cooperation across the boundaries of nation-states. The Sustainable
Development Goals, which were adopted at the seventieth general assembly of
the United Nations, in September 2015, are the most recent expression of that
cosmopolitan aspiration.

As an institution of the Enlightenment, public education is, at its core, an

institution created to advance the cosmopolitan idea of humanity as one and
human rights as a shared responsibility (Reimers, 2015a, 2015b).

The long-standing cosmopolitan character of education is reflected in the way

that ideas about the purposes of education and about the curriculum and
pedagogies used to achieve those purposes have generally traveled across
national boundaries. The expansion of public education in particular depended
on multiple forms of exchanges between educators across national boundaries
and on extensive borrowing and transfers of educational approaches and
practices from one cultural context to another. In the early years of the French
Republic, for instance, Marc Antoine Jullien proposed that the systematic
comparative study and diffusion of educational innovation was a way to
advance public education. In the early years of the American experience, John
Quincy Adams extensively documented the educational practices of Silesia,
where he served as ambassador, for the benefit of his contemporaries. Horace
Mann, the founder of public education in the United States, benefited from the
systematic study of the educational systems of Prussia and France, and the
founder of public education in South America, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento,
benefited from exchanges with Horace Mann and his wife, Mary Tyler Peabody
Mann, as well as from the study of the early American experience with public
education (Reimers, 2016).

Such an extensive cross-national exchange and the roots of the public school
system in the Enlightenment imprinted a cosmopolitan character on the resulting
global movement to expand education to all. Greek and Latin were subjects in
the curriculum at many colleges and schools in Europe as well as in the
Americas in order to enable students’ access to common content.

With the creation of public education systems two hundred years ago, in part to
advance the consolidation of nation-states, school-based education adds to the
cosmopolitan aspiration of education the purpose of consolidating national
identity through the teaching of a common language, a set of common cultural

20
views and knowledge, and the knowledge of a shared national history. But this
new set of nationalistic goals notwithstanding, the common school curriculum
also included geography, and the structure and content of the curriculum were
influenced by examples taken from other countries. In that sense, traditional
education was cosmopolitan insofar as the “classics” defined what should be
learned much more than regional or local experience did. In the United States,
for instance, it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that local
literature was included in the college curriculum, which had been largely
composed of classical texts.

Global education was also advanced by movements to advance peace, which

emerged in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Peace-education movements
often resorted to education as a way to share knowledge about the dangers of
war and to help avert it. Many of these education efforts were aimed at adults
and did not involve formal education in schools; but at the beginning of the
twentieth century, the peace movement included support for school-based peace
education.

In 1912 a school peace league had chapters in nearly every state in the United
States that were “promoting through the schools…the interests of international
justice and fraternity” (Scanlon, 1959, p. 214). They had ambitious plans to
acquaint over five hundred thousand teachers with the conditions for peace
(Stomfay-Stitz, 1993). In the interbella period between the First and Second
World Wars, social studies teachers started teaching international relations so
that their students wouldn’t want to wage war against foreigners. Convinced that
schools had encouraged and enabled war by indoctrinating youth into
nationalism, peace educators contributed to a progressive education reform in
which schools were seen as a means to promote social progress by providing
students with an awareness of common humanity that helped break down the
national barriers that lead to war (Harris, 2008).

A number of progressive educators at Teachers College at Columbia University

advocated for education for global understanding, emphasizing cooperation
rather than competition as the goal. James Earl Russell, the third president of
Teachers College, offered a course on “foreign education systems” in 1898 with
the purpose of helping teacher candidates develop global awareness. Russell
supported the creation of the first university-based center of comparative
education at Teachers College, where faculty such as John Dewey devoted
significant time to learning about education systems in other countries and to
contributing ideas to the advancement of public education abroad.

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A leading figure at Teachers College’s Comparative Education Center was
Professor Isaac Kandel. At a lecture given to the National Association of
Secondary School Principals in 1925, Kandel advocated for infusing high
school curricula with information that would prepare students for international
understanding (Kandel, 1930). Kandel defined international understanding as
“that attitude which recognizes the possibilities of service of our own nation and
of other nations in a common cause, the cause of humanity, the readiness to
realize that other nations along with our own have by virtue of their common
humanity the ability to contribute something of worth to the progress of
civilization” (Kandel, 1930: 228). He distinguished international understanding
from communism, or as antithetical to nationalism. To foster international
understanding at the high school level, Kandel proposed not a new subject but a
special emphasis on the international dimensions of the existing subjects,
including the arts, science, geography, literature, and history. Kandel saw the
existing curriculum as holding the potential to foster international understanding
as a result of a specific emphasis on highlighting cosmopolitan linkages among
people. In effect, he was advocating for the infusion of global education into the
existent curriculum of other disciplines.

One alternative to the idea that global education could be infused into the
curricula of other disciplines was the notion that global education required a
specific study of international subject matter. Another view on global education
emphasized the importance of experiences and interactions with people from
diverse cultural backgrounds and national origins that exchanges and study
abroad provide.

A contemporary of Kandel who also advocated for using global education to

foster international understanding was Stephen Duggan, the first president of the
Institute for International Education, which he founded with Nobel Laureates
Elihu Root, a former US secretary of war, and Nicholas Murray Butler, the
president of Columbia University. Duggan, who was known as the apostle of
internationalism, was also the first president of the Council on Foreign
Relations. The Institute of International Education was established to support
international understanding as a way to achieve lasting peace. The institute’s
founders believed that student-teacher exchanges were a valuable way to foster
such international understanding.

The institute also sponsored the creation of international relations clubs on

college campuses. In addition, in the 1920s a few colleges in the United States,
including Harvard University, offered their students the opportunity to
participate in simulations of the League of Nations with the purpose of educating

22
them on global issues, interdependence, and the factors that threatened peace
and security.

Following World War II, the creation of the United Nations and the adoption of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included education as one of
the basic rights whose pursuit would help achieve peace, accentuated the
cosmopolitan aspiration for education—that is, that education would help
students discover their common humanity with others. The preamble to the
constitution of UNESCO, the specialized agency established to advance the
achievement of the right to education, makes explicit reference to the need to
educate students on the focus of the United Nations and on advancing human
rights. This idea gave impetus to the view of global education as a specific
subject matter that would require direct study and interaction with diverse
peers, not indirect infusion into other disciplines. In collaboration with
governments around the world, UNESCO advanced a number of programmatic
initiatives to promote global education, peace education, and human-rights
education. These included a series of affiliated schools, starting with thirty-
three schools in fifteen countries in 1953, whose goal was to “encourage the
development of education in the aims and activities of the United Nations and
the Specialized Agencies and in the principles of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.” UNESCO also contributed to the development of curricula for
peace and human-rights education.

In the 1960s two important education programs emerged to promote global

understanding. One of them, the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization,
was established in 1968 in Geneva to develop and support a university
preparatory curriculum—a diploma program—for students who had to move
between countries as a result of their parents’ occupations. In developing this
curriculum, the organization initially built upon a UNESCO handbook published
in 1948 that presented a framework for peace education (Maurette, 1948). Over
time, the International Baccalaureate Organization grew to offer a primary-years
program, a midyears program, and a high school diploma. Core components of
the high school diploma program include the following: an independent research
project that students conduct, resulting in a substantive paper that reflects an in-
depth understanding of a topic, and a subject called “theory of knowledge,”
which was designed to help students understand the relationship among the
various subjects and to reflect on alternative ways of knowing, with a focus on
the areas of natural sciences, human sciences, arts, mathematics, ethics, and
history.

The midyears program emphasizes holistic learning, intercultural awareness,

23
and communication. The focus is on approaches to learning, community and
service, human ingenuity, health and social education, and environments
(Hayden & Thompson, 2011).

The primary program emphasizes interdisciplinarity in the studies of identity,

one’s location in space and time, communication, understanding the world,
understanding human organization, and understanding the planet. These themes
are explored through the study of six subjects: languages, social studies,
mathematics, arts, science, and personal and physical education.

In 1962 Kurt Hahn, a German educator, established the United World College
(UWC) of the Atlantic in South Wales. His goal was to foster international
understanding among students between the ages of sixteen and twenty from
diverse countries through a shared residential pre-collegiate educational. The
explicit goal of the United World College is to foster peace and sustainability.
The organization has expanded to fourteen colleges located in different parts of
the world. The curriculum goes beyond imparting knowledge to its students and
actively promotes a series of values aligned with international understanding,
including valuing differences, personal responsibility and integrity, mutual
responsibility and respect, compassion and service, respect for the environment,
idealism, and personal action. The early development of the International
Baccalaureate was intertwined with the early development of the United World
College, as the experiences of students in the UWC in Wales were studied by
those developing the IB diploma, and the UWC was one of the first adopters of
the IB.

2. Alternative Approaches to Global Education

The approaches to global education that were developed during the twentieth
century vary along at least two related dimensions: the purposes of global
education and the definition of “global competency.”

The purposes of global education have included the advancement of personal

and national goals through a better understanding of others as well as
international cooperation toward the mutual advancement of shared interests.
Different curricula emerged from these diverse purposes, including education in
world history or geography, education for international business, education for
the advancement of human rights, peace education, education for conflict
resolution, international and area studies, security studies, and peace studies, for
example.

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More recently, researchers have noted that most global citizenship education
curricula encourage students to understand globalization, to adopt a self-critical
approach to how they and their nation are implicated in local and global
problems, to engage in intercultural perspectives and diversity (Pashby, 2008),
and to recognize and use their political agency toward effecting change and
promoting social and environmental justice (Eidoo et al., 2011). Schurgurensky
(2005, in Eidoo et al., 2011) observes that “transformative citizenship learning
involves the nurturing of caring and critical citizens who raise important
questions and problems in overt ways” and “probe the status quo” (Eidoo et al.,
2011). Andreotti (2006) further draws the distinction between “soft” and
“critical” global citizenship education and looks to critical literacy for a
pedagogical approach that “prioritizes critical reflection and asks learners to
recognize their own context and their own and others’ epistemological and
ontological assumptions.” Furthermore, she argues that in order “to think
otherwise” and to transform views and relationships, learners must engage with
their own and others’ perspectives. Andreotti’s “critical” global citizenship
model promotes citizenship action as “a choice of the individual after a careful
analysis of the context of intervention, of different views, of power relations
(especially the position of who is intervening) and of short- and long-term
(positive and negative) implications of goals and strategies” (p. 7). Key
concepts of critical GCE include “transformation, criticality, self-reflexivity,
diversity, complicity, and agency” (Eidoo et al., 2011).

Also undergirding these various approaches to global education are diverse

ideas about what global competency entails. One approach views global
competency as knowledge and, to some extent, as the ability to use knowledge
or skills to solve problems. This idea translates largely into curricular
approaches that focus on giving students access to specific content and subject
matter—such as geography or world history or the study of international
organizations. Additionally, these approaches focus on efforts to infuse existing
curricula of more established disciplines—such as science or history or
literature—with topics that are global in nature, as Kandel suggested in 1928.
Examples of global-in-nature topics include specific curricula on global
education, such as development studies or international affairs, and Oxfam’s
Global Citizenship Curriculum, an initiative of Oxfam in the United Kingdom
consisting of a series of lesson plans—plus support for teachers—that foster the
development of global citizenship (Oxfam, 2015). In the United States, infusing
global education into the more established subjects of a curriculum, such as
social studies, history, language, or sciences, is the prevalent approach to global
education. A few states, such as Wisconsin, have developed curricular maps that
explicitly identify opportunities for infusion of global topics into the entire
curricular framework for the state. More recently Wisconsin’s Department of

25
Public Instruction created a Global Education Achievement Certificate to
encourage and recognize students’ rigorous work in global education (Wisconsin
Department of Public Instruction, 2005, 2008, 2011). More recently, the Asia
Society published a framework to infuse global education into existing curricula
in schools and districts (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011).

An alternative approach to global education views global competency as a

disposition—that is, as a way of thinking and doing and as a value. This idea
translates into pedagogical approaches to global education. The following
educators reflect this perspective: Maria Montessori’s emphasis on pedagogy as
essential to the development of peaceful and democratic dispositions, in
contrast to the authoritarian pedagogies that she believed reflected and
reinforced a mind-set accepting of authoritarian regimes; John Dewey’s
emphasis on pedagogy as the way to cultivate autonomy of the mind; and the
International Baccalaureate’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity and research. A
study of the effects of a cosmopolitan pedagogical framework used in three
educational programs in Chicago’s public schools demonstrates that it can teach
global competencies that encompass hope, memory, dialogue, and other
cosmopolitan values to underserved students (Sobré-Denton, Carlsen & Gruel,
2014). The emphasis on experience and, therefore, on pedagogy was a key tenet
of the progressive education movement, of which Dewey and Kandel were
proponents. The following key tenets of the movement were adopted at the
founding of the Progressive Education Association, in 1919:

▪ freedom to develop naturally

▪ interest as the motive of all work
▪ the teacher as a guide, not a taskmaster
▪ the scientific study of the pupil’s development
▪ greater attention to all that affects the child’s physical development
▪ cooperation between the school and the home to meet the needs of the
children
▪ the progressive school as a leader in educational movements (Little,
2013)

Some approaches emphasize the role of experience in learning over intellectual

engagement with cosmopolitan knowledge exclusively. Study abroad and
exchanges, for instance, reflect this emphasis on embedding students in a
cultural setting different from the one they are most familiar with in order to
expose them to interactions with people of different cultural backgrounds, which
can be a path to developing cross-cultural understanding. Rooted in this view on
the importance of social experience with cultural differences are a range of

26
programs that focus on the structure of the social context that students will
experience in their schools and classrooms or in particular activities designed
to expose them to culturally diverse contexts. These programs and activities are
based on the assumption that exchanges among culturally diverse learners and
teachers will enable them to discover the common humanity they share with
others across lines of difference. This view is central to the approach reflected
in the student- and teacher-exchange programs of, for instance, the Institute for
International Education, the United World Colleges, the Fulbright Exchange
Programs, the Peace Corps, the myriad programs of study abroad supported by
higher education institutions, and other programs that deliberately bring together
students or teachers from diverse backgrounds. One of the areas of current
experimentation involves using technology to facilitate remote collaboration
among students in different countries, an area pioneered by iEarn, an
organization operating in over 140 countries and connecting over thirty thousand
schools in projects in which students and teachers can collaborate. Such
collaborations have been found to be beneficial to the development of global
competency. For example, an intervention that used virtual collaboration among
students from China and the United States on international business papers
resulted in gains in global competence by both groups of students (Li, 2013).
Virtual learning exchanges have been used to promote collaboration among
primary through secondary school students with peers around the world,
allowing them to share information on their local cultures, histories, religions,
and geographies; discuss US civil rights issues, climate change, poetry,
chemistry, and mathematics; play chess matches; and debate contemporary
global issues (Roemer, 2015).

Why Is Global Citizenship Important in the Twenty-First

Century?
In addition to the long roots underlying the desire to help students develop
cosmopolitanism discussed earlier, there are new and emerging motivations.
This section expands upon the familiar reasons for global education introduced
in the preceding section, the promotion of peace and sustainability, the
sustenance of global compacts, and the generation of opportunities for
individuals and nations, which range from the opportunity to access humankind’s
cultural heritage to the opportunity to prepare to obtain jobs in a highly
globalized economy. A subsequent section will examine new rationales.

GLOBAL CITIZENS MITIGATE GLOBAL RISK

In the aftermath of World War II, after more than fifty million lives had been
lost, after the first and only instances of nuclear warfare, and after the victors,

27
rather than forging even closer bonds, began carving up the world on either side
of the Iron Curtain, a group of individuals—representatives from over fifty
countries—came together to imagine a series of institutions that would help
ensure that another war of this devastating scope never took place again (UN,
2012). The United Nations (UN) was born out of a hope to sow seeds of peace
and cooperation among the countries of the world and to unite humanity in a
common cause. Those who led its creation expressed a desire for a new kind of
citizen—a global citizen—who would balance his personal and state’s interests
with the needs and practicalities of a global world order. The United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) crystalized, in the
preamble to its constitution, the idea that peace and stability are ensured not
only by treaties and military clout but also—and primarily—by the attitudes and
beliefs of individuals: “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defences of peace must be constructed” (UNESCO, 2012).

The need for global citizens who are the defenders of peace has not diminished
in the intervening decades. Today’s wars are neither easily defined nor
constrained by national borders. Newer organizations have joined the United
Nations in recognizing both the lasting need for cooperation in order to achieve
peace and the new challenges for global stability facing humanity today. Global
education remains one of the antidotes to conflict and one of the remedies during
and after conflict (Reimers & Chung, 2010).

Each year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes a Global Risks Report
that identifies the fifty most important risks and trends that threaten global
stability. The risks, which are identified by a group of over 750 experts, must be
global in scope, must affect at least three distinct industries, must have
substantial potential economic impact, must include some element of uncertainty
(that is, the likelihood of their occurring in the next ten years and the scope of
the impact of the risk must be uncertain), and must require a variety of
stakeholders to work together to mitigate the risk (WEF, 2016). The risks are
divided into five categories: environmental, technological, societal, economic,
and geopolitical. Besides identifying the risks, the report also quantifies and
describes the interconnectedness of the risks themselves (WEF, 2016).

Today’s world needs leaders who are versatile and interdisciplinary thinkers
able to work toward finding solutions to these pernicious and entangled threats
as well as informed citizens who are aware of these risks and of the way in
which their own actions can minimize their impact. The aspiration to build the
defenses of peace in the minds of people, as reflected in UNESCO’s charter, has
therefore grown more complex. The UN secretary general’s special initiative

28
Education First, which was launched in 2012, has a specific focus on fostering
global citizenship: “Education is much more than an entry to the job market. It
has the power to shape a sustainable future and better world. Education policies
should promote peace, mutual respect and environmental care” (Ban Ki-moon,
2012). The recently approved Sustainable Development Goals represent a
positive, aspirational way to address and overcome these risks, and the notion
of global citizenship emanating from that compact is one that reflects the skills
and dispositions that could effectively address those risks.

GLOBAL CITIZENS PROTECT GLOBAL COMPACTS

In addition to helping people understand and mitigate global risks, global
citizenship can support the institutions that allow for global governance in
addressing those risks. Shortly after the founding of the UN, the international
body adopted and ratified an unprecedented legal document that defines and
affirms the rights of all men and women through the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. In the words of Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile, a member of the
committee that drafted it, this extraordinary document guaranteed “the supreme
value of the human person, a value that did not originate in the decision of a
worldly power, but rather in the fact of existing” (UN, 2012b). The declaration
asserts the right to dignity, employment, education, religion, freedom, and more
for all men and women of the world. This momentous document requires global
citizens to act on its behalf to ensure that the universal rights of every man,
woman, and child are protected.

In a similar way, as the turn of the millennium approached, the United Nations
members’ states reaffirmed their dedication to the promotion of peace and
cooperation by establishing another global compact that identified a series of
global targets for human development, poverty alleviation, and social justice.
The following goals compose the Millennium Development Goals, which were
to be achieved by 2015:

Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education.
Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
Goal 4. Reduce child mortality.
Goal 5. Improve maternal health.
Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development (UN, 2012c).

In September 2015, a new global development compact—the Sustainable

29
Development Goals (UN, 2015)—was approved by the United Nations at the
Seventieth Session of the General Assembly:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition,
and promote sustainable agriculture.
Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all
ages.
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and
promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and
sanitation for all.
Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and
modern energy for all.
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic
growth; full and productive employment; and decent work for all.
Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructures, promote inclusive and
sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.
Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries.
Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient,
and sustainable.
Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its
impacts.
Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine
resources for sustainable development.
Goal 15. Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial
ecosystems; sustainably manage forests; combat desertification; halt
and reverse land degradation; and halt biodiversity loss.
Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable
development; provide access to justice for all; and build effective,
accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels
Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Achieving these ambitious goals requires the hard work, expert knowledge, and
collaboration of groups of supranational institutions, public and private, and of
individuals from all nations. They require the cooperation of governments,
international and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other global
and national institutions. Global citizenship is a condition of support for the
work of those institutions, whether it’s expressed in the form of elected officials

30
devoting taxpayers’ funds to international-development assistance or public
diplomacy efforts, in the form of individuals who fund international
nongovernment organizations, or in the myriad ways in which ordinary people
can now take responsibility to address some of the global challenges and goals
mentioned above.

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP BENEFITS INDIVIDUALS

The individual advantages of cosmopolitanism have been evident for centuries.
Globalization, which will be discussed later, has enhanced those advantages.
Businesses are increasingly enmeshed in both the global and the local through
supply chains, broad customer bases, and the proliferation of large multinational
conglomerates. It could be argued that the heir to the age of empires, when a few
countries controlled much of the world, is the age of the multinational
corporation, when companies have operating budgets larger than the GDP of
some countries. In some real ways, Yahoo is bigger than Mongolia, Nike is
bigger than Paraguay, and Amazon is bigger than Kenya (Trivett, 2011).

McDonalds, for example, operates in more than sixty countries—more countries

than initially ratified the UN charter (McDonalds, 2012). Not only its leadership
team but also a significant proportion of its rank-and-file corporate employees
need strong inter- and intrapersonal skills, intercultural competencies,
knowledge of different countries and their business and food cultures, and
positive attitudes and dispositions toward others. These skills, attitudes, and
understandings are becoming more and more important for gainful employment
whether one is working for a corporation or pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.

Even for people whose ambition is to live life and to work in their own
hometown, the local is becoming increasingly global. An article in the New York
Times describes “glocal students,” or students who pursue a global career by
taking advantage of local opportunities, such as increasingly diverse local
institutions of higher education (Saalfield & Appel, 2012).

Tony Wagner, a proponent of twenty-first-century education, makes the case for

global competency as follows: “the skillfulness of individuals working with
networks of people across boundaries and from different cultures has become an
essential prerequisite for a growing number of multinational corporations”
(Wagner, 2008).

Recognizing the importance of global competencies in the twenty-first century,

the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development is planning to add
to the regular assessments of student knowledge and skills—which cover

31
literacy, mathematics, and science—the assessment of global competency
(OECD, 2016; Reimers, 2013b).

In the United States, more international students than ever are enrolled in
American colleges and universities. Approximately 3.7 percent of all college
students in the United States are international students. While this percentage
seems small, it represents more than seven hundred thousand people, and if the
current trends continue, this number will double within the next five years (IIE,
2012). However, despite the fact that the local is becoming more global, there is
still a strong need for students to have opportunities to learn and to practice how
to be citizens in the new global climate. A study of 454 international students
enrolled at ten public universities found that 38 percent of the foreign students
had “no strong friendships with US students” (Marklein, 2012). That statistic
points toward a deficiency in the theory of action of these programs, which
assumes that bringing people together alone contributes to international
understanding.

3. New Calls for Global Education in the United States

Today
The mediocre performance of American students in international comparative
assessments of students’ knowledge and skills, such as the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA), and the acceleration of globalization
have resulted in the evolution of a global education discourse that seeks to make
American children and classrooms more globally oriented, aware, and prepared
for the challenges of twenty-first-century citizenship and workplaces (Council
of Foreign Relations, 2012; Di Giacomo, Fishbein, Monthey, & Pack, 2013).
Much of this discourse has translated into internationalizing state standards and
the Common Core and ensuring that American graduates are as well, if not
more, prepared than their peers in other countries in the core subjects of
language, mathematics, and science (Reimers & Villegas-Reimers, 2014). This
has also resulted in growing interests in supporting students with greater
knowledge about the world and about globalization and teaching them relevant
skills, as reflected in an unprecedented move by the US Department of
Education, which adopted an international education strategy. This strategy
defines a “globally competent student” as one who can investigate the world,
weigh perspectives, communicate effectively with diverse audiences, and take
action (US Department of Education, 2012).

Echoing similar themes, a recent report of the College Board calls attention to

32
 what may be the biggest challenge facing the United States in the
coming decades. As other countries become increasingly competitive
through rising levels of interaction in the globalized economy, the
U.S. is faced with the challenge of retaining the competitive
advantage it has built through decades of economic growth. If the US
does not enact measures to counter this growing competition, it faces
the risk of being outmaneuvered, outperformed, and outpaced by
countries that have the ability to adapt to ever-increasing rates of
constant change, something that will characterize global markets for
the foreseeable future. In order to achieve this goal, the U.S. must
possess a citizenry who demonstrate sufficient levels of global
competency—that is, they have the right skills, aptitudes, and
dispositions necessary to navigate and excel in a highly fluid,
globalized, and increasingly competitive environment. (Balistreri et
al., 2012)

The Council of Foreign Relations issued an education report that highlights the
deficits in the global competency of American students:

American teachers, administrators, policymakers, and parents all

need to think about how to better prepare students for life in a world
that will affect them, directly and indirectly, in countless ways.
Young people will need not only the skills outlined here but also a
deep and diverse knowledge base about the world around them. The
histories and foreign policies of other countries, the nature and
function of the international system, and an understanding of the
challenges and opportunities globalization offers—these could all be
elements of a curriculum dedicated to shaping the globally literate
citizens our civil service, military forces, economy, and society writ
large will need. (Klein & Rice, 2012, pp: x–xi)

In recent years, the Asia Society and the Longview Foundation have worked
with more than twenty-five states through the States Network on International
Education in the Schools. This network seeks to support states in developing
their capacities to make students more globally competent and to make schools
more prepared to implement a global education curriculum well (Asia Society,
2008). This network builds on the previous efforts of the Asia Society to
identify and disseminate good practice in international education through a
competition, the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prizes for Excellence in
International Education. This competition, which was conducted for several
years, allowed the Asia Society to identify and analyze good practices at each

33
level of education, including at the district and state levels. More recently, the
Asia Society produced a series of publications outlining approaches to
globalize education as well as a framework to infuse global education in the
curriculum (Asia Society, 2016).

Similar efforts have taken place at the tertiary level. These include an annual
competition organized by the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors,
the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization, which every
year recognizes several colleges and universities for their demonstrated success
in fostering the internationalization of their programs (NAFSA, 2016). A recent
publication of the National Research Council presents the results of an
evaluation conducted by the National Academy of Sciences at the request of
Congress. The National Academy of Sciences evaluated Title VI and Foreign
Languages and Area Studies Programs and other federally funded programs that
support international studies and foreign-language instruction in colleges and
universities (O’Connell & Norwood, 2007).

TEACHER PREPARATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

A number of programs focus on supporting the global competency of teachers, as
that is a critical aspect of global education (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011; Zhao,
2010). Universities and teacher-preparation departments have intentionally been
integrating international modules into general education courses. For example,
at The William Paterson University in New Jersey, preservice teachers must
take at least twelve credits worth of courses in global or international
education. Similarly, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
undergraduates must take at least one non-Western course to graduate, with the
aim that students who may decide to become teachers in the future will have had
some basic, minimum exposure to a non-Western knowledge base that supports
the development of global competency (Longview Foundation, 2008). It may be
argued that the broadening of general education courses can pique an interest in
international understanding among teacher candidates. However, given the low
threshold of the minimum required credits in such courses, a more stringent and
defined set of requirements is needed to develop the knowledge of teachers.

Other strategies to support teachers in global education have included hiring

teacher educators who have traveled internationally, who have some global or
area-specific expertise, and who are committed to drawing on that expertise in
their teaching. For instance, regional universities in Oklahoma specifically
require “global expertise” in postings for new hires. Similarly, at the University
of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences, candidates are
asked about their foreign-language proficiency and the contributions they could

34
make toward internationalizing the school’s curriculum (Longview Foundation,
2008). In examining strategies to bolster international competence among
undergraduate teachers, Schneider (2007) recommended interfaculty
collaboration between the departments of education and the arts and sciences.
She found that much regional expertise lay in the area-studies centers that are
often housed within arts and science departments. Bringing this expertise to
schools of education would allow for greater diversity in the course selection
offered and would also enrich existing courses, thereby making schools of
education less parochial in their approach to global competency. Universities
such as Indiana University and the University of Maryland, College Park, have
established funds and incentives to support curriculum development that focuses
on global awareness, in some cases specifically for educators (Longview
Foundation, 2008).

A fairly common strategy to broaden teachers’ global understanding has been, at

least since the establishment of the Institute for International Education,
supporting teachers in study-abroad programs. These can range from anything to
a week spent abroad observing classes and seeking out the best practices that
are transferable (Stewart, 2012) to spending an entire semester abroad, in the
case of preservice teachers. For example, the University of Minnesota, Morris
mandates that teacher candidates complete their practicum experiences in
settings that are culturally different from ones they know closely. Similarly,

Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
have partnerships in South Africa and Germany, respectively, where preservice
teachers can fulfill some course requirements abroad. Other universities, such
as the Ohio State University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of San
Diego, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Miami University, offer
opportunities for students to practice teaching in a classroom outside of the
United States (Longview Foundation, 2008).

Given the thin evidence base around the effectiveness of study-abroad

programs, it is unknown whether the initial euphoria of a study-abroad program
lasts long enough to translate into demonstrable gains in the knowledge and
skills of teachers when teachers implement a global education curriculum. In
addition, some of these programs don’t seem to be targeted enough and may be
offered more broadly to the student population at large in the hope that those
students who become teachers will graduate with some global experience or
expertise.

Moving beyond teacher preparation and certification, some states have

35
undertaken professional-development activities to prepare teachers to teach
about the world. California’s International Study Project supports teachers in
low-performing schools to develop their competency and to upgrade their skills
in teaching subjects that have international content—specifically international
studies, world history, and geography. Similarly, the University of Vermont’s
Asian Studies Outreach Program runs a statewide program that introduces the
study of Asia to Vermont schools (Asia Society, 2008). Organizations such as
Primary Source, World Savvy, iEARN, and several other area-study centers
within universities typically offer curricula and professional-development
opportunities for teachers who are keen to integrate international content into
their existing curricula.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY

In their nationwide survey of foreign-language education in elementary and
secondary schools in the United States, the Center for Applied Linguistics
(CAL) (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009) found a 6 percent decline in elementary
schools and a 17 percent decline in middle schools offering foreign languages
between 1997 and 2008. While Spanish was the most commonly taught language
(in 88 percent of elementary schools and in 93 percent of secondary schools),
the teaching of French, German, Japanese, and Russian decreased during this
period at both the elementary and secondary levels. About 4 percent of all
elementary and secondary schools offered the study of Chinese. There was a
stark increase (14 percent) between 1997 and 2008 in the percentage of
uncertified foreign-language teachers at the elementary school level. This
statistic is not alarming, given the recommendation to master languages such as
Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, and Korean, which are difficult for native English
speakers to learn (Longview Foundation, 2008).

Between 2005 and 2008, there was a 200 percent increase in the number of
schools teaching Chinese, and forty-four states now offer Chinese language
programs (Asia Society, 2008). The Longview Foundation (2008) points out that
there is virtually no pipeline of recent high school graduates who have studied
the less commonly taught languages such as Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Korean,
and Hindi/Urdu, which are increasingly important to the strategic security and
economic interests of the United States. While there is a recognition that schools
are expanding their foreign-language offerings, the unilateral thrust to offer
Chinese in classrooms is also driven by the Chinese government’s initiative of
sending Chinese teachers across the world to teach about the country’s culture
and language and paying part of their salaries, thereby minimizing the
expenditure incurred by schools in the United States. (Dillon, 2010).

36
The Wyoming legislature passed a law requiring that k–8 students be given the
opportunity to study a foreign language and in 2004 channeled $5 million into
funding the development of a k–6 language program to be piloted in fifty
Wyoming elementary schools for five years (Asia Society, 2008). New Jersey
executed a four-year pilot program (2009–2013) to improve language
proficiency and piloted high school world-language reform along with the
development of stronger proficiency assessments and measures (Global
Washington, 2011). STARTALK!, a component of the National Security
Language Initiative, seeks to improve the teaching and learning of strategically
important world languages that are not widely taught in the United States. It
offers k–16 students and teachers across the country the opportunity to learn
Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish,
and Urdu over the summer (https://startalk.umd.edu/). However, since some of
these programs are residential, there is inequality in students’ and teachers’
access to these programs, as they haven’t been systematically scaled within
school districts. Other states, such as West Virginia, Ohio, and New York, have
drawn out extensive and strategic language plans and road maps that articulate
their visions for second-language learning and acquisition (Asia Society, 2008).
Wilkinson (1998) identifies the need for more research into exploring the
pathways of classrooms’ foreign-language instruction and study-abroad
programs that overcome the limitations of “teacher talk” and classroom-
sanctioned behaviors while teaching foreign languages.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE, PARTNERSHIPS, AND STUDY ABROAD

It is widely believed that students who participate in study-abroad programs
develop a deeper respect and understanding of global issues, stronger
intercultural communication skills, better foreign-language skills, and improved
self-image (Norris & Gillespie, 2009; Kitsantas, 2004). While there has been an
exponential surge in opportunities for undergraduate international experiences
(Salisbury, Umbach, Paulsen & Pascarella, 2008), evaluations of the effects of
study abroad on school students are hard to come by.

One of the purposes of study-abroad programs is to provide an immersive

experience that will support foreign-language acquisition. However, Wilkinson
(1998) found that increased nonclassroom interactions don’t always result in
significant linguistic gains or in deeper cultural understandings. Other factors
that influence the benefits of study-abroad experiences include increased
interactions with host families (Schmidt-Rinehart, 2004), the duration of the
study-abroad program itself (Wikinson, 1998; Rivers, 1998), and students’ goals
while studying abroad (Kitsantas, 2004). There are also several methodological
limitations to these studies, such as their reliance on retrospective surveys
(Norris & Gillespie, 2009), the lack of a fair comparison group, and small

37
sample sizes (Wilkinson, 1998; Williams, 2005). Given the weak evidence base
concerning the impacts of study abroad, specifically on school students, we must
be cautious with regard to the anticipated outcomes of such programs.

Connecticut has recently adopted eighty-five sister-school relationships with

schools in the Shandong province in China. This arrangement offers teacher-,
principal-, and student-exchange trips (Asia Society, 2008; Global Washington,
2011). States such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin have also sent
delegations of policy makers, business leaders, and educators on trips to India,
China, Mexico, Japan, Germany, Thailand, and France to establish district
education and school-to-school partnerships (Asia Society, 2008).

LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

The development of information technology has increased both the amount of
opportunities available for bringing the world into the classroom and the
“intensity of interconnectedness” (Fujikane, 2003, p. 144). For example, the
Global Scholars Program is an online global-awareness education initiative that
engages students between the ages of ten and thirteen in global cities around the
world in the study of a rigorous yearlong curriculum on topics of global
relevance.

To examine the efficacy of integrating technology into a social studies

curriculum, Johnson, Boyer, and Brown (2011) undertook an evaluation of
GlobalEd, a problem-based learning simulation based on real-world scenarios
and problems that leverages technology to facilitate communications between
groups of middle and high school students in geographically diverse school
locations. In their study of 260 participants in middle schools in Connecticut,
Maryland, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, the authors found that such
simulations provided students with the necessary scaffolding to work
collaboratively in building new knowledge and skills relevant to global
problem solving, communication, and decision making. However, this gain in
skills was specific to the female students, and there was instead a decline in the
level of skills of the male students.

Given the promise of technology in bridging geographies and in working

collaboratively with diverse student populations, the Asia Society (2008) has
documented the integration of technology into global education curriculum in
classrooms. Several states have expanded the availability of online international
courses and have created virtual school-to-school partnerships with schools in
other parts of the world. For instance, Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio, and
Washington departments of education have partnered with iEARN to offer

38
professional-development support for teachers around online project work with
schools in other geographies. Similarly, the Florida and Michigan Virtual High
Schools offer online courses to students in world cultures, history, global
studies, and Mandarin. Indiana and Kentucky have also recently developed
distance-learning courses in Mandarin for their students. However, it remains to
be seen whether these interventions are being scaled across the state or whether
they are just smaller pockets of innovations whose success is yet to be
determined. In addition, as identified by Patterson, Carrillo, and Salinas (2011),
there exist several logistical, technical, and intercultural challenges to
successfully implementing global-learning virtual classrooms, and one must
account for them before scaling such programs.

In this section, we have summarized various programs, strategies, and

innovations being implemented around global education by states with the
purpose of illustrating the wide variation in approaches in use, rather than of
being comprehensive in examining every available program. We find that while
these varied approaches represent positive steps toward developing global
competency, for the most part, they are self-contained approaches that target
particular dimensions of global competency and span a short period in the
educational trajectories of students. While these various approaches could be
integrated into a comprehensive strategy of global education that supports the
continuous development of global citizenship over the schooling trajectories of
students, examples of such extended and comprehensive programs of global
education are more rare. It is likely that each of the discussed strategies could
provide synergies by upholding the development of global competency in
America’s classrooms; for example, online student exchanges could motivate the
study of foreign languages, and study-abroad programs could significantly
deepen the value of online study and foreign-language study. For example, a
study found a positive relationship between global competence and second-
language motivation in critical languages among university students (Semaan &
Yamazaki, 2015).

In addition, while there are pockets of excellence and innovation in each of the
states, there is much that is still unknown about the effectiveness of these
approaches and about how these strategies would scale up and generalize to
different settings. An ethnographic study of the efforts of a suburban high school
in Pennsylvania to integrate global education into the curriculum through a
global-studies initiative and credential shows that only a small group of students
benefited and that the pressures of system-wide accountability on schools limit
the potential for this program to reach a significant number of students
(Cozzolino, 2014).

39
4. Rethinking Global Education
Whereas education has long had cosmopolitan aspirations, the acceleration of
globalization and new developments in our understanding of human
development require new and more intentional approaches to global education
that reflect more ambitious and transformative opportunities.

GLOBALIZATION
In addition to the enduring historical reasons for fostering cosmopolitanism
discussed earlier, the acceleration of globalization has increased the importance
of educating students on global citizenship.

During the last decades of the twentieth century, a number of scholars argued
that an acceleration of a series of processes of social change was resulting from
the growth and intensification of relationships between people transcending
national boundaries. The combination of these processes was called
“globalization.” Globalization includes the creation of a global society, the
development of global consciousness, and increased global interdependence,
meaning that local events are significantly affected by remote and global events.
While there is some agreement that there were other eras of globalization in the
past, there is an emerging consensus that globalization is intensifying (Albrow,
1990: 9; Giddens, 1990: 64; Held et al., 1999: 16; Robertson, 1992:8; Scholte,
2000: 46; Waters, 2001: 5).

Globalization, the acceleration of global integration, creates a renewed reason

for global education, with the aim of preparing students to understand the
process itself and to live and function in increasingly globalized contexts.
Globalization is making all of us increasingly global citizens, in that much of our
lives and circumstances are shaped by events that are global in nature. Just as
most individuals do not have much of a choice with regard to being subject to
rights and responsibilities in nation-states—although some individuals may
choose which nation-state they wish to be a part of—they do not have much of a
choice regarding the fact that we are all affected by international regulations and
processes, which also give us opportunities, challenges, rights, and
responsibilities. Widespread forced displacement caused by conflicts and
natural disasters, health epidemics that span continents, and questions around the
ethics of whistleblowing and the boundaries of technological development have
forced educators and society at large to confront new challenges within and
outside of nation-states that were earlier unimagined. These challenges have
crept their way into schools and classrooms and affect the very processes of
teaching and learning. As with national citizenship, which, as Kandel noted a
century ago, is not antithetical to global citizenship, individuals can be equipped

40
with the disposition to be more efficacious in exercising such rights and
responsibilities, in seizing the opportunities, and in understanding and
addressing the challenges. As global citizens, we can contribute to the
mitigation of global risks, the creation and sustenance of global compacts to
steward shared interests, and the advancement of personal and national
interests. In this sense the new global education differs from the traditional
education for cosmopolitanism in that there is now a greater need not only for an
international understanding in order to sustain peaceful relations among nations
but also for an understanding of the process of globalization itself and for the
ability to live and to be efficacious in more globally integrated societies and
institutions.

NEW WAYS TO THINK ABOUT HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

Over the last several decades, the study of human development has contributed
to an expanded conception of humanity, one that goes beyond knowledge and
dispositions and consequently to a new way of thinking about learning and
teaching. In the education field, these developments have found expression in a
movement to advance what are called “twenty-first-century skills” (Reimers &
Chung, 2016). There are clear parallels between the emphases on the twenty-
first-century skills movement and those on the progressive education movement,
of which Dewey and Kandel were proponents (Little, 2013). Tom Little (2013)
has drawn parallels between the principles of progressive education articulated
by the Progressive Educators Network in 1987 and the emphasis of twenty-first-
century education on a number of subjects. The principles of progressive
education as defined by the Network of Progressive Educators include the
following:

• a curriculum tailored to individual learning styles, developmental

needs, and intellectual interests
• the student as an active partner in learning
• arts, sciences, and humanities equally valued in an interdisciplinary
curriculum
• learning through direct experience and primary material
• a focus on multicultural and global perspectives
• the school as a model of democracy
• the school as a humane environment
• commitment to the community beyond school
• commitment to a healthy body through sports and outdoor play

Twenty-first-century education emphasizes the following:

41
 • project-based learning
• critical thinking
• cooperative learning
• individualized instruction
• self-direction and independence
• global competency and awareness
• using technology as a learning tool

A recent review of the research evidence on twenty-first-century competencies

categorizes them as cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal (Pellegrino &
Hilton, 2012). Cognitive competencies encompass cognitive processes and
strategies and knowledge and creativity; intrapersonal competencies include
intellectual openness, work ethic/conscientiousness, and positive core self-
evaluation; and interpersonal competencies include teamwork and collaboration
as well as leadership (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). Notice that this review does
not include global competency as a distinct competency, which is consistent
with the view of some that global affairs and globalization represent merely a
domain in which twenty-first-century skills can be developed or applied (Boix
Mansilla & Jackson, 2011). Our view is that while the study of globalization
indeed offers a uniquely valuable context in which to develop twenty-first-
century skills, there are particular competencies necessary for understanding
and functioning efficaciously in global contexts. So global competency
encompasses, for example, a particular capacity for empathy with people from
different cultural backgrounds as well as the intercultural competency needed to
collaborate with colleagues from different national, religious, ethnic, and
cultural backgrounds. It similarly includes a deep understanding of and an
interest in topics that are global in nature, including, for instance, shared
natural-resource challenges, concern for global conflicts and peace, an
understanding of the historical sources of such conflicts, and knowledge of
international institutions. Global competency equally requires an understanding
of the global risks outlined earlier, the skills needed to educate oneself on those
risks, and the capacity to live in ways that contribute to the mitigation of those
risks.

GLOBAL EDUCATION: CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY

Following our definition of global competency as distinct from knowledge or
dispositions that can be developed only from education infused in an existing
curriculum and also building on Dewey’s notion that how we teach is what we
teach, we conceive of global education as encompassing both distinct curricula
and distinctive pedagogies. These curricula and pedagogies are intertwined and
mutually reinforcing, and neither can achieve the goal of global competency
without the other. For these reasons, the curriculum we present in this book

42
provides suggested activities that in effect provide examples of a pedagogy of
global education.

5. Designing the World Course

In the years 2011 and 2012, we designed a global citizenship education
curriculum to be taught in a distinct course that would require six to eight hours
a week from kindergarten to high school. Our proposal was to create a new
subject that would serve as an organizing core framework around which all
other subjects in the curriculum would be integrated. We called this subject the
“World Course” and developed it to be taught initially at Avenues: The World
School, an innovative global network of elite independent schools, none of
which were in operation when we developed the course. The first Avenues
campus was then being established in New York City. We agreed with the
leadership of Avenues that we would develop this course with their financial
support because they intended to use the course. We also agreed that we would
subsequently publish the curriculum such that it could be used by other schools
and teachers outside of the Avenues network in the United States and abroad.

As we developed the curriculum, we benefited from periodic presentations of

our work in progress to the coheads of the Avenues campus in New York; the
division heads of the early learning center, lower school, middle school, and
upper school; and the director of educational design. We also benefited from
conversations with the coheads at the start of this collaboration and upon
conclusion of the curriculum. The feedback we received in these exchanges
from these seasoned educators helped us to ground our curriculum design in the
practicalities and challenges of implementing the curriculum and to balance it
with other demands in a new school, such as the demands to teach other subjects
and to prepare students for college admission. These conversations helped us
appreciate the challenges of negotiating the innovative dimensions of the new
subject we were proposing with the demands, expectations, and capacities of
students, teachers, and parents. They further helped us to anticipate the ways in
which Avenues would integrate our curriculum into theirs, which would have to
be responsive to the unique context that emerged as the school evolved in ways
that would require modifications to our initial designs. The same is likely to
happen in any school that attempts to implement the curriculum presented in this
book.

These adaptations or deviations from initial designs are known in the

specialized literature as the distinction between fidelity of implementation and
integrity of implementation. Proponents of integrity of implementation

43
recognize that local actors will give priority to what matters most in their
specific school, integrating what works best for the local circumstances and
specific needs, which challenges the expectation of fidelity of implementation,
or the carrying out of a program’s designs as intended: “The real challenge of
implementation, then, is to figure out how to thoughtfully accommodate local
contexts while remaining true to the core ideas to ensure improvements in
practice that carry the warrant of effectiveness” (Le Mahieu 2011 & Bryk et al.,
2015). Because we are more interested in integrity of implementation than in
fidelity of implementation, we explicate the goals and principles that guided the
design of our curriculum in the rest of this chapter so that those who need to
make adaptations can do so in ways that preserve the integrity of our design.

As explained earlier, the overarching goal of our curriculum is to support the

development of global citizenship, which is understood to be the result of
competencies in understanding, caring about, and having the capacity to
influence global affairs and to advance human rights. We built on a
conceptualization of global competency that included knowledge, affect, and
skills (Reimers, 2009, 2010.) Central to our conception of global competency is
the notion of human agency—of empowerment—and we therefore sought to
cultivate the mind-set that individuals can make a difference, the desire to take
initiative, the ability to act in leadership roles, and an understanding of
responsibility.

The principles that guided our curriculum design were defining clear outcomes
for knowledge, affect, and action and focusing on interdisciplinary units that
would be aligned with coherent themes in each grade as well as with an overall
scope and sequence. Finally we audited the entire curriculum to ascertain
whether there were adequate opportunities for developing the intended
capabilities throughout. We balanced such curriculum mapping with various
features designed to support personalization, i.e. providing students
opportunities to develop their own interests, to discover their passions, and to
learn deeply about issues that were of interest to them. In particular, we
depended on project based learning, student collaboration, engagement of
parents and community members, and student agency in shaping the high school
curriculum as ways to personalize learning.

One of the pedagogical principles on which this design was grounded was to
rely extensively on project-based learning and on active learning
methodologies, such as Design Thinking, that place students at the center of their
learning. We also sought to give students abundant opportunities to demonstrate
understanding in the form of products that could be shared with peers, teachers,

44
and other audiences, including students in other grades in the school and parents.

We also sought to create multiple opportunities for students to directly

collaborate with peers in other countries with the use of technology for project-
based work and remote communication. We viewed this collaboration as a way
to help them find their common humanity with diverse students.

The curriculum also provides multiple opportunities to directly engage students

and teachers with parents and community members who can directly contribute
knowledge and experience to support global education and thereby help students
identify authentic connections between the local and global.

Throughout the entire K-12 curriculum, but particularly in grades nine through
twelve, are opportunities for students to pursue their personal interests with
greater depth, and to co-construct with their teachers a significant portion of the
curriculum.

As we undertook to design the World Course, we sought both to use a twenty-

first-century-skills framework to guide the development of the curriculum and to
include in it opportunities to develop specific global competencies. The first
implication of this aim is that it is necessary to dedicate time to the curriculum
and to recognize that attempting to achieve global competency through
curriculum infusion would at best produce only partial and inadequate results.
The second implication of this approach is that the design of the curriculum has
to start with the explicit identification of the competencies that define a globally
competent graduate. Those competencies can then be used to map out the
sequence of the curriculum and the pedagogies that support the development of
those competencies.

We defined those competencies as encompassing intercultural competency,

ethical orientation, knowledge and skills, and work and mind habits:

1. Intercultural competency
This includes the ability to interact successfully with people from
different cultural identities and origins. It encompasses interpersonal
skills as well as intrapersonal skills and ways to govern oneself in
the face of cultural differences.
A. Interpersonal Skills
i. Work productively in and effectively lead intercultural
teams, including teams distributed in various geographies

45
 through the use of telecommunication technologies
ii. Demonstrate empathy toward other people from different
cultural origins
iii. Demonstrate courtesy and norms of interaction
appropriate to various cultural settings
iv. Resolve culturally based disagreements through
negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution
B. Intrapersonal Skills
i. Curiosity about global affairs and world cultures
ii. The ability to recognize and weigh diverse cultural
perspectives
iii. An understanding of one’s own identity, of others’
identities, of how other cultures shape their own and
others’ identities, and of where one is in space and time
iv. The ability to recognize and examine assumptions when
engaging with cultural differences
v. The recognition of cultural (civilizational, religious, or
ethnic) prejudice and the ability to minimize its effects in
intergroup dynamics
vi. An understanding and appreciation of cultural variation in
basic norms of interaction, the ability to be courteous,
and the ability to find and learn about norms appropriate
in specific settings and types of interaction

2. Ethical orientation
A. Appreciation of ethical frameworks in diverse religious
systems
B. Commitment to basic equality of all people
C. Recognition of common values and common humanity across
civilizational streams
D. Appreciation of the potential of every person regardless of
socioeconomic circumstances or cultural origin
E. Appreciation of the role of global compacts such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in guiding global
governance
F. Commitment to supporting universal human rights, to reducing
global poverty, to promoting peace, and to promoting
sustainable forms of human-environmental interaction
G. Ability to interact with people from diverse cultural
backgrounds while demonstrating humility, respect, reciprocity,
and integrity
H. An understanding of the role of trust in sustaining human

46
 interaction as well as global institutions and recognition of
forms of breakdowns in trust and institutional corruption and
its causes

3. Knowledge and skills

In addition to highlighting the cosmopolitan links infused in the
curriculum, as Kandel recommended a century ago, a global
education curriculum should provide students with the knowledge
and skills necessary to understand the various vectors of
globalization. These include culture, religion, history and geography,
politics and government, economics, science, technology and
innovation, public health, and demography.
A. Culture, religion, and history and geography
i. World history and geography, with attention to the role of
globalization in cultural change
ii. The study of religions as powerful institutions organizing
human activity
iii. Historical knowledge, which includes various
perspectives and an understanding of the role of ordinary
citizens in history
iv. World geography, including the different areas of the
world, what unites them, what differences exist, and how
humans have changed the geography of the planet
v. World religions, history, and points of contact between
civilizations over time
vi. Major philosophical traditions and points of connection
vii. Performing and visual arts (e.g., theater, dance, music,
visual arts, etc.) as a means to find common humanity
viii. Different arts and ability to see connections
ix. Ability to view art as expression, to use art for
expression, and to understand globalization and art
B. Politics and government
i. Comparative government
ii. How governments work in different societies
iii. Major international institutions and their role in shaping
global affairs
iv. Contemporary global challenges in human-environmental
interaction
v. Sources of these challenges, options to address them, and
the role of global institutions in addressing these
challenges
vi. History of contemporary global conflicts and the role of

47
 global institutions in addressing these challenges
C. Economics, business, and entrepreneurship
i. Theories of economic development and how they explain
the various stages in economic development of nations,
poverty, and inequality
ii. Institutions that regulate global trade and work to promote
international development
iii. Contemporary literature on the effectiveness and
limitations of those institutions
iv. The impact of global trade
v. The consequences of global poverty and the agency of the
poor
vi. The demography and factors influencing demographic
trends and their implications for global change
D. Science, technology and innovation, and globalization
E. Public Health, population, and demography

4. Work and mind habits

A. Demonstrate innovation and creativity in contributing to
formulating solutions to global challenges and to seizing global
opportunities; seek and identify the best global practices; and
transfer them across geographic, disciplinary, and professional
contexts
B. Identify different cultural perspectives through which to think
about problems
C. Understand the process of cultural change and that there is
individual variation within cultural groups
D. Carry out research projects independently
E. Present results of independent research in writing, orally, and
using media

HOW ARE THESE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBALLY COMPETENT GRADUATE

RELATED TO TWENTY -FIRST-CENTURY SKILLS?
The characteristics mentioned above include cognitive, intrapersonal, and
interpersonal skills. They are, however, more specific than and distinct from
twenty-first-century skills. For example, we define “global capability” in the
following way: “Innovation and creativity in contributing to formulating
solutions to global challenges and seizing global opportunities. Ability to seek
and identify the best global practices and to transfer those across geographic,
disciplinary, and professional contexts.” Whereas innovation and creativity are
“general” twenty-first-century skills, the ability to identify solutions in a global
context and to adequately transfer solutions across geographic contexts involves

48
the analytic ability to recognize similarities and differences across cross-
cultural contexts.

In creating the World Course curriculum, we sought to create something different

from the prevailing approaches to global education reviewed in preceding
sections of this chapter. We endeavored to create a curriculum that would
embody specific principles and frameworks. In our view, global education is
not only about informing students of global issues but also about supporting them
in embracing and taking responsibility for the principles of common humanity
and shared global risks. As such, our curriculum focuses not only on knowledge
and ideas but also on developing the skills needed to put that knowledge to use
and the attitudes necessary to inspire meaningful action in the pursuit of global
stability and peace. This combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes is
summarized by our use of the term “global competency” throughout this
discussion. Furthermore, in consideration of the history of global education as
well as of the state of global education today, we made the decision to attach
global education to the ethical framework reflected in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and to the specific goal of being able to contribute to solving
pressing current world risks, such as those defined by the SDGs. When we
developed the World Course, the development compact of the time was
reflected in the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable
Development Goals had not yet been approved by the UN. In this book we have
updated the references to MDGs with references to SDGs.

Anchoring our curriculum design in these frameworks was crucial for three
reasons. First, a shared humanity, which is exemplified by a shared commitment
to universal human rights, binds people together across borders and boundaries.
The ability to recognize oneself as human and deserving of inalienable rights—
and others as human and also deserving of inalienable rights—undergirds the
willingness to take action when human rights are violated. Furthermore,
universal human rights are the philosophical basis of democratic societies and a
philosophy that is shared across many cultures. Second, global education must
be salient in the way that disciplinary education has been salient, and these
frameworks provide salience by defining Global education’s theory and
purpose. Third, the problems themselves, both those that are current and those
that will arise in the future, are complex, serious, and unanticipated. Solving
these problems is therefore critical, and adopting problem solving as the goal of
global education infuses global education with urgency, purpose, and meaning.
Global education is optimal as a method to solve these problems because it
requires innovation and collaboration across cultures, societies, and
disciplines. Because global education is optimal as a method to solve pressing
world problems, it should be a priority in education systems, an idea that is

49
reflected in the adoption of global education curricula that are clear in
philosophy and in goals, such as the World Course.

The difficulties in the area of global education center around a lack of

conceptual and operational clarity. A significant difficulty in creating a global
education curriculum, as opposed to a disciplinary curriculum, is that global
education as an idea lacks clarity sufficient to engender the kind of common
understanding and consensus needed to operationalize the idea into any
curricular content. An additional difficulty lies in the lack of clarity around the
idea of global citizenship as well as in the lack of clarity around the underlying
philosophy and goals of global education. In this chapter, we attempt to resolve
this lack of clarity.

One way in which global education lacks clarity concerns the fact that global
citizenship shares similarities with national citizenship, yet it is distinct in that
being a global citizen crosses national boundaries by definition. National
citizenship, since the Treaty of Westphalia over 350 years ago, is a status bound
to the nation-state that is both inclusive and exclusive. It is inclusive in that it
defines who qualifies as a member, or a citizen, and exclusive in that it also
defines who does not. Global citizenship, by contrast, crosses multiple borders
—political, cultural, social, and historical—and is entirely inclusive.
Boundaries, some of which are clearly established in the context of national
citizenship, fade in the context of global citizenship such that global citizenship
runs the risk of becoming a meaningless concept. There is a legal foundation for
national citizenship that does not at present exist for global citizenship, although
international human rights law does provide some legal foundation for rights
and duties that transcend those stipulated by national legal covenants. However,
national and global citizenship are similar when the emphasis is shifted away
from definition and toward purpose. National citizenship and global citizenship
are pragmatic, as they are safeguards of rights and access to resources.
However, global citizenship rights emphasize human rights, which are shared by
all. Because the relevant rights are shared across national, ethnic, and linguistic
lines, they carry with them a responsibility that also crosses these lines. This
responsibility is the heart of the pragmatism of global citizenship.

Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) work in developing a typology of citizenship is

also useful as a groundwork for the conceptualization of global citizenship.
They identify three kinds of citizen: a personally responsible citizen (a
responsible member of a community who, for example, obeys the rule of law
and volunteers to assist others); a participatory citizen (an active participant in
efforts to remedy injustice and to make improvements in the community); and a

50
justice-oriented citizen (a critical member of a community who seeks to
understand the causes of problems and injustice). Global citizenship must
encompass these expressions of citizenship. In order to effect change on a global
scale, one must be personally responsible, must participate in efforts to remedy
injustice, and must seek to understand the causes of problems and injustice
worldwide. In order to meet global challenges, participation must be innovative
and include collaboration across political, cultural, and other boundaries.
Therefore, to this typology we add innovation and collaboration as components
of our framework for global citizenship. The collaborative citizen reaches out
across borders to work with peers—and, specifically, to purposely work with
peers who have differing perspectives—to solve global challenges. The
innovative global citizen synthesizes knowledge from across multiple
disciplines to develop new approaches, new ways of viewing problems, and
new solutions.

Further difficulty exists at the level of education, in that global education must
include complex competence that is both interdisciplinary and disciplinary. This
idea represents a departure from the disciplinary focus of current education
systems and presents a real challenge in the field of global education. Part of
what makes education within disciplines comparatively more salient is that the
overarching ideas behind the disciplines are clear, and creating curricular
content is therefore straightforward insofar as the curriculum should reflect
those ideas. Furthermore, the history of the discipline is traceable, as is the
future of the discipline, by specific goals. Take, for example, the discipline of
history. This discipline has a discrete set of knowledge and skills, such as
knowledge of the historical causes of conflicts and the ability to review primary
and secondary documents to build that knowledge, respectively. It also has
goals, such as avoiding future conflicts through helping students understand and
be able to articulate a history that a nation or people share, and the existence of
diverse historical narratives. Global education must achieve the same clarity in
overarching knowledge and goals, which the World Course achieves through its
attachment to the framework of universal human rights, articulated knowledge
and skills, and the goal of solving pressing world problems.

CREATING THE WORLD COURSE

To create the World Course, we first spent some time defining the
characteristics of a globally competent graduate, as described earlier. To do that
we drew from a range of literature, including from frameworks such as the
Human Rights Declaration and studies and analyses of future global risks such
as those outlined in the World Economic Forum’s global risk assessment
framework and in the development goals advanced by the United Nations. We
also drew from our knowledge of the history of the prevailing approaches in the

51
field that are reviewed in this chapter. We then engaged in a survey of existing
global education curricula, as discussed in the literature above.

We found that the existing global education curricula were approached in one of
two ways: they were either infused into other curricula—that is, current
curricular content was examined for opportunities to include global content and
revised accordingly—or viewed as separate curricula. Current approaches in
national civic education have fallen into these same categories, and there are
cross-national differences regarding whether civic education is infused into the
curriculum or taught separately as a subject (see Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr,
& Losito, 2009, p. 43–46). It is our position that both infusion and a separate
curriculum are necessary to achieve complex and deep global competence.
Infusion is necessary because the competence developed within disciplines
should include global content. Without global content, disciplines are simply
incomplete and cannot prepare students to be successful in globalizing societies.
We are not arguing against infusion, and we consider it necessary for this
reason. However, we argue here that developing a separate curriculum is also
necessary. This is because there are certain competencies that are not included
in traditional school curricula, such as demography, and topics that are not
organized or sustained, such as the study of global poverty. The complex nature
of these competencies requires that time be devoted to them in a sustained way.
The World Course is therefore presented here as a complete curriculum for
kindergarteners through twelfth graders that should be taught separately but
alongside the revision of disciplinary curricula to include global issues. These
two approaches are mutually reinforcing.

We developed our curriculum from this review of existing curricula and from
the definition of a globally competent graduate. Once we had agreed on the
graduate profile presented earlier, we set out to identify curriculum content that
would support the development of those competencies.

Within the framework of universal human rights, and to make real and
meaningful progress in solving pressing world problems, we created a complete
curriculum that (1) is deep and rigorous, meaning that it is coherent and
sustained from kindergarten through graduation, develops depth of competence
as well as breadth, and increases in complexity as students progress; (2)
unifies disciplinary and interdisciplinary competence as well as cross-
cultural competence; and (3) supports lifelong transformative action by
graduates who will pursue many different occupations and paths in life.

We designed the World Course to be deep and rigorous and to those ends. It is

52
coherent vertically and horizontally. It is vertically coherent in that the content
of each grade level is unified along a particular theme and horizontally coherent
in that particular content and topics are sustained throughout the entire sequence.
For example, the theme of the fifth grade is freedom and the rights of
individuals, and students engage in the study of social change around the rights
of individuals. This theme builds from the creation of a classroom community
and then moves to historical explorations through research in various
independence movements (e.g., those of the United States, France, and Haiti and
the South African resistance to oppression). As a one-year course, it is
underpinned by the idea of universal human rights, yet it addresses the students’
local contexts and lived experience as well as their shared national and
international history. The World Course is also horizontally coherent along
strands that are traced from year to year. For example, we determined that
understanding identity is fundamental to intercultural competence, and thus we
threaded the theme of identity throughout the curriculum in every grade and at
increasingly complex levels. For example, in kindergarten, the students examine
their own cultures and customs as well as those around them in their class and
their neighborhoods. Later, in sixth grade, students begin looking at the way that
values and identity shape people and institutions, including governments. In high
school, in the Global Conflict and Solutions course, students examine ethnic
identities that separate groups as one way (out of several) to approach the
Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

In addition to coherence, we developed a curriculum that is sustained from

kindergarten to graduation for two reasons. First, a sustained curriculum reflects
the depth and complexity of global issues as well as the depth of the competence
needed to solve them. It is hard to imagine developing mathematical competence
in a year or in a unit, yet that is the expectation that is implied when global
education lessons or courses are presented in such a short time frame. A study
that is sustained enables the complexity and depth to increase over time. That is
preferable to the overwhelming nature of studying complex topics too quickly.
Second, we must be successful in developing a lifelong commitment to universal
human rights and to the competency required to solve pressing world problems
across individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and future plans,
not simply among students who already possess this inclination and are within
an environment that promotes such goals. Developing competency in global
affairs across entire student populations, which should be the goal of education,
requires the systematic development of competency in students who possess
very different inclinations and who are situated in very different environments.
Consider the example of global poverty as a pressing world problem. To solve
global poverty, graduates competence must reflect the deep complexity of the
problem, and it must be embraced by those entering not only into international

53
development but also into business, medicine, education, service, and other
fields. The ability to understand how choices made at the local and individual
levels have implications for poverty at the group and global levels requires a
sustained examination of this topic that increases in complexity as students gain
competence over time.

The World Course unifies disciplinary and interdisciplinary competence as well

as cross-cultural competence. As we argue above, interdisciplinary competence
is vital to solving global problems, yet it should be mutually reinforced by
disciplinary competence that is also global in nature. This unification is most
evident when one examines its vertical and horizontal coherence as well.
Disciplinary knowledge is a vertical focus; for example, both the fourth and fifth
grade courses feature a focus on history and on developing the skills of a
historian or an archaeologist. The discipline of history is also threaded
horizontally throughout the curriculum with a focus, for example, on historical
agents of change within each topic. Each year draws upon content that crosses
and combines disciplines, which is most clearly evident in the projects
discussed in detail in the section in this paper on pedagogy. Students are
required to draw upon knowledge across disciplines in the creation of a product
such as a media presentation or a mock summit. It would not be possible to
create these projects solely within a science class or a history class, for
example, as both of those disciplines, and others, must be brought to bear on the
topic of the project. Transformative action, which is addressed through
pedagogy and curriculum, is a main focus of the World Course. The pedagogical
practices that support transformative action, such as student choice, are
discussed in detail in the section on pedagogy. However, transformative action
is also addressed within the curriculum through an examination of others, both
historical and contemporary, as agents of change as well as through
introspection and self-reflection on how each student is also an agent of change.

In order to innovate and collaborate on a global level, young people need to

develop the skills to understand perspectives and practices other than their own
and to operate between local and global levels. Supporting students in stepping
outside of themselves and developing the ability to understand multiple
perspectives on multiple contextual levels is complex and challenging. Part of
the challenge is that it requires exploration both of the self and of others as well
exploration of local and global communities. In addition to these explorations,
another part of the challenge lies in navigating the linkages between the self and
others and between the local and the global. A third part of the challenge lies in
exploring linkages over time through historical, present, and future perspectives.

54
In order to be clear and accessible, global education must be tied to definable
and defensible frameworks and goals. Here, we have argued that the humanity
we share undergirds the project of global education as a commitment to the
framework of universal human rights. Furthermore, the goal of global education
is to make meaningful progress in solving pressing world problems, which
infuses global education with urgency and purpose. As such, the World Course
is deep and rigorous, unifies disciplinary and interdisciplinary competence as
well as cross-cultural competence, makes connections between the self and
others as well as between the local and the global, and supports lifelong
transformative action by graduates who will pursue many different occupations.
To this end, we envision the graduate of the World Course as an individual who
is an expert in working in teams that cross borders and that marshal deep
disciplinary and interdisciplinary competence to solve problems, who has the
intercultural competence to bring diverse people together for such purposes, and
who has made a lifelong commitment to human rights.

2. How Is the World Course an Adaptive Approach to

Global Citizenship Education in the Twenty-First Century?
As discussed in the preceding section, we see the demands created by
globalization as requiring specific instruction that will enable students to
understand and to be prepared for globalization. Infusion approaches are
insufficient because in practice, they dilute responsibility for such instruction
and minimize the opportunities for completeness, clarity, rigor, and adequate
and sufficient progression in supporting the development of global citizenship.
In this respect, we disagree with the view espoused by Isaac Kandel a century
ago that intercultural understanding can be fostered solely as a result of the
emphasis of existing subjects on it.

Consequently, if a specific curriculum is necessary to develop global

knowledge, what curriculum should be taught? Existing options include
relatively short and fragmentary curricular sequences, such as UNICEF’s and its
partners’ lessons on the Sustainable Development Goals; the World’s Largest
Lesson; Oxfam’s Global Citizenship curriculum; and some advanced-placement
subjects—that is, college-level courses taught in high school—such as world
history, geography, or economics.

While the AP curriculum emphasizes breadth of knowledge and the US

standards movement lists discrete skills, knowledge, and attitudes that people
wish to impart to students, the World Course curriculum seeks to develop a
depth of knowledge and the kind of “expert” thinking required to solve

55
problems. In our desire to integrate into the curriculum knowledge, skills, and
attitudes—that is, not only to impart knowledge but also to focus on teaching
skills and attitudes—that would prepare learners for the twenty-first century, we
found that a focus on developing an interdisciplinary approach to curricular
development was necessary. For example, when we looked at the AP curriculum
as a possible framework for our curriculum’s design, we were impressed by the
breadth of knowledge required by the program; however, we ultimately felt that
we wanted to emphasize depth of knowledge, given the kind of “expert” thinking
required to solve problems. We concluded also that the available AP courses
were insufficient to teach the foundational knowledge that global citizenship
requires; for example, there are no AP courses on public health, demography,
technology, or innovation, all of which, in our view, are indispensable
components of an adequate understanding of globalization.

In addition, rather than imposing on the students a list of the discrete skills,
knowledge, and attitudes that we wished to impart to them, we wanted the
students to find and make meaning in their learning. Thus, the World Course
curriculum focuses on learning that is integrated and grounded in current social,
political, economic, and other concerns and specifically on issues that are
complex and without easy answers or solutions. We believed that students
would find value in—and would desire to engage with—issues that are “real”
and authentic; similarly, we believed that in being asked to engage with these
real-life issues, the learners would be more motivated to learn the skills and
knowledge necessary to understand and solve these issues. For example, the
curriculum centers on issues like immigration and the impact of human migration
on the environment and on the kinds of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are
necessary to address these issues. That approach led us to fields such as
demography, which is not a subject taught in many schools but is a topic that we
thought was essential for learning how to address issues about population
growth and its impact on sustainability. Another difference between more
traditional global citizenship education curricula and the World Course is our
curriculum’s focus on social entrepreneurship; while a few business classes
may be taught in high schools, we deliberately brought the subject to the lower
grades and coupled it with the development of students’ understanding of
international development and notions of justice and equity.

In our examination of the IB programs, we appreciated the emphasis on

interdisciplinarity and on the development of research and analytic skills, but
we missed an explicit curricular sequence and the kind of content that would
provide all students with foundational knowledge about globalization and global
affairs.

56
Like other global education curricula, we focused on intercultural competencies
to develop the values, attitudes, and perceptions of students. For example, we
wanted students to understand how cultures can shape identities, including their
own. With our curriculum, we sought to develop empathy in the students through
perspective-taking exercises. We also draw upon literature and the arts to
encourage creative expression in the global-studies course. As students learn
about other cultures through their artistic traditions - music, dance, theater, and
other forms of storytelling and emotional communication, they can experience
emotional connections which transcend linguistic barriers. Many art forms,
particularly performing arts, require collaboration, creativity, and the embrace
of uncertain situations, which makes them a potentially effective medium for
cultivating in students the ability to appreciate and engage with the unknown,
therefore teaching them to be more empathetic and open minded. Participating in
an artistic performance is more likely to leave an impression on students
learning about other cultures than a history textbook describing the culture
because the arts engage emotions, the body, and the senses, in addition to the
mind.

In addition to individual development, we focused on the students’ development

as team members who would be able to work productively in and effectively
lead intercultural teams. We built in curricular opportunities for student to
develop skills in negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution.

AGENTS OF CHANGE
We focused on introducing choice, developing capacity to solve problems and
make a difference, and motivating students to contribute to the world around
them in small and large ways. We sought to cultivate in the students a focus on
being innovative and creative in formulating solutions to real global challenges
and seizing global opportunities. To that end, the curriculum is largely project
based, with a cumulative sequencing of units within and across grades. We
include discussions of how geographic, disciplinary, and professional contexts
matter in devising effective solutions to global challenges. In particular, we
sought to ground students in the reality of the world but also infused into the
curriculum the notions of agency and possibility, along with concrete skills and
projects that would teach them to be agents of change.

In addition to placing curricular emphases on fairness and global citizenship,

we also wanted to make sure that the students felt that they had the freedom to
choose how to engage with these issues, and not that the emphases were heavy-
handed. For example, at the high school level, the final projects are broadly
conceived and open to the students’ own conceptions of how they want to apply

57
these skills and knowledge, whether they want to be a scientist, an artist, or a
politician. We wanted to develop a strong core body of knowledge and skills
that could be ably used by learners who have developed an attitude of
compassion, responsibility, and efficacy about changing the world around them.
While the students will be thoughtfully guided by their teachers in developing
these projects, they will ultimately be encouraged and able to carry out their
projects independently.

PROJECT-BASED AND GROUP LEARNING

Emphasizing the development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes thrhough
project-based, cumulative sequences of units within and across grades, our
various units about different cultures and regions of the world were intended to
cultivate the students’ ability not only to seek and identify the best global
practices and to transfer them across geographic, disciplinary, and professional
contexts but also to recognize how these different geographic, cultural, and other
perspectives matter in devising effective solutions to global challenges. Instead
of being asked to merely engage in individualized learning, students are asked to
interact with others, learn with others, and influence others. For example, in
grade five they are asked to create an awareness project about the SDGs; then in
grade six, they are asked to implement an advocacy project about the SDGs.

ASSESSMENT: MORE THAN A NUMBER

From kindergarten, students not only learn but also are engaged in
demonstrating their understanding of what they’ve learned throughout the year.
We integrated formative and summative assessments into the course because we
believe that global competency and twenty-first-century learning require
authentic forms of assessment (Greenstein, 2012). More than merely displaying
knowledge, students are asked to engage in creating a product, whether that
product is a puppet show (kindergarten), a book (first grade), a business plan
(third grade), a game (fourth grade), or a social enterprise (eighth grade).
Learning is constructed as cumulative, with knowledge building on prior
experience and understanding. For example, in third grade, students learn to
understand global interdependence through participating in creating a social-
enterprise project in chocolate manufacturing. The learning objective is to build
an entrepreneurial spirit in young children through an understanding of global
food chains and the ethics of free trade and child labor using the case of
chocolate. The primary geographic focus is on West Africa’s chocolate-
manufacturing countries.

The year ends with a capstone activity that gives the students the opportunity to
engage in complex, activity-based tasks that incorporate the skills, knowledge,

58
and attitudes they have learned during the year. The capstone activity for the
third grade is to create a marketing campaign for the chocolate they have made
and to differentiate their product based on the culture of their target market.
They build toward this capstone activity through the following units: 1. Setting
the Stage for the Life of a Chocolate; 2. The Life of a Chocolate and Its History;
3. Let’s Make Our Own Chocolate; 4. Understanding the Culture of My Market;
5. Marketing My Chocolate in School; 6. Child Labor; 7. Taking My Chocolate
to the Market; 8. Beyond Chocolate

Other capstone activities include the following: kindergarteners take part in a

puppet show performance on understanding difference, first graders create a
“Book of Me,” second graders educate others, third graders create a business
(chocolate), fourth graders create a game about civilizations, fifth graders create
an awareness project on SDGs, sixth graders implement an advocacy project
about an SDG, seventh graders participate in extended service learning, and
eighth graders create a social enterprise around an SDG. In many cases, the
capstone activities build on one another; in fifth grade, for example, students are
asked to create an awareness project to inform others about the SDGs, and in
sixth grade, they are then asked to implement an advocacy project about the
SDGs.

Our aim is to enable students to demonstrate innovation and creativity in

formulating solutions to real global challenges and seizing global opportunities.
Our various units about different cultures and regions of the world are intended
to foster the students’ ability not only to seek and identify the best global
practices and to transfer them across geographic, disciplinary, and professional
contexts but also to recognize how these different geographic, cultural, and other
perspectives matter in devising effective solutions to global challenges.

1 Terentius, or “Terence,” whose full name was Publius Terentius Afer, was a theater writer of
the Roman Republic (195–159 BC). Born in North Africa, he was brought to Rome as a slave
to a Roman senator, who eventually freed him.

59
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The World Course

68
 THE WORLD COURSE
KINDERGARTEN: OUR WORLD IS
DIVERSE AND BEAUTIFUL

Theme
O ur world is diverse and beautiful, and we can learn about it different
ways, like counting, interviewing, describing, storytelling, and viewing
pictures.

Description
In this grade, children explore themselves, their families, and the world around
them. The focus is on exploration, experimentation, experience, and the different
methods of knowing and learning.

Each unit focuses on a central question or questions and is interdisciplinary

(covering literature, science, arts, geography, etc.) in nature. The units connect
with one another, moving from exploration of the self to surroundings.

Throughout the units, children learn about the beauty of difference and that it
exists all around us. The last unit is on folktales that emphasize the concept of
fairness in the midst of this difference.

The culminating activity is a puppet show featuring the different products they
have created during the year.

The children’s parents will be invited to speak with the class about their
experiences of different countries and contexts as they relate to the various
topics addressed during the year. We hope that starting explicit parental
involvement in kindergarten will cultivate a school culture that encourages and
embraces partnerships with parents.

69
Looking Forward
We Are One People with Universal Human Needs

Overview of the Units

1) Getting to Know You: Colors, Clothing, and Choices

2) Where Do We Live? What Is around Us?
3) Where Do We live? How Do We Move Around?
4) What Do Different People Do in My School and in My
Neighborhood? How Do We Help One Another?
5) What, When, Whom, How, and Why Do We Celebrate?
6) If Things Look Different, How Can We Be Fair?

Capstone
Produce a puppet show that reflects understanding of diversity.

70
Unit K.1
Getting to Know You: Colors, Clothing, and Choices.
This unit is a review of colors and clothing with discussion on
Topic
the factors that influence the choices behind what they
wear.
ICC: interpersonal; culture: arts, music, and literature; and
Theme
global risk: environment
Region Various
Length Five weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the different types and colors of clothing worn by

themselves and their classmates.
2. Inspire students to be curious about other people.
3. Act by asking questions and learning about their classmates’ favorite
things.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn to ask different kinds of questions.

2. Students will understand that choices of clothing are influenced by a
variety of factors.
3. Students will recognize that a single piece of clothing may look
different in different parts of the world.

Overview
Students begin the year by getting to know one another and talking about the
meaning behind their names. They then learn about one another by asking one
another about their favorite things and begin to recognize that different people
have different favorite things, that colors can mean different things in different
parts of the world, and that even the same piece of clothing (e.g., pants) can look
different depending on the weather, season, culture, and region.

71
Activity K.1.1
The Story behind Our Names
The students take home a question sheet and get help from parents in filling out
the answers to the following questions:

1. What is your name?

2. What does your name mean?
3. Why do you have this name?
4. Who gave you this name?
5. Who was the first person in your family to have the same name?
6. Which famous people have your name?
7. If you have a nickname, what is it?

Students can create different visualizations of their name (e.g., posters,

handicrafts, drawings, etc.). They then do a short show-and-tell for the class
about their names.

Students can also make blogs and share information about their names on
iEARN.

Resources K.1.1

• https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-115
• http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/your_world_my_world/files/les

Activity K.1.2
My Favorite Things: What Is My Favorite Color? What Are
My Favorite Things?

– The students review colors by singing songs about them and looking
for items in the room with specific colors.
– Students then cut out pictures from magazines (from different
countries) with items that have that color. They can also learn how to
say the names of colors in different languages (e.g., Chinese or
Spanish).
– At the end, the students ask one another, “What is your favorite

72
 color?” They then tell one another their favorite color, make
fingerprints in their favorite color, look at one another’s prints, and
talk about how those prints are similar and different.
– They review counting by counting how many of their classmates like
a certain color. (This simple survey of the class can be repeated
throughout the year with other questions as a way for the children to
begin thinking about patterns and data gathering.)
– An optional activity would be to begin to teach them about how
different colors mean different things in different cultures (e.g., red
can mean “danger,” be a warning, or signify luck, and white and
black are colors of mourning in different cultures).
– This activity can be extended such that children can list and ask one
another about other “favorite things” like foods, animals, and
activities (as a way to extend their vocabulary). To add a global
connection, the teacher can give examples from different parts of the
world for each of these categories (e.g., foods from different cultures
or animals on different continents). At the end, the classroom walls
can be covered with each child’s picture and name and a web of his
or her favorite things.
– The class can partner with another kindergarten classroom from
another part of the world, and children can share their similar and
different “favorite things” with one another via simple lists, pictures,
or videos.
– They can also learn the song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound
of Music.

Resources K.1.2

• http://www.songsforteaching.com/colorssongs.htm
• http://www.pbs.org/kcts/preciouschildren/diversity/read_activities.html
• http://www.drjean.org/html/activityPg.html
• http://globalization-group.com/edge/resources/color-meanings-by-
culture/
• Children Just Like Me, by Susan Elizabeth Copsey, Barnabas
Kindersley, Anabel Kindersley, and Harry Belafonte
• https://www.amazon.com/Children-Just-Like-Me-
Celebration/dp/0789402017/ref=sr_1_1?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466791758&sr=1-
1&keywords=children+just+like+me

73
Activity K.1.3
My Family’s Favorite Things

– They ask their family members about their favorite colors and
favorite activities and draw their family members wearing these
colors and doing these activities. They compare their families with
others’ families and talk about what they like to do with their
families.
– They read storybooks about families in different places in the world
and discuss similarities and differences.
– They can watch films about families (for example, films about how
babies are taken care of in different places).

Resources K.1.3

• http://www.focusfeatures.com/babies
• A list of children’s books about family for kindergarteners
(http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-books-about-family-
Kindergarten/lm/R2SCJ07NE3LZYE)
• Families: Around the world, One Kid at a Time by Sophie Furlaud
and Pierre Verboudhttp://www.amazon.com/Families-Around-
World-One-Time/dp/0789310090)
• A list of books about family diversity
(http://www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/e-family-
news/2014-how-to-help-children-understand-diverse-families/)
• Grandfather’s Journey, by Allen Say

Activity K.1.4
The Clothes I Wear
What am I wearing today? What are you wearing today? What is the weather
today, and how does what we’re wearing relate to it? What are we doing today,
and how does what we’re wearing relate to it? Why did you wear this clothing
today?

– At the end of the color/family activity, children are asked to come to

school wearing a piece of clothing in their favorite color. Students
review and identify different articles of clothing (e.g., pants, shirts,

74
 skirts, socks, blouses, etc.). They talk about why they chose the
clothing they’re wearing.
– The students then learn about different weathers and seasons. Using
pictures and cutouts, they look at the different items of clothing they
wear during the year depending on the season and the weather. This
activity introduces the ideas that the same person may look
“different” at different times and that there may be change even
within one person.
○ http://www.newhavenscience.org/01weather.pdf
– They also learn about different activities/verbs (e.g., activities/verbs
that relate to sports, concerts, parties, outdoor activities, etc.) and
the different kinds of clothing associated with them. They begin to
see, for example, that pants can look different, depending on the
weather, the season, or the activity that the wearer is engaged in.
– They begin to form a picture cloud on the classroom walls. A
clothing word—
– for example, “pants”—is at the center of it, and they post pictures to
show how pants can look different depending on context. They also
learn about the different kinds of clothing worn in different cultures
and places around the world and also add pictures from other
cultures and places to the picture cloud. They also learn about the
differences between traditional dress/costumes (e.g., theater
costumes) and everyday clothing. They begin to familiarize
themselves with differences in appearance and to understand that
those differences are a part of living in a diverse world.
– An optional activity would be to learn about different kinds of
fabrics (e.g., cotton, silk, wool, etc.), how they feel to the touch, and
where they come from (e.g., plants, worms, animals, etc.).

Resources K.1.4

• Hands Around the World: 365 Creative Ways to Encourage Cultural

Awareness and Global Respect, by Susan Milord from the
Williamson Kids Can! series,
• Lesson Plans from the Discovery Channel
(http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-
plans/around-the-world.cfm)

75
Unit K.2
Topic Where Do We Live? What Is around Us?
Global risk: environment; arts: other/architecture; and
Theme
geography
Region India and beyond
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe their neighborhood and to identify both man-made

(e.g., buildings) and natural (e.g., trees, flowers, animals, etc.)
objects. Students learn about the different kinds of houses in which
people and animals can live and about how those structures can be
influenced be climate and culture.
2. Inspire students to be observant and curious about their surroundings.
3. Act by starting a collection of different items, both living and
nonliving (e.g., bugs and rocks), and exchanging those items with
children from other schools in the world.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn to describe their surroundings.

2. Students will describe the basic environmental factors that contribute
to construction materials and the types of homes that people live in.
3. Students will use basic vocabulary related to the weather and seasons
that contribute to clothing materials and the types of clothing that
people wear.

Overview
Children learn to describe their neighborhood and both man-made (e.g.,
buildings) and natural (e.g., trees, flowers, animals, etc.) objects. They make a
collection of different living and nonliving items (e.g., bugs and rocks), and they
exchange these items with children from other schools in the world. (They can
also build on the previous unit and exchange pictures of clothing and their
families, for example.) They continue to realize that food, shelter, water, and

76
clothing may look different in different places. There is also a continued
emphasis on climate and weather—for example, on the fact that trees, flowers,
buildings, and clothing can differ across cultures because of differences in
climate or context.

Activity K.2.1
Homes around the World

– The students are given pictures of houses and rooms from different
places around the world, and they are asked to group them according
to what they observe as similarities and differences.
– The students also read two photo books, one on clothes and the other
on houses around the world. In each case, the students are asked to
answer the following questions as part of a group discussion:
○ What do the houses have in common?
○ Why would the houses look different in different places?
○ What is familiar about the houses?
○ What is unfamiliar about the houses?
○ What kind of house do you live in? What do you like about it?
What don’t you like about it?
– Through these activities, they learn about houses, the different rooms
in houses, and the rooms’ functions. They learn about different types
of buildings where people live (e.g., apartments, houses, condos,
cabins, etc.) and how those buildings are different around the world.
○ They can review the alphabet and learn about different types of
buildings for each letter (e.g., a is for “apartment,” b is for
“boathouses,” c is for “castle,” etc.). See the listings under
“Resources” below.

Resources K.2.1

• Houses and Homes, by Ann Morris, Ken Heyman (illustrator), and

Ken Hayman (photographer) from the Around the World series,
• (http://www.amazon.com/Homes-Around-World-ABC-
Alphabet/dp/0736836659/ref=sr_1_2?
ie=UTF8&qid=1306891959&sr=8-2)
• A list of other books about homes around the world
(http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_sq_top?

77
 ie=UTF8&keywords=homes%20around%20the%20world%20kindergarten%
top-stripe-
1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0736836659&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd
• The Three Little Pigs
• Wonderful Houses Around the World, by Yoshio Komatsu
• Imagine a House, by Angela Gustafson
• Homes in Many Cultures, by Heather Adamson Clothes in Many
Cultures, by Heather Adamson
• Children Just Like Me: A Celebration of Children Around the
World, by Anabel Kindersley and Barnabas Kindersley
• A list other sets of lessons on houses tied to story books
(http://www.homeschoolshare.com/houses_and_homes.php)
• Building Museum of Washington, DC

Activity K.2.2
Oh, Give Me a Home

– They learn how the climate impacts the shapes and materials used in
different places around the world.
– They can follow the following lesson plan from National
Geographic:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/15/g35/givemehome.h
Here is a description of it: “Just as humans need oxygen, food, and
water, they also need shelter. This need for shelter is satisfied in a
variety of ways. This lesson will explore ways in which the
environment influences the design and construction of homes around
the world”:

Activity K.2.3
Making House Models

– As part of this unit, students review and learn about simple shapes
(e.g., circles, rectangles, squares, etc.) and learn to use these shapes
to make representations of where they live. For example, they may
make construction-paper representations of their home; use different
shapes made out of gingerbread to make a gingerbread house; or use
clay, straw, cardboard, and other materials to build a model of their
home. Ideally, they should make a few different types of houses from

78
 the same part of the world.

Activity K.2.4
Animals, Plants, and Their Houses

– As part of this unit, students also learn about animals and their
habitats and learn to identify the animals that live in their region of
the world.
– It would be a good idea to include a trip to a zoo in this unit.
– They also learn about the different kinds of flowers and plants found
in their neighborhood.
– They begin to learn about greenhouses and about how a “house” or
shelter can enable plants to live under different circumstances than
those of their natural habitat.
– The students then partner with older students and take pictures. They
collect some items that are around them and exchange them with
children in other places. A platform that enables such student-to-
student exchanges is touchable earth
(http://www.touchableearth.org/).

Resources K.2.4

• http://www.education.com/activity/article/Animal_Habitat_Game/
• I See a Kookaburra! Discovering Animal Habitat Around the World,
by Steve
• Jenkins and Robin Page
• In A Small, Small Pond, by Denise Fleming
• Magic School Bus Hops Home: A Book About Animal Habitats, by
Joanna Cole
• http://www.amazon.com/Wanna-Take-Me-Picture-
Photography/dp/0807031410
• http://www.42explore2.com/sheltr.htm
• Children from Australia to Zimbabwe: A Photographic Journey
Around the World,
• by Maya Ajmera, Anna Rhesa Versola, and Marian Wright Edelman

79
Unit K.3
Topic Where Do We Live? How Do We Move Around?
Geography; arts: music and literature; and ICC:
Theme
interpersonal (work in teams)
Region All/any
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn that transportation can take on different forms (e.g.,

transportation via land, water, or air) depending on function, one’s
region, and other factors.
2. Inspire students to appreciate the inventiveness of people in moving
and carrying people and things and to want to try to experience as
many different forms of transportation as they can (now and in the
future).
3. Act by working together with others to create models and collages of
different forms of transportation.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify various forms of transportation (e.g., land,

water, and air).
2. Students will recognize that forms of transportation vary by function,
region, culture, and other factors.
3. Students will learn the meaning behind different types of road signs
(including how they may vary by region, country, and language but
also how these signs can be helpful even when they don’t know the
language of the country the signs are in).

Overview
The children learn about different forms of transportation around the world and
learn to identify how they vary by purpose and context. They are also introduced
to the concept of symbolism by learning about different types of road signs and
how they are similar and different across cultures.

80
Activity K.3.1

– Students are asked to share how they get to school (e.g., bus, car,
subway, walking, biking, etc.). For homework, they ask their parents
how they get to work, and then they report back to the class what they
learned.
– The students read books about transportation (see the resources
listed below) and learn to sing songs about movement (e.g., “The
Wheels on the Bus”).
– They read books such as Transportation in Many Cultures, by
Martha E.H. Rustad, and Ann Morris’s On the Go from the Around
the World series to make the global connection that, for example,
“boats” can look different in different parts of the world but can have
similar functions.
– Various activities can be incorporated into the lessons to facilitate
learning and community.
○ For example, each child draws a car of a train, and then they
link the train cars together to make a model train as a class.
○ Each child selects a favorite mode of transportation. The
children who share the same favorite form of transportation can
work together to make a collage about that particular form of
transportation by finding and cutting out as many different
pictures as they can (so those who choose cars could cut out
pictures of sports cars, vans, electric cars, race cars,
limousines, etc.). They can then share it with the rest of the
class.

Resources K.3.1

• Sesame Street’s video of Zoe Saldana explaining the word

“Transportation” (https://www.google.com/?
gws_rd=ssl#q=sesame+street+zoe+saldana+transportation)
• Transportation in Many Cultures, by Martha E.H. Rustad
• On the Go, by Ann Morris from the Around the World series
• Red, Stop! Green, Go!, by P. D. Eastman.
• Go, Train, Go! from the Thomas & Friends series, by Rev. W. Awdry
• The Big Book of Transportation, by Caroline Bingham
• On the Go!, by Teresa Imperato

81
Activity K.3.2
As they look at the collages, the students begin/continue to ask and learn why we
need so many different kinds of transportation.

– They learn about the different purposes that each form of

transportation may have (e.g., carrying people, animals, supplies,
etc.) and how the purpose of a vehicle may impact its size and shape.
– They also begin to learn about the different types of water (e.g.,
rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.) and landforms (e.g., deserts, forests,
mountains, etc.). They begin to learn that different modes of
transportation are good for traveling on different types of terrain.
(They can, for example, work with models of various types of
wheels on various surfaces as a way to explore which kinds of
wheels work better on which types of surfaces.)
– They learn about different words and activities associated with
different forms of transportation and moving and about how those
words and activities may be different in different parts of the world.
– Again, the theme of differences and similarities is explored by
looking at different representations of a similar concept (e.g., by
looking at boats across different cultures and uses).

Activity K.3.3

– Children learn about different kinds of transportation, safety signs,

and the meaning of the colors in road signs (e.g., red means “stop,”
yellow means “caution,” green means “go,” orange indicates
construction, and blue indicates information). They can play “red
light green light” to reinforce the meanings of red and green.
– They read books such as Tana Hoban’s I Read Signs.
– They learn basic safety rules, such as those relevant to crossing the
street.
– They make signs to communicate what they want to say.
– They may play games like charades or Pictionary to continue the
theme of learning to communicate nonverbally with pictures and
motions.
– They can also find other nontransportation related signs and explain
to the class what they mean (e.g., Do not Disturb or Poison).

82
Resource K.3.3

• An explanation of road signs from around the world

(http://www.elve.net/rcoulst.htm)

83
Unit K.4
What Do Different People Do in My School and in My
Topic
Neighborhood? How Do We Help One Another?
Ethics: trust in institutions and humility and respect and
Theme
interpersonal: etiquette
Region All/any
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the different jobs that people perform in the

neighborhood and the school and how those jobs may be similar or
different depending on the context and one’s place the world.
2. Inspire students to appreciate the roles that others play in the
community.
3. Act by taking a role in their classroom and helping with the everyday
functioning of the classroom.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will know the different roles that people play in the
community (e.g., firefighter, policeman, teacher, mayor, etc.).
2. Students will recognize that it takes many people to help a community
function.
3. Students will learn basic etiquette that is helpful for interacting with
others.

Overview
At the end of the previous transportation unit, children learn about fire trucks,
police cars, trash trucks, ambulances, taxicabs, subway cars, and other forms of
transportation that they may see often on the streets of New York City (or the
city of their residence). In this current unit, they learn more about the people
who drive and ride those forms of transportation and about how they help the
city. The students also learn and review basic interview skills and social
etiquette, and they listen and ask questions to guest speakers (e.g., firefighters,

84
policemen, parents who come in to talk about their jobs, etc.). To connect these
concepts to the idea of global citizenship, they can invite a guest speaker who
has traveled to a different part of the world for humanitarian aid (e.g., as a
Peace Corps volunteer) to speak to them about how he or she helped a
community abroad. They also learn about the different roles that different people
play around the school (e.g., the head of the school, custodians, technology
support staff, etc.) and list the different jobs that make the classroom function
(e.g., passing out papers and picking up papers).

Activity K.4.1

– Children review the forms of transportation that help the community,

like fire trucks, police cars, trash trucks, ambulances, taxicabs, and
subway cars, for example.
– They learn about the basic duties of the people who drive these
vehicles and how they help the city.
– They learn to ask questions for an interview and then pose them to
guest speakers (whom to ask, including parents, is within the
teacher’s discretion).

Resources K.4.1

• There are songs and activity sheets available online

(http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Neighborhood-vecindario-
Foundations/dp/193139881X/ref=sr_1_3?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306892652&sr=1-3 and
http://www.first-school.ws/theme/commhelpers.htm).

Activity K.4.2

– The teacher can take the class through a series of relevant Peace
Corps lesson plans (https://sharemylesson.com/partner/peace-corps-
world-wise-schools), including the following:
1) “The following lesson engages young children in ideas and
concepts surrounding community with an exploration of the
varied factors that influence how people live, the roles of
adults and children, and the interaction of people who live and

85
 work within a community.”
2) “Asha, a young girl living in India, takes the reader on a virtual
journey through her village. She offers a glimpse into aspects
of her culture and daily life while introducing a variety of
words in Hindi. By seeing components of a village in India,
students can compare and contrast daily life in India with their
own. In doing so, they can see that although people may have
differences in country of origin, foods, or language, we are
more alike than different.”
– The teacher then invites a former Peace Corps volunteer to come and
be a guest speaker for the class. Children ask the volunteer questions
that they have brainstormed together as a class based on these
lessons and on the particular volunteer’s background and experience.

Activity K.4.3

– The students brainstorm a list of all of the adults they know in the
school, including what they think the adults’ roles are. With the
teacher’s help, they identify three to five people and take a mini–
field trip to where the different staff members work (e.g., the
cafeteria or the school’s administrative offices). They take a “tour”
of the spaces and learn how these people help the school community
and how they are relevant to the students’ own learning.
– The students then learn how these functions may look similar or
different in a different part of the world. Consider using the
following lesson plan from the Peace Corps: “The following lesson
engages young children in exploring the concept of school and
education with an exploration of the varied factors that influence
children’s access to formal schooling, the subjects taught and
learned, and children’s role in their classroom.”

Activity K.4.4

– Students learn about the different ways they can help their own
classroom become a place where they take responsibility for each
other’s well being and learning and help one another. With the
teacher’s help, they create a list of roles and take on tasks on a
rotating basis.
– They then link with another kindergarten classroom in a different part

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of the world and compare notes on the kinds of roles that students
play in the classroom.

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Unit K.5
Topic What, When, Whom, How, and Why Do We Celebrate?
ICC: interpersonal; culture: arts and music; and ethics:
Theme
religious diversity
Region Various
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to recognize the different ways and occasions in which people

celebrate around the world.
2. Inspire students to have joy and gratitude as a part of their lives.
3. Act by creating a holiday for someone or a group of people they
would like to celebrate, writing a thank-you card, and celebrating
that person or group in other ways.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will know that common holidays (e.g., New Year’s Day) can
be celebrated differently and similarly in different regions and
cultures
2. Students will be able to say common forms of greeting and
celebration in different languages.

Overview
As a way to transition from the previous unit, the students learn about citywide
celebrations (e.g., family-friendly summer celebrations) that help to build a
sense of community. They may talk about the Fourth of July if they’re in the
United States (or about national holidays of their school’s country if they aren’t)
and also about how and what their own family celebrates. They talk about what
they feel when they’re part of a birthday party and also identify a person or a
group of people they want to celebrate (and explain why). They write a thank-
you/celebratory card and create other ways to celebrate that person or group
(this celebration can be linked to Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, for example).
The class can also study how Children’s Day is celebrated in different parts of

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the world and have its own Children’s Day celebration.

Activity K.5.1

– Throughout the year, the class may participate in celebrating different

holidays and special occasions.
– Children can draw and talk about the different things they celebrate
within the classroom and with their families (e.g., the birth of a
brother or sister, good work, holidays, religious celebrations, etc.).
– They read about different common celebrations around the world
(e.g., New Year’s Day celebrations, birthdays, weddings, births of
children, etc.).

Activity K.5.2

– They learn simple greetings and celebratory messages in different

languages. They can learn to speak, read, or write these messages
and even learn the alphabet in different languages.
– Peace Corps challenge game—Traditional Greetings:

Activity K.5.3

– They learn different celebratory songs (e.g., birthday songs or

holiday songs) and dances and play with different instruments,
examining the different sounds that each instrument makes. They can
learn about orchestras, listen to music, and learn how each different
instrument contributes to making a larger, grander sound as a group.
They can then learn about different musical instruments from
different cultures.

Activity K.5.4

– They learn how Children’s Day is celebrated around the world

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children’s_Day).
– They can design their own Children’s Day celebration and/or

89
 identify a person or a group of people they want to celebrate. They
then explain why they want to celebrate that person or group and
create a thank-you card and/or other forms of celebration.
Grandparents and parents are easy candidates for celebration and
thanks, as are the people they met during the tour of the school and
the guest speakers (people who serve the community) they met in the
previous unit.

Resources K.5

• An explanation of New Year’s Eve

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve)
• http://www.lessonplanspage.com/NewYears.htm
• Celebrations Around the World: A Multicultural Handbook, by
Carole S. Angell
• Children Just Like Me: Celebrations!, by Anabel Kindersley
(contributor) and Barnabas Kindersley (photographer)
(http://www.amazon.com/Children-Just-Like-Me-
Celebrations/dp/0789420279/ref=sr_1_1?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306523549&sr=1-1)
• http://www.amazon.com/DK-Readers-Holiday-Celebration-
Beginning/dp/0789457113
• http://www.tarleton.edu/Faculty/boucher/Elementary%20Music%20Resources
• The Kindergarten around the World Malay dance
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZZL3Ynujxs&feature=related)
• https://www.putumayo.com/shop/
• A list of a variety of lesson plans on holidays
• (http://www.cloudnet.com/~edrbsass/edholiday.htm)

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Unit K.6
Topic If Things Look Different, How Can We Be Fair?
Theme Arts: literature and drama and creative communication
Region All/any
Length Five weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to become familiar with different fairy tales and folktales

around the world.
2. Inspire students to treat people fairly.
3. Act by creating their own fairy tales on the theme of fairness.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn the components of common fairy tales and

folktales around the world.
2. Students will talk about their thoughts about fairness and why it is
important.
3. Students will write and illustrate original fairy tales.

Overview
Children read folktales and fairy tales whose theme is fairness from around the
world; the folktales also serve as a review of the different kinds of differences
and similarities learned earlier in the year (e.g., differences and similarities in
clothing, buildings, climates, contexts, animals, celebrations, families, houses,
etc.). The students then write and illustrate their own fairy tales. They learn
about different puppets from around the world and compose a puppet show with
puppets and props that they make to represent what they’ve learned about
different clothing, shelters, animals, musical instruments, and folktales from
around the world.

Activities and Resources

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Lessons can be taken from the following resources on recognizing the
components of fairy tales from around the world and on creating their own fairy
tales:

– http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/fairy-tales-around-world
• Resources on puppets from around the world
(https://makingvisualnarratives.com/)
• A list of links to sites that describe puppetry in Japan, Vietnam, and
Indonesia (http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/activity/puppets/)
• One World, One Sky: Big Bird’s Adventure
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1D7xXLO8yk)
• http://contentdev.sesameworkshop.org/web/street/parents/topicsandactivities/t
• The Global Grover series (aimed for preschool children)
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX750lVbI_s
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-XJV9feNOI
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAburU-d__s
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFgpMj9o0o
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTtrwnPPcA
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqPaWJe99PY
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJvkmcyC2uo
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYzKA4Es-I
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC5HDLvrNGY
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCVh7e4E5Y
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WMks6MotE
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPVgxbmOhbs
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWP42HDsV2M
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwDN2hF2bmU
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjr2A9jLRGQ
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMTvep1_A4
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqz7nFiyAw8
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRjl6T_n0Ds
• Diversity activities for elementary schools
(http://www.diversitycouncil.org/elActivities.shtml)

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 THE WORLD COURSE
FIRST GRADE: WE ARE ONE PEOPLE
WITH UNIVERSAL HUMAN NEEDS

Theme
U nderstanding common humanity across various cultural differences and
common needs of all people.

Description
This year establishes the oneness of all human life through an investigation of a
few universal human needs. Students learn about what food, water, clothing,
shelter, and respectful relationships look like around the world, with a special
focus on India. Their understanding of what it means to care for one another and
to meet basic needs is deepened by activities involving taking care of plants and
classroom pets. At the beginning of the year, students are also given a blank map
that they will fill in over the course of the year with the geographical, historical,
and cultural information they learn about. The year ends with a project in which
students create a “Book of Me” that includes photos, poems, and essays about
themselves, their homes, the foods they eat, their clothes, their families, and
their other needs and wants.

Looking Back
Our world is diverse and beautiful, and we can learn about it different ways.

Looking Forward:
Who are we, where do we come from, what do we have in common, and how
do we differ from others? Exploring people, culture, and the world.

Overview of the Units

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 1) Human Needs
2) Food and Water
3) Clothing and Shelter
4) Respectful Relationships

Capstone
The students create a “Book of Me” (a scrapbook) about themselves that mirrors
the “snapshots” of the children in Oxfam’s “My World, Your World.” They
include photos of themselves, their families, their homes, the foods they eat,
their clothes, and other items that they determine are needs and wants. The book
will also double as a portfolio of the work that the students will create over the
course of the year, such as poems, drawings, and other materials.

(Note that for all Oxfam activities in this year, the United Kingdom should be
replaced with the country where the course is been taught.)

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Unit 1.1
Topic Human Needs
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, and others’ identities and culture);
ethics: common values; work and mind habits: innovation
Theme
and creativity; culture: geography; arts: literature and
visual; and investigation and analytical skills: local-global
link and creative communication
Region Brazil, India, Russia, Ethiopia
Length Two Weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about a few of the things that unite humans—such as the need
for food, water, clothing, shelter, and respectful relationships—
while at the same time learning about their own and others’ cultural
perspectives.
2. Inspire students to reflect on how plants and animals need many of
the same things that humans need.
3. Act by identifying some of the key ways in which all humans are the
same.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will be able to locate Brazil, India, Russia, and Ethiopia on

a map and to name the continent that each is on.
2. Students will identify at least four basic human needs that reflect
common values.
3. Students will describe themselves (their own identities) and see
connections between themselves and others (others’ identities), thus
gaining interpersonal skills.
4. Students will discuss the meaning of their names and the importance
of names, thereby deepening their understanding of common values.
5. Students will make comparisons between two things that may initially
seem unfamiliar and different, thereby developing perspective-taking
skills.

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 6. Students will write their own poetry and make visual art that they
then share with children in other parts of the world.

Overview
In this unit, students learn about those needs that unite all of humanity, as well as
the difference between needs and wants. They begin by getting introduced to
children from different parts of the world in the Oxfam curriculum, “Your
World, My World.” They examine the topic of human needs through the arts, as
well as through poetry.

Activity 1.1.1
Your World, My World
Students complete this series of activities from Oxfam, paying particular
attention to what the photos/stories tell the class about what people around the
world need. They plot the cities and countries mentioned on their maps. After
completing the lessons, the students create a similar “snapshot” and a collection
of photographs oft themselves. In this way, the students will learn about the
others in the class. This series of lessons can also extend throughout the year.
(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/your-world-my-world)

Activity 1.1.2
Wants and Needs
Students complete this activity (or one like it) on the differences between wants
and needs(https://educators.brainpop.com/bp-jr-topic/needs-and-wants/).

They will come up with the following: 1) water, 2) food, 3) clothing, 4) shelter,
5) air, 6) education, and 7) love/respectful relationships.

Activity 1.1.3
Six Billion People, Six Billion Possibilities
Students are instructed to find one object that represents each of the seven
universal human needs that they found and to make something out of the object.
For example, a student may collect a water bottle (water), an empty cereal box
(food), an old sock (clothing), a few Lego bricks (shelter), a balloon (air), a
paper clip (education), and a photo of his or her family (love). He or she then

96
creates a sculpture out of the objects. Each child shares his or her sculpture, and
the teacher leads the class in a discussion of how even though we all need the
same things, those things look different for every person.

Activity 1.1.4
What Makes a Good Friend
The teacher asks the students to think about what a good friend is and what a
good friend does. The students write an acrostic poem using a word and
descriptions of friendship. Consider the following example:

Friends are nice

Really great to have
In sunny skies
Especially to play
Never to hurt
Don’t say mean things
So good to have a friend

They will revisit these poems later in the year.

Resources 1.1.4

• iEARN (www.iearn.org)
• Oxfam Educational Resources (www.oxfam.org.uk/education)
• Useful maps
(http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/mapping/outline-
map/?map=Africa)
• Stories of children around the world
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/your-world-my-world

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Unit 1.2
Water and Food
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, others’ identities and cultures, and
working in intercultural teams); ICC: intrapersonal
(minimization of the effects of prejudice; ethics: common
Topic values, commitment to equality, the value of human
potential, and the importance of global compacts); work and
mind habits: cross-cultural perspective taking; culture:
geography; global risk: environment; arts: literature and
visual; and investigation and analytical skills: local-global
link and creative communication
Region Ghana, India, Uganda, and Mexico
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about water and food around the world.

2. Inspire students to think about how all forms of life, both human and
other, need water and food.
3. Act by describing what water is needed for and how to access it.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn the difference between salt water and freshwater
(geography).
2. Students will learn the oceans and place them on a map (geography).
3. Students will be able to place India, Ghana, and Uganda on a map
(geography).
4. Students will learn about the many uses of water (common values).
5. Students will study water-related poetry (arts) and write their own.
6. Students will learn about the foods that people eat around the world,
both those that are different and those that are similar (diverse
cultural perspectives).
7. Students will learn about the needs of plants (and maybe animals) and
how they differ from human needs (common values).

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 8. Students will read versions of the story “Stone Soup” from many
different countries and cultures.

Overview
In this unit, students learn about two of the universal human needs: water and
food. They learn about geography and the difference between salt water and
freshwater, about how other cultures access water, and about what foods other
people eat. They will compare the foods that they eat with the foods that others
eat, with the goal of making “foreign” foods seem less foreign. Finally, they will
examine different versions of the story “Stone Soup.”

(In science class, students can learn about the makeup of water, the water cycle,
and other information about water. In order to learn about the water cycle,
students can use the following experiment:
https://www3.epa.gov/safewater/kids/.)

Activity 1.2.1
Freshwater versus Salt Water
The teacher asks students about the differences between oceans, rivers, and
lakes. On their maps, students color salt water dark blue and freshwater light
blue. They talk about the parts of the world that have less freshwater than others.
Students label the oceans on their maps.

Activity 1.2.2
Water Has Many Uses
Students reflect on the ways that they use water, how others in their family use
water, and why water is important, using section 4 of the following curriculum:
http://static.water.org/docs/curriculums/WaterOrg%20ElemCurricFULL.pdf.

Activity 1.2.3
Water Is Life, Water Is Poetry
Students illustrate poems about water from around the world and then write
their own poem about water.
(http://static.water.org/docs/curriculums/WaterOrg%20ElemCurricFULL.pdf.)

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Activity 1.2.4
Hungry Planet
Students look at Hungry Planet, a book by Peter Menzel that shows the foods
that a family eats in a week. They then compare the quantity and types of foods
that the families from all over the world eat. They look for similarities and
differences between what they eat. They may be asked to find at least one food
that both they and each family eat.

Activity 1.2.5
Our Own Hungry Planet
Students pair with a classroom in another part of the world, and each class
records what they ate for a day or a week (whichever the teacher prefers). They
must ask their parents/caretakers what is in the food and make note of who
prepared the food. Consider the following example

Food Eaten Who Prepared It?

Spaghetti Mom
Potato Chips Packaged
Ice Cream Packaged

First the students will compare what they ate with what other members of the
class ate. Then they will compare the types of foods they ate with the types of
foods their partners from another country ate. They will also place the country
that their partners are from on their map.

Activity 1.2.6
“Stone Soup”
Students read several different versions of the folktale “Stone Soup.” They
compare each version and think about why they might be different and how they
are the similar. They mark on their map the origin of each version of the folktale.

We recommend the following versions of the story:

○ Marcia Brown’s 1947 Caldecott Award–winning “Stone Soup”

○ Jon J. Muth’s 2003 “Stone Soup,” which is set in China
○ The versions listed on the University of Pittsburgh’s website:

100
 http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html

Activity 1.2.7
Our Food, Our World
Students complete the “Our Food, Our World” series of lessons from Oxfam.
They learn about what foods children in India and Mexico eat and also learn
about what they have in common with children in those countries. They add
information that they learn from Yamini and Luis, two characters in the lessons,
to their maps.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/our_food_our_world/

Activity 1.2.8
Our Global Garden
At the beginning of the year, the students will plant plants from some of the
countries they’re studying. The students will evaluate what conditions exist in
the country each plant is from in order to see what it needs to survive. They will
be introduced to the concept of native plants and non-native plants. They will
monitor the plants’ progress in class. If possible, students in another school in
another country will do the same, and the two classes will share notes on the
progress of their plants. Each student can have one plant that he or she must take
care of all year, or the students can take turns being responsible for a plant. Each
should keep a journal about what the plant needs to thrive, how he or she is
meeting the needs of the plant, and the reasons that the plant is or isn’t thriving.

(Note that the class may also want to investigate adopting a pet indigenous to
one or more of the countries being studied. They can research what kind of
habitat the animal needs, what kinds of things the animal eats, and names for the
animal. They can then also reflect on what the pet needs to thrive and on
whether the things the pet needs are the same as or different from what the plants
need and what humans need. Chickens may be an ideal choice for this project.)

Optional Activity
Drip Calculator
Students use this drip calculator to find out about water wastage:
http://www.awwa.org/resources-tools/public-affairs/public-
information/dripcalculator.aspx.

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Optional Activity
Home Water-Use Calculator
Student use this form to calculate the amount of water used in their homes:
http://www.waterbudgets.com/ConserVision/CUWCC/DataInput.htm

Resources

• The Environmental Protection Agency (water.epa.gov)

• WaterAid (www.wateraid.org)
• iEARN (www.iearn.org)

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Unit 1.3
Topic Clothing and Shelter
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture and
others’ identities and cultures); ethics: common values;
Theme
work and mind habits: innovation and creativity; and arts:
literature and visual
Region India and Beyond
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the clothes people wear around the world and the
houses in which they live.
2. Inspire students to reflect on the cultural meaning behind different
clothing choices and types of houses.
3. Act by identifying cultures based on the types of clothing and houses.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students learn about the types of houses people live in around the
world.
2. Students are able to describe the basic environmental factors that
contribute to the construction materials and types of homes people
live in.
3. Students learn about the types of clothing that people around the
world wear.
4. Students are able to describe the basic environmental factors that
contribute to the types of clothing that people wear and the materials
they’re made from.
5. Students are able to think reflectively about the type of house they
live in and about which aspects of their home reflect their family’s
wants and which reflect their family’s needs.

Overview
In this unit students learn about more human needs: clothing and shelter. They

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learn about what clothes and houses around the world have in common with
their clothes and houses, respectively.

Activity 1.3.1
Books about Clothes and Houses
The students read two photo books, one on clothes and the other on houses
around the world. In each case, the students are asked to answer the following
questions as part of a group discussion:

1. What do the houses/clothes have in common?

2. Why do the houses/clothes look different in different places?
3. What is familiar about the houses/clothes?
4. What is unfamiliar about the houses/clothes?
5. What kind of clothes do they themselves wear? Why?
6. What kind of houses do they themselves live in? Why?
7. Do they wear only one type of clothes, or do they wear more than one
style or type? Why?
8. Do they think that children in other countries only wear one style or
type of clothes every day? Why or why not?

The teacher can also use this guide to lead a lesson about Morris and Heyman’s
Houses and Homes.

Recommended Books

• Morris and Heyman’s Houses and Homes (ISBN 978-0688135782)

• Komatsu’s Wonderful Houses Around the World (ISBN 978-
0936070346)
• Gustafson’s Imagine a House (ISBN 978-0972684903)
• Adamson’s Homes in Many Cultures” (ISBN: 978-1429633802)
• Adamson’s “Clothes in Many Cultures” (ISBN: 978-1429633826)
• Kindersley’s “Children Just Like Me: A Celebration of Children
around the World” (ISBN: 978-0789402011)

Activity 1.3.2
Oh, Give Me a Home

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This lesson is summarized by National Geographic in the following way: “Just
as humans need oxygen, food, and water, they also need shelter. This need for
shelter is satisfied in a variety of ways. This lesson will explore ways in which
the environment influences the design and construction of homes around the
world.”
(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/15/g35/givemehome.html

Activity 1.3.3
Making House Models
Students make models of houses from different parts of the world using clay,
straw, cardboard, and other materials. Ideally, they should make a few different
types of houses from the same part of the world.

Resources

• Others sets of lessons on houses tied to storybooks:

(http://www.homeschoolshare.com/houses_and_homes.php)
• Building Museum of Washington, DC

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Unit 1.4
Topic Respectful Relationships
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, and others’ identities and cultures);
ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills); ethics:
Theme common values and commitment to equality; work and mind
habits: cross-cultural perspective taking; arts: literature;
and investigation and analytical skills: local-global link and
creative communication
Region India
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how all people need respectful relationships and families of

some sort.
2. Inspire students to reflect on the facts that not all families interact in
the same way and that not all respectful relationships involve people
who are blood relations.
3. Act by treating one another with the respect that all people deserve
and need.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about the diverse cultural perspectives that

influence literature through different retellings of the story
“Cinderella.”
2. Students will learn about their own cultures and others’ cultures by
reflecting on their families and the family and friends of Muluken, a
character who lives in India. This also develops their cross-cultural
perspective taking.
3. Students will link the local (their own families and friends) to the
global—the fact that all people around the world need respectful
relationships. This also develops their commitment to equality by
establishing a universal human need.
4. Students will use creative communication to write their own versions

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 of “Cinderella” and to add to their “Book of Me.”
5. Students will learn conflict-resolution skills by thinking about how
all people need respectful relationships and by reflecting on what
constitutes a respectful relationship.

Overview
Students examine the need of all people for respectful relationships. They
examine the life of Muluken, who lives in India, and her description of her
family. They revisit their friendship poems from the beginning of the year and
think about what changes they would like to make to them. They also read and
write poetry about their families. They also do an extended comparison of
different versions of “Cinderella.”

Activity 1.4.1
Revisiting Muluken
Students go back to Oxfam’s “Your World, My World” series of lessons and
focus on the lesson on families. They learn about Muluken’s family and use her
story to reflect on their own family
(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/your_world_my_world/files/lesson5_exp

Activity 1.4.2
Revisiting Friendships
Students revisit the section on friends in Oxfam’s “Your World, My World” and
contrast their answers with what they said and thought at the beginning of the
year. They will also look at their acrostic poems on friendship and make new
ones based on their current understandings of friendship

(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/your_world_my_world/files/lesson6_our

Activity 1.4.3
Myself
Students help one another make life-size cutouts of themselves out of butcher
paper. One child will lie down on the paper, and another will trace his or her
outline. The students talk to one another about their features and help one
another draw paper versions of themselves on the paper. They can mix paint to

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make a shade similar to their skin color and see how people are all just
varieties of a few shades.

Activity 1.4.4
Family Poetry
Students create their own poetry about caring relationships and families
modeled after poems like this one

Our family comes

From many homes,
Our hair is straight,
Our hair is brown,
Our hair is curled,
Our eyes are blue,
Our skins are different
Colors, too.
We’re girls and boys,
We’re big and small,
We’re young and old,
We’re short and tall.
We’re everything
That we can be
And still we are
A family.
We laugh and cry,
We work and play,
We help each other
Every day.
The world’s a lovely
Place to be
Because we are
A family.

or this one

What is a family?
Who is a family?
One and another makes two is a family!
Baby and father and mother: a family!
Parents and sister and brother: a family!

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 All kinds of people can make up a family
All kinds of mixtures can make up a family
What is a family?
Who is a family?
The children that lived in a shoe is a family!
A pair like a kanga and roo is a family!
A calf and a cow that go moo is a family!
All kinds of creatures can make up a family
All kinds of numbers can make up a family
What is a family?
Who is a family?
Either a lot or a few is a family;
But whether there’s ten or there’s two in your family,
All of your family plus you is a family!
(Mary Ann Hoberman)

These poems are taken from the following website:

http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems3.html.

Activity 1.4.5
“Cinderella” Around the World
Students will read and discuss “Cinderella.” Then they will read variations of
the folktale from different parts of the world. They will compare and contrast
the stories, discussing why and how the elements of the story are different. They
will also write their own version of “Cinderella,” keeping the essential
components of it but changing other elements to reflect the fact that they
understand how the same story can be presented in different ways.

Recommended “Cinderella” Resources:

• http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/cinderella-folk-tales-
variations-plot-and-setting#sect-introduction
• http://learningtogive.org/lessons/unit205/lesson1.html

Optional Activity
Family Interactions

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Have each student pick two or three dolls, puppets, or stuffed animals—one to
represent the student and a few others to represent his or her family members.
They can also make paper dolls or puppets. Students then pretend that an alarm
clock is going off and start their day. Using their dolls, puppets, or stuffed
animals, students act out the sequence of events and the role of each family
member during their morning ritual. This can be expanded, and students can act
out other parts of the day, family celebrations of holidays, or to the process of
helping their family members. Consider asking students the following questions:
How is each family member’s role important, including your own? How are the
roles that people play in your family similar to and different from those that
people play in other families (e.g., many children in other countries take a more
active role in caring for their siblings than do children in the United States)?

Resources

• An optional activity on children’s roles around the world

(http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-
plans/children-around-the-world.cfm)
• Lessons on children around the world, with many references to
diverse families
https://sharemylesson.com/partner/peace-corps-world-wise-schools
• Another unit using children’s literature to inspire students to reflect
on the idea of family (http://www.halcyon.com/marcs/theme.html)
• A review of children’s literature on families of different types
(http://www.carolhurst.com/newsletters/23bnewsletters.html)
• The Mosaic Project (on conflict resolution)
• All families are special by Norma Simon
• The family book paperback by Todd Parr
• Mommy, Mama, and Me board book by Leslea Newman
• It’s Okay to be different by Todd Parr

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 THE WORLD COURSE
SECOND GRADE: OURSELVES AND OTHERS

Theme
W ho are we, where do we come from, what do we have in common, and
how do we differ from others and what needs to we have in common?
Exploring people, culture, and the world.

Description
In this grade students explore cultural differences with a special focus on how
childhood is experienced in different parts of the world. They read stories about
children, forms of play, customs, and myths; study literature and music from
around the world; and learn about different places around the world. They also
examine the way in which children can make a significant difference in the
world around them and collaborate in a project to improve the educational
opportunities of other children. Students are introduced to the SDGs.

This year students work with peers in at least one other second grade in another
country. Periodically, students check in with their peers in their sister school to
compare notes on what they’re learning, to obtain information, and to make
presentations.

The year places a special emphasis on having the children observe their own
experiences and surroundings as well as the experiences of others. The children
then analyze those experiences as they relate to specific cultures and present
reports of their observations to other children in a different country using varied
technologies.

The curriculum is structured in four units, thirteen activities, and thirty-eight

sessions that take place over thirty weeks.

111
Looking Back
We are one people with universal human needs

Looking Forward
Understanding global interdependence through economic production.

Overview of the Units

1. Similarities and Differences Across Cultures

2. Growing Up in Different Cultures
3. Comparing Literature and Music from Different Cultures
4. How Children Make a Difference

Capstone
The capstone project, which is modest in scope, encourages children to
contribute to the education of other children.

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Unit 2.1
Topic Similarities and Differences Across Cultures
Diverse cultural perspectives, empathy, variations within
cultural groups, curiosity about global affairs, geography,
Theme
common values, the use of evidence, and the use of
technology
Any/all, with more emphasis on the countries represented by
the children’s parents and on the countries in which partner
schools are located. It would be helpful if various sections of
Region
the same grade covered different countries and attempted
to have representation of various world regions (e.g.,
Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America)
Length Eight weeks (six activities and twelve sessions)

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn similarities and differences in how children play in different

cultures and understand the limitations of representing an entire
culture or country with ideal types or averages, understanding that
within every culture, there is variation.
2. Inspire students to take interest in various cultures, cultural
differences, and the ways children live in different cultures. Spark
their desire to communicate with children in other countries with the
use of modern telecommunication technologies.
3. Act by describing the games children play in different cultures and
sharing those observations with students in other parts of the world.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the games that they and other children in their
school play and then present those descriptions in a poster.
2. Students will analyze and compare various games played by children
in their school.
3. Students will narrate the games they play, produce simple videos and
pictures of those games, and share those observations with peers in
other countries using Internet-based communication technologies

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 4. Students will analyze reports produced by peers in a school in
another country describing the games they play.

Overview
This unit engages students in the analysis of their direct experience with the
games they play, and that analysis is then extended to analyses of the games
played by their parents and their peers in other countries. The activities
involves collecting evidence, using observation skills, studying interviews and
documentary sources, elaborating a framework creating categories to analyze
games, and presenting analyses to peers and teachers in their school and to
peers in other countries. The unit offers an introduction to maps and to countries
and students around the world. Students use technology to communicate with
peers in other countries.

Activity 2.1.1
What Games Do We Play?
This teacher-led activity is an analysis of the games that students in the class
play. Students take turns describing one game they play. In groups, some students
then play the game while other students observe them. The teacher then leads an
analysis of the game, focusing the conversation on, for example, the following
questions:

1. What is the name of the game?

2. What is the aim of the game?
3. How many students play it?
4. How does the game foster cooperation?
5. How does the game foster competition?
6. What kind of skill is required to play the game?
7. What resources are necessary to play the game?
8. In what way is the game fun?
9. Where did the game originate? Do we know what country the game is
originally from?
10. In what countries is this game played?

After the conversation in which the games are analyzed, the teacher and students
jointly prepare posters for several games. Some students might write, while
others might draw. These posters are then placed side by side, and students
engage in a conversation in which they compare and contrast the various games.

114
Students then decide as a group which of the games they would like to play by
taking turns making a case for their favorite game, participating in a
conversation about which game they should choose, and finally taking a vote. As
some students play the game, others act as recorders, taking pictures and filming
a short video. Students then watch the video, look at the pictures, and reflect on
their experience playing the game. They go back to the poster describing the
game and revise the description of it if necessary.

Activity 2.1.2What Games Did Our Parents Play When

They Were Children?
Homework
Following lesson 2.1.1, students interview their parents about the games they
played as children. They prepare a poster similar to the posters prepared in
class, with assistance from their parents if necessary. They use the following
interview rubric:

1. What is the name of the game?

2. What is the aim of the game?
3. How would you describe the game?
4. How many students play?
5. How does the game foster cooperation?
6. How does the game foster competition?
7. What kind of skill is required to play the game?
8. What resources are necessary to play the game?
9. In what way is the game fun?
10. Where did the game originate? Do we know what country is the game
originally from?
11. In what countries is this game played?

Using the posters that the students prepared as homework, the teacher leads a
discussion in which the students in class compare and contrast the various
games they learned about. They compare the games played by their parents with
the games they themselves play. They count repeated occurrences of the same
games and examine variations of those games. On a world map, they color-code
the countries in which the games discussed in class are played.

Activity 2.1.3Observing Children Play

In small groups during recess, students observe students in other classes in the

115
school as they play games. They take pictures and videos. Using the rubric
they’ve used so far to analyze games, they interview the other children about the
games they play. In class, they report their observations and produce posters to
systematically compare the various games they’ve observed. They discuss the
differences in age and gender composition of the groups they’ve observed and
which games those groups play.

Activity 2.1.4Talking about Games with Children in Other

Parts of the World
Students examine and analyze how children play in various countries and
regions, beginning with the countries and cultures represented in the class and
extending into those represented by students in their partner school. In this unit
students are also introduced to their peers in their partner school in another
country, and they collaborate to describe the games that children play in their
school and in their sister school.

The teacher and the students communicate with second graders in a school in at
least one other country—and if possible, in two or three other countries. The
purpose of this activity is to have students introduce themselves to their peers,
exchange greetings, and then share descriptions of the games they play. Each
student will introduce him or herself by stating his or her name, age, number of
siblings, and favorite game.

This activity could be supported by the following Coverdell lesson plan, which
was designed to help students think about themselves and how they are similar
to and different from children in other countries:
https://sharemylesson.com/partner/peace-corps-world-wise-schools.

If possible, the students will communicate with one another in real time by using
Skype to hold a videoconference. If a time difference precludes that, they will
exchange a series of PowerPoint slides with videos and pictures in them to
present the games they’ve examined in class. They will receive a similar
presentation from their peers, and they’ll then discuss in class how those games
are similar to or different from the games they themselves play. Students will
explore possible connections between the games they’ve learned about from
their peers in another country and the games they themselves play and those that
their parents played.

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Activity 2.1.5 Understanding Maps
This unit expands on the brief introduction to maps in the previous activity,
focusing on the study of what a map is, what a globe is, where the students’
school is located, and where their sister schools are located. If possible, they
may be encouraged to draw a map of their route from their home to the school
and asked to label it with landmarks relevant their interests (e.g., flowers or
buildings). They learn about different countries and their flags and basic
characteristics of those countries (e.g., their climate, animals, plants, etc.).

– Students learn how to make a map of their classroom, noting where

things are located.
– Students are then given a map of the school and are taken to different
places using the map; some places will not be on the map, and they
will learn how to fill it in.
– They are then given a map of the neighborhood, and they label where
they live.
– They use building blocks to make a “map” of their route from their
home to the school, and they label landmarks.
– They locate bodies of water (e.g., rivers, lakes, and oceans) and
learn to identify them on the globe.

Resources

• Panwapa from Sesame Street (https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=YVyPHSHnMsM and http://www.panwapa.com/)
• The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, by Darcy Pattison
• My Granny Went to Market: A Round-the-World Counting Rhyme,
by Stella Blackstone
• How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, by Marjorie
Priceman
• How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A., by Marjorie
Priceman
• Tulip Sees America, by Cynthia Rylant
• My Sister’s Rusty Bike, by Jim Aylesworth
• Me on the Map, by Joan Sweeney
• Zigby Hunts for Treasure, by Brian Paterson
• Pirate Treasure Map: A Fairytale Adventure
• X Marks the Spot
• The Good Night Our World series, by Adam Gamble
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_n_age_range_mrr_1?

117
 rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AAdam+Gamble%2Cn%3A%211000%2Cn%3

Students then locate their partner schools on a map of the world. They focus on
the countries where those partner schools are located and learn about them and
their flags and perhaps about their basic characteristics (e.g., climate, animals,
plants, etc.).

Optional Activity
A possible activity would be for students to divide into groups, each of which
would be responsible for one country and for making a display with pictures
and other items from that country. The students then carry around a “passport”
and fill it in with pictures or stamps as they “visit” each country/station. Parents
can be asked to help with this activity.

Activity 2.1.6 (Four Sessions)

Learning about Games in Other Countries
Using the games described in the following resources, the teacher will teach a
lesson about games played in different countries. Students will label those
games and the countries in which they’re played on a world map, and in small
groups, they’ll study one particular game. The small groups will then apply the
rubric used throughout these activities to prepare a poster analyzing the game
and will present that poster to the class. If feasible, students will bring home
handouts with information about the game they’re studying and discuss this game
with siblings and parents.

As part of this lesson, students learn to locate on a map all of the continents and
the regions or countries from which they, their parents or guardians, their
grandparents, and other relatives or ancestors came. They also learn to locate
the oceans of the world, five major rivers, and major mountain ranges.

Resources

• http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Around-World-Play-
Games/dp/0471409847#reader_0471409847
• http://www.amazon.com/Multicultural-Game-Book-Grades-1-
6/dp/0590494090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306514348&sr=8-

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 1#reader_0590494090
• http://www.clintrogersonline.com/blog/2008/06/20/games-people-
play-in-different-countries-and-cultures/
• http://www.gameskidsplay.net/games/foreign_indexes/index.htm
• http://www.streetplay.com/playfulworld/
• http://www.amazon.com/Children-Just-Like-Me-
Celebration/dp/0789402017/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1306513644&sr=8-1#reader_0789402017

119
Unit 2.2
Topic Growing Up in Different Cultures
Diverse cultural perspectives, curiosity about global affairs,
cross-cultural perspective taking, empathy, commitment to
Theme
equality, variation within cultural groups, poverty, the use of
evidence, and the use of technology
India, Japan, and the world (as reflected in the countries
Region
represented by partner schools)
Length Ten weeks (four activities and fourteen sessions)

Students examine how children grow up in various parts of the world, including
the rights and responsibilities that children have. Beginning with themselves and
with their peers in their partner school, students examine how children spend
their time and their rights and responsibilities at home and in school. They also
define and give examples of some of the rights and responsibilities that students
as citizens have in school (e.g., students have the right to vote in class elections
and have the responsibility to follow rules). Students then learn about growing
up in various cultures and learn about how different demands and opportunities
influence school attendance.

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn: Learn similarities and differences in how children live in

different cultures
2. Inspire students to take interest in various cultures, in how children
live and grow up in different cultures, and in communicating with
them using modern telecommunication technologies
3. Act by describing the rights and responsibilities of children in
different cultures and by sharing those descriptions with students in
other parts of the world.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the rights and responsibilities of children in

different countries.
2. Students will analyze and compare childhood in different countries.

120
 3. Students will begin to learn about child labor and the concept of
educational opportunity.
4. Students will, using Internet-based communication technologies,
exchange presentations on how children spend their time
(specifically, a week) with peers in other countries.

Overview
This unit builds on the students’ analysis of the games children play in different
countries and parts of the world and helps students analyze the lives of children
in different cultures. Students observe and record how they spend their time and
compare and contrast those observations with those of their peers as well as
with those of their peers in partner schools around the world. They learn the
concepts of rights and responsibilities and use those as categories to examine
how they and other children spend time. They prepare presentations that they
will share in class and with peers in other countries using telecommunication
technologies. They then study childhood in urban and rural areas and examine
school attendance and the education experience of students in different countries
and regions. This unit also introduces the concept of child labor around the
world.

Activity 2.2.1A Typical Week in Several Countries

Students maintain a record of how they spend their time in a given week. In
class they examine those observations and classify their activities using various
categories (e.g., time alone and time with others; time with other children and
time with adults; time with relatives and time with nonrelatives; and time at
home, in school, or outdoors). They examine variations in how different
children in the class spend their time and discuss, for example, how they help in
school and how they help at home. Students also discuss the rights and
responsibilities that they have at home and in school. Students then prepare a
presentation—using text, pictures, and PowerPoint slides—that summarizes
how most of them spend their time, how they help, their rights and
responsibilities, and variations within the class.

They then share that presentation with peers in their sister school abroad.
Students exchange ideas about the reasons for the differences in how they spend
their time, in how they help at home and in school, and in their rights and
responsibilities at home and in school.

121
Activity 2.2.2Growing Up in India and Japan and Going to
School in Different Countries
This lesson introduces how children grow up in urban and rural areas in Japan
and in rural areas in India. It also introduces some of the different approaches to
education in use in various countries.

Students discuss selected segments of the following Discovery DVD:

http://store.discoveryeducation.com/product/show/51900.

Students read and discuss the book I Live in Tokyo, by Mari Takabayashi. In this
book the main character, seven-year-old Mimiko, describes special dates
throughout the year.

The teacher leads the students through the lesson “Asha’s Village in India,”
which was developed by the Peace Corps’ Coverdell Program.

Students then watch selected segments of this video series and discuss
differences in school characteristics and in opportunities to attend school in
various countries: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/time-for-
school-series/introduction/4340/.

Activity 2.2.3
Growing Up Around the World
Using a library of books that describe growing up in different countries, students
in small teams select a country whose children they want to learn more about.
They read a book, and with the assistance of the teacher, who will draw from
the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children’s Issues Worldwide, they prepare a
presentation for their peers on how children grow up in the country they
selected. That presentation focuses on analyses of what percentage of the
children in that country attend elementary school and secondary school and of
what forms of child labor exist in the country. Students place on a world map the
country they are studying.

Students will also develop activities, reflective essays, drawings, and

discussions.

Teacher Resources
122
 • The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children’s Issues Worldwide,
which has very complete summary chapters describing basic
characteristics of childhood in most countries.
• A list of literature about growing up in various countries. Ideally, the
school library will have all of these titles; if not, the teacher can
select a subset of them specifically for this activity.
(http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/compubs/booklists/growingupwrld/G

Activity 2.2.4
Access to School and Child Labor around the World
In this lesson the teacher explains how access to school around the world varies
and introduces the topic of child labor. The children read selected chapters in
the book Facing the Lion, by Joseph Lekuton, and discuss in class the different
responsibilities and opportunities that children have in different parts of the
world. They also watch selected segments of the series Time for School. To
introduce the discussion of the factors that influence access to school, the
teacher uses lessons from the Coverdell program.

Resources

• Facing the Lion: Growing up Maasai on the African Savanna, by

Joseph Lekuton (http://www.amazon.com/Facing-Lion-Growing-
African-Savanna/dp/0792251253)
• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_lekuton.html
• http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/time-for-school-
series/introduction/4340/

123
Unit 2.3
Topic Comparing Literature and Music from Different Cultures
Arts: literature and music; one’s own and others’ identities,
Theme common values, empathy, curiosity about global affairs,
cross-cultural perspective taking, and geography
Region Any/all
Length Six weeks (two activities and eight sessions)

In this unit students examine literature and music from different cultures and
countries. They situate the stories and songs on a map and a time line and
discuss the themes that those creations focus on, comparing and contrasting
them.

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn similarities and differences in children’s literature and myths

and in songs from different cultures
2. Inspire students to take in interest and appreciate literature and music
as cultural expressions.
3. Act by analyzing the values reflected in literature and myths and by
assessing the potential of music to promote global understanding.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will recognize the similarities and differences in various

myths and literature from different countries.
2. Students will identify responses to songs and music and recognize the
impact of music on other children.

Overview
Building on the analysis of similarities and differences in direct experiences
with play and games and on the analysis of how children spend their time,
students explore music and literature from different countries and analyze the
similarities and differences in music and literature across cultures and over
time.

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Activity 2.3.1
Folktales and Myths from around the World
Students read and discuss folktales and myths from around the world. They
discuss the aspects of the human experience and the values conveyed by those
stories and their similarities and differences. If possible, students then place the
origin of those stories on a time line and a map.

Resources

• http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/myths.htm
• http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Creation-Stories-Around-
World/dp/0152387420

Activity 2.3.2 Music and Songs from around the World

Students explore music and songs from around the world as well as how songs
can highlight commonalities of the human experience. Students learn a few short
songs in several foreign languages and learn basic greetings in Arabic, Chinese,
French, Japanese, and Spanish. Students explore songs that celebrate cultural
diversity and are introduced to the project “Playing for Change,” which brings
together musicians from around the world in a collaborative project promoting
global understanding.

Parents are invited to submit songs appropriate for second graders that convey
significant meaning. These songs are played in class, and the children discuss
the themes addressed in these songs. They compare these themes.

The teacher then introduces and plays additional songs, and students share what
emotions those songs evoke and what themes they think are addressed in those
songs. Students learn a few of these songs and situate their origin on a world
map and a time line.

Students are then introduced to projects in which musicians from around the
world collaborate to promote global understanding through music.

Resources

125
• http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=e_atoz
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessi_Colter_Sings_Just_for_Kids:_Songs_from_
• Playing for Change project (http://www.amazon.com/PFC-Songs-
Around-World-
Combo/dp/B003TJ4YUQ/ref=amb_link_356415782_3?
pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=hero-quick-
promo&pf_rd_r=1SDMQ9GY4MQ2GKXP801N&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=12

126
Unit 2.4.
Topic How Children Make a Difference
Empathy, ethical frameworks, common values, commitment
to equality, innovation, creativity, the value of human
Theme
potential, creative communication, and the use of
technology
Region Any/all and countries in partner school
Length Six weeks (two activities and five sessions)

This unit will examine how children around the world make a difference by
helping others, improving their communities, and collaborating to address
global needs. It will conclude with children in the school taking on a project to
make a contribution to the education of other children. The project will be of a
modest scale, and it could be as simple as making a financial contribution to an
existing organization that supports education. The project could also be more
complex, and students could work with their peers in the sister classroom with
which they have collaborated throughout the year to find age-appropriate ways
to jointly address a global challenge.

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn that people, and especially children, have the ability to

influence others positively through their actions in a significant way
and the ability to question the barriers that limit opportunities for
children to exercise agency in improving the conditions in their
communities. Identify the SDGs.
2. Inspire students to develop an appreciation for those who contribute
to solving important global challenges.
3. Act by analyzing various ways to improve educational opportunity
and by evaluating their own capacity to contribute to those
improvements.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn the characteristics that children change makers

share.

127
 2. Students will recognize their own capacity to be change makers.
3. Students will develop the skills to collaborate with others in order to
make a tangible contribution to the education of other children.

Overview
In the concluding unit for the grade, students build on the previous analyses of
similarities and differences in how children grow up around the world and in
their opportunity to be educated and analyze the ways in which children can
express their agency in positive ways that make a difference. Students engage in
a small project in which they make a contribution to the education of other
children in some part of the world.

Activity 2.4.1 How Do We Help Others?

The teacher will discuss examples of how the students help others at home, in
their community, and beyond. The teacher will then discuss examples of
children who have helped others on a larger scale—for example, the founders of
the World Children Organization or some of the children featured in Scholastic’s
Kids Make a Difference series (see below). Students in the class will then be
asked to read a story about one of those children and to create a painting or
write a song, paragraph, or poem that explains how that child is making a
difference and why that difference is important. The teacher will then introduce
the SDGs using the lesson plans developed by UNICEF.

Resources

1. Kids Make a Difference articles from Scholastic

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=504)
2. UNICEF’s lesson plan on introducing the SDGs
(https://teachunicef.org/teaching-materials/topic/sustainable-
development-goals)
3. The iEARN projects created for the purpose of introducing the SDGs
(https://iearn.org/news/iearn-projects-align-to-the-un-sustainable-
development-goals)

Activity 2.4.2
What Can We Do Together to Help Other Children Get an
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Education?
In class the teacher will lead a discussion of how students can help with the
education of other children. The teacher will present some of the organizations
that are involved in supporting education, explain the ways they do it, and
suggest ways that the students in the class could make a contribution. The
students in the class will decide which other children they want to help and how
and implement a plan to help in a concrete way. The teacher may do this activity
in collaboration with the partner school.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
THIRD GRADE: UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL
INTERDEPENDENCE THROUGH
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
IN CHOCOLATE MANUFACTURING

Theme
E xploring and experimenting with social entrepreneurship to address global
issues, especially around child labor; Understanding and addressing
social and global issues from an inter-disciplinary lens using the perspectives of
multiple stakeholders such as individuals, businesses, and NGOs.

Description
In this year, students learn about entrepreneurship and managing a business.
They start with knowing that they have to make their own kind of chocolate but
based on the multiple processes that underpin chocolate manufacturing as it
moves from raw material to a finished product. Students also examine the
growth of chocolate as a global phenomenon through a historical perspective.
The students work in groups and imagine that they are the owners of a chocolate
business that they want to expand into three different countries. Students are
introduced to a pen pal from each of those countries and learn about those
countries’ cultural values and norms and begin to recognize some of the
stereotypes about them. Throughout the year, students “manage” a business by
monitoring the associated expenses, developing a business strategy, and creating
a prototype. Students learn about different physical markets in the world,
focusing specifically in three countries they study, and are informed that they can
sell their chocolate in those markets. Based on what they’ve learned through
discussions with their pen pals about the culture, lifestyles, and preferences in
their countries, students create their final prototype, a logo, and their own
advertising campaign for the chocolate. At the same time, they question key
business-related concepts such as free trade, child labor, and creating products
that are ethical, and they learn to acknowledge, appreciate, and value diversity
across the world.

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Looking Back
Exploring similarities, commonalities and differences between people and
cultures across the world

Looking Forward
Understanding the formation, maintenance, governance and the decline of
ancient and modern civilizations across time

Overview of the Units

1) Setting the Stage for the Life of a Chocolate

2) The Life of a Chocolate and Its History
3) Let’s Make Our Own Chocolate
4) Understanding the Culture of My Market
5) Marketing My Chocolate in School
6) Child Labor
7) Taking My Chocolate to the Market
8) Beyond Chocolate

Capstone
A Yearlong project in which students develop a business plan and manage a
business of selling chocolate.

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Unit 3.1
Topic Setting the Stage for the Life of a Chocolate
Geography; globalization; ICC; and work and mind habits:
Theme
innovation and creativity
Cocoa-producing areas (West Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana,
Region Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo; Mexico; Brazil; Malaysia, and
Indonesia)
Length One to two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn a story in a classic children’s book (Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory) and begin to see chocolate as a global product.
2. Inspire students to take interest in examining some of the global
interdependencies in the creation of chocolate.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the fact that the main
ingredient in chocolate and its production are confined to very few
parts of the world.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become familiar with the plot of a classic children’s

literary piece: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
2. Students will understand how the actions of individuals impact
eventual outcomes, as in the case of Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory.
3. Students will plot on a map the countries where cocoa is grown
across the world and also understand that the sites for growth,
processing, and exporting don’t necessarily have to be the same.

Overview
In this unit, students are introduced to the movie - Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic book, first published in 1964.
The story not only serves as a primer to the year and creates excitement around
the theme of chocolate production but also gives students an opportunity to

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examine some of the decisions made by the characters and the ways those
decisions influence eventual outcomes. Through a mapping exercise, students
will identify the countries that are the largest producers of cocoa in the world
today and understand that while the critical ingredient (cocoa) might be grown
in one part of the world, its production might take place in another part of the
world. In that way, the students will draw out some of the global
interdependencies involved in the production of the product.

Activity 3.1.1
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
As the students walk into class, they are welcomed with a piece of chocolate.
The teacher provides students with the wrappers of the chocolates and asks
them to list out the first few natural ingredients. This will elicit responses from
the students about, for example, what they think the ingredients of chocolate are,
what forms they think those ingredients might be in (solid/liquid), and whether
they think those ingredients come from plants or animals.

The students subsequently watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a movie
released in 2005 and based on Roald Dahl’s original book. After viewing the
movie, the teacher asks them the following questions:

1. How do they think the gold wrapper got into the chocolate in the first
place?
2. What did they learn about how chocolate is made from the film? What
is unique about each of the rooms in the factory?
3. Why do the characters in the film make some of the choices that they
make?

(Note that students may also read Roald Dahl’s original book alternatively,
instead of watching the movie, and it could be assigned as summer reading
leading up to third grade.)

For homework, students are provided with a Hershey’s Kiss and are asked to
answer the following question and complete the following tasks:

1. What is the main ingredient in chocolate? (The main ingredient is

cocoa.)
2. Mark on a world map any five countries where cocoa is grown, and
also mark the world’s largest manufacturer of cocoa.

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 3. Mark on a world map three countries where Hershey has a chocolate
manufacturing unit. (There are Hershey manufacturing units in
Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and, thanks to a recent partnership
with Lotte, a South Korean candy manufacturer, China.) For more
information about Hershey’s consult the resources list.
4. Conduct background research to find out if chocolate is a modern
phenomenon or if it has a history.

Resources

• Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

(http://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/stories/1960s/charlie-and-
the-chocolate-factory) and (https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-
Chocolate-Factory-Roald-Dahl/dp/0142410314/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1466877499&sr=8-
1&keywords=charlie+and+the+chocolate+factory)
• A sample lesson plan and games associated with Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory
• (http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/library/books/charlie-and-the-
chocolate-factory)
• A teaching-unit CD on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Chocolate-Factory-Teaching-
Unit/dp/B0018XVLVA
• Information regarding Hershey is available at
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hershey_Company
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/01/26/idUSSEO13926420070126

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Unit 3.2
Topic The Life of a Chocolate and Its History
Geography, globalization, world history, and ICC:
Theme
interpersonal (others’ identities and cultures)
Region Any/all
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the global interdependencies in manufacturing using the

example of chocolate.
2. Inspire students to be excited by the fact that the foods people eat
have had a long history and have evolved over time through the
interactions of people and culture.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the important milestones in
the evolution of the product.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the geographical reasons for processes

entailed in chocolate production and understand the value-addition
process in manufacturing across different geographies.
2. Students will describe the important milestones in the development
and evolution of chocolate and understand that its form has changed
over the years.
3. Students will create time lines that chart the process through which
chocolate became a global product.

Overview
In this unit, students get a better understanding of why cocoa production is
limited to certain parts of the world and of its importance in the chocolate-
manufacturing process. Students get an overview of the processes involved in
manufacturing chocolate. They also realize that chocolate isn’t a modern
phenomenon but has evolved over time through the interactions of societies,
cultures, and peoples.

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Activity 3.2.1
The Chocolate-Manufacturing Process
Students begin by presenting their findings from their homework to the class.
The teacher marks all of the places where chocolate is produced on a world
map (West Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo; Mexico;
Brazil; Malaysia, and Indonesia). The teacher should ask the students the
following questions:

1. Which part of the cacao plant does the chocolate come from?
2. Does the plant have a chocolaty smell? A chocolaty taste?
3. Why is cocoa grown only in the countries they listed on the map? Are
there special climatic conditions necessary for the growth of the
plant? Can they grow the plant in their backyard?

Resources

• A lesson plan on the anatomy of the cacao plant and on how it’s
cultivated (http://www.rainforest-
alliance.org/curriculum/fourth/lesson2)
• A lesson plan concerning ecological connections, the environment,
and chocolate (a highly recommended resource)
(http://www.rainforestalliance.org/curriculum/third/lesson1)
• Virtual tours of chocolate factories that include explanations of the
chocolate-manufacturing process
(http://manufacturing.stanford.edu/hetm.html)

(Note that this unit can also be connected to the science curriculum, and
specifically to the unit on states of matter. The teacher can explain how
chocolate comes from a solid cocoa pod, is subsequently converted to a liquid,
and is finally sold as a solid product as well as how this conversion from one
state of matter to another could take place.)

Activity 3.2.2
Is Chocolate a Modern or Historical Phenomenon?
The students can read a book about the history of chocolate and about how it
spread from the Mayan civilization to Europe and the Americas. Students can
create a time line showing the history of chocolate, and the teacher can help

136
them plot on a map the spread of chocolate across the world over time.

Through these activities, the students should also be able to produce a list of the
important developments in the history of chocolate (e.g., the Europeans’ addition
of sugar, the Aztecs’ use of cacao as a currency, and the cultivation of the cacao
tree).

Resources

• A lesson plan on how chocolate has changed through the ages

(http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/themes/chocolate)
• Reading material on the story of chocolate
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Chocolate-DK-Readers-
Level/dp/1405303875/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b)
• A quick overview of the history of chocolate
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chocolate)
• A second overview of the history of chocolate
(http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/the-sweet-history-of-
chocolate)

Teacher Resources

• A book based on archaeological and ethno-historical research on the

significance of chocolate across several millennia
(http://www.amazon.com/True-History-Chocolate-Sophie-
Coe/dp/0500282293)
• Another book on the history of chocolate
http://www.amazon.com/Chocolate-Pathway-Meredith-L-
Dreiss/dp/0816524645/ref=pd_sim_b_5)

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Unit 3.3
Topic Let’s Make Our Own Chocolate
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture and
Theme others’ identities and cultures); work and mind habits:
innovation and creativity; geography; and economics
Region Any/all
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about some of the decisions involved in establishing a

business and about how distance and geography play a role in value-
addition processes.
2. Inspire students to learn more about these underlying
interdependencies and about how different pieces of information are
required to understand product markets in a holistic way.
3. Act by describing where to get the main raw ingredient from and plot
on a map the locations of the countries that grow it and their target-
market countries.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe some of the important pieces of information

that they need before they can create a product.
2. Students will understand the concepts of export, import, markups,
different modes of transportation, and distance as it relates to
manufacturing decisions.
3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the use of budgets and
the ability to stick to one while planning a trip.

Overview
Students are introduced to some of the intricacies of starting consumer-goods
manufacturing units and to the underlying factors that influence pricing
decisions, such as demand, supply, competition, availability of ingredients and
raw materials, costs of production and distribution. Students begin to understand

138
that their decisions must be based on factors relating to the raw materials as
well as to the end product itself. Students are familiarized with data exploration,
markups, and price fluctuations. Through a mapping exercise, students plan a
trip to the markets they will sell their product in. Students use a budget to plan
the trip and collect the background information necessary to prepare for it.

Activity 3.3.1, Option A

Manufacturing My Own Chocolate
(Note that there are two options for this activity, option A and option B. Option
A can serve as a stand-alone activity, and if time and interest permit it, option B
can be added to the unit.)

The teacher informs the students that they will start their own chocolate-
manufacturing companies and that through the year, they will work to create their
own unique type of chocolate. Students are divided into three teams and
informed that each team is a competitor. They are also informed that they have to
manufacture their chocolate in New York City and sell their chocolate to
children of their age in one specific country. (Each team will be assigned one
country in Asia, Africa, or South America.)

(Note that the teacher should help the students pick these target-market
countries. They should be developing countries and should be a mix of countries
that are close to and farther away from cocoa-exporting countries. Also, if the
teacher feels comfortable with it, the students may actually use the kitchen in the
school and try to produce their own chocolate. Even though the process of
chocolate production in the school will be hugely oversimplified, it will still
serve to generate excitement and interest around the activities of the year.)

Once each team has been assigned the country in which it will sell chocolate,
the team will be asked to create a list of questions about what it needs to know
about that country. Consider the following potential list of questions:

Which part of the world will the team get its cocoa from? (The eight
largest cocoa-producing countries at present are Côte d’Ivoire,
Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Ecuador, and
Malaysia. These countries produce 90 percent of the world’s supply
of cocoa.) This question has several subquestions that need to be
addressed:

139
 1. What is the cost of exporting cocoa from these cocoa-
manufacturing countries?
2. Where have these countries been exporting cocoa to?
3. How would one plot a simple trend of cocoa production in
these countries across different years? Does the trend stay
more or less the same, or does it fluctuate over time?
4. How much does it cost to import and export cocoa?
5. Are there frequent price fluctuations? How might price
fluctuations impact the decision to buy cocoa from a particular
country?
6. What are the possible expenses involved in manufacturing
chocolate in New York City and, further, in selling it in another
country? (Note that students may need to budget for expenses of
other raw materials—for example, milk or nuts. Since they will
be producing their chocolate in New York City, they can obtain
these prices from a supermarket, or the teacher can provide
them.)
7. What are markups in the manufacturing process? Are there
overhead costs, and if so, how can buying in bulk affect those
overheads? (Note that the teacher may connect this idea to the
math curriculum to help students learn about profit, loss, and
markups.)

The teacher should consult the International Cocoa Organization

(http://www.icco.org/) for statistics on cocoa production across the world since
1960. He or she will have to modify this data set before presenting it to the
students, though, since there are a lot of data points that could confuse children
at this age.

Students should consider the following questions while selling their chocolate
(the finished product):

1. What is the climate of the country in which they will be selling their
chocolate?
2. Where will they sell their chocolate to children?
3. What kind of food do people in that country eat?
4. When do they eat chocolate (before their meal, after their meal, or in
between meals as a snack)? What kinds of chocolate do they eat?
(This question can also introduce students to the different kinds and
forms of chocolate—for example, dark chocolate, milk chocolate,
and hot-chocolate powder.)

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 5. How much do people pay for chocolate in these countries? Based on
this information and on the financial information already discussed
(e.g., markups), how much should they sell their chocolate for?

(Note that the teacher should clarify that they don’t need to answer all of these
questions immediately and that they will discover many of the answers as they
proceed through the year. He or she should also mention that much of the
research and groundwork will have to be done by the teams themselves.)

Activity 3.3.1, Option B

Examining the Cocoa Market Closely
(This activity can be used in addition to option A if time permits, or the teacher
can skip it and move on to activity 3.3.2.)

The students have passports that they update as they visit their cocoa markets
and examine the factors below. They also maintain a video journal or a
scrapbook and answer the following questions in it:

1. How would they get to those countries?

2. How far will the cocoa have to travel to get to their site of
manufacturing (New York City)?
3. In what climates does cocoa grow?
4. What are the fields and farmers of the countries like? How do people
live in those countries?

Activity 3.3.2
Planning my trip to my market!
The teams of students are informed that they will have to virtually travel to the
countries they will be selling their chocolate in. The teams are provided with a
budget for travel and have to stick to it. Using online travel websites and
interactive world maps, students will do the following activities:

1. Identify the mode of transportation they will use.

2. Plot their journey on a map.
3. Decide how they will break up their journey if they need to.
4. Identify how much it will cost to get to these countries and figure out
whether they’ve stuck to their budget.

141
5. Identify other alternative modes of transportation and discuss whether
it’s better to save time or money.
6. Discuss what they will need to pack for their trip.
7. Make a list of any other background information that they think they
might need.

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Unit 3.4
Topic Understanding the Culture of My Market
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture, others’
identities and cultures, and etiquette); ethics: humility,
Theme
respect, and common values; and work and mind habits:
cross-cultural perspective taking
Region Any/all
Length Two weeks at first and then throughout the semester

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the day-to-day life and the culture in their target
countries and learn to interact with another student in a different part
of the world using technology.
2. Inspire students to appreciate cultural nuances and differences and to
draw comparisons in order to examine how life differs across the
world.
3. Act by using technology to regularly communicate effectively and
respectfully with someone very different in another country.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Use technology to communicate with their pen pal on an ongoing

basis and become comfortable doing so even though they haven’t
seen or met their pen pals in person.
2. Share details of their own culture and contrast it with the cultures of
their pen pals.
3. Describe daily lifestyles of other children in different parts of the
world.
4. Appreciate literature from different parts of the world.
5. Reflect on their own practices and readily express their
apprehensions and excitement about communicating with people
from different parts of the world.

Overview

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In this unit, students form pen-pal relationships with students in the countries
where their chocolate will be sold. Through these interactions, students develop
a better understanding of the culture of their market, of how people in it interact
with one another, and of the food preferences of those people. Students will also
form their own discussion questions based on the assigned books, which will
serve to provide them with background information on and insight into the
culture of their markets. As these interactions with their pen pal continue,
students will also reflect on their thoughts about the cultures of their target
markets, on the stereotypes they initially had about them, and on how those
thoughts and stereotypes have changed over time.

(Note that while the suggested length for this unit is about two weeks, it could
also be made into a semester-long, ongoing activity where their pen pals serve
as consultants as the students further explore the market where they will sell
their chocolate.)

Activity 3.4.1
Getting to Know the Other
In this unit, the students are introduced to pen pals in their sister schools. The
aim of this activity is for students to know more about the background and
preferences of the children who will be the teams’ customers. Each student will
be paired with a pen pal. Each student will exchange information with his or her
pen pal by asking and answer the following questions:

1. What languages are spoken in the country?

2. How do people greet one another, and what is the common etiquette
in this country?
3. What food preferences do children have?
4. Are children commonly given pocket money?
5. What does daily life look like?
6. Does the student have a large or small family?
7. Who makes the decision to buy things in the house? Where do they
buy things?
8. Does the student work at home and help with daily chores, or is
someone else responsible for chores?

Each team will be assigned a children’s book based on the country it picked.
The following are databases of age-appropriate books and stories from across
the world that the students may pick a book from:

144
 ○ http://www.unc.edu/~rwilkers/title.htm,
○ http://resources.primarysource.org/content.php?
pid=53344&sid=390913
○ http://www.eslstation.net/theREALWF/Folktale%20Links.htm

After the very first interaction with their pen pals, the teams will maintain a
video journal and answer the following questions:

1. What are their expectations about how this person looks or behaves?
2. What were their responses to their first encounter with this new
person? Were they scared, excited, happy, or indifferent? Why or
why not?
3. What were their beliefs about people in that part of the world, and
what are their beliefs now?
4. How are their lives and the lives of children in those countries
similar or different?

At the very end of the activity (or maybe even later in the year, depending on
whether these interactions continue or are terminated after two weeks), students
will look back at some of their reflections on their interactions with people from
other cultures and seek to understand whether their perceptions have changed.
(Note that this could be a very powerful learning experience for the students and
thus could require scaffolding from the teacher.)

Alternatively, students could also maintain a portfolio of pictures and important

items that represent the day-to-day life in the countries of their pen pals, and
those portfolios could be exchanged with students’ pen pals at this point in time.
This portfolio would be similar to the one they created and exchanged in second
grade (if implemented at that time), or they could even do it at this stage in the
event that students and pen pals did not exchange the same during the second
grade.

(Note that students are asked to keep a video journal so that they can become
familiar with technology from the start and also because many activities in the
middle school rely heavily on written tasks. A video journal would also provide
a form of documentation that could eventually be shared with stakeholders.)

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Unit 3.5
Topic Marketing My Chocolate in School
ICC: interpersonal (empathy and diverse cultural
Theme perspectives); ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global
affairs); ethics: commitment to equality; and poverty
Region Developing world
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the different entry points for a product and about what
school life in different parts of the world looks like.
2. Inspire students to develop a better understanding of the differences
in schooling experiences.
3. Act by describing schooling experiences in various places, analyze
differences and provide possible reasons and hypotheses for those
differences, and realizing how schools are used as target markets for
products.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become comfortable using interviews and field

observations as data-collection techniques.
2. Students will identify cases of product differentiation within the
school.
3. Students will describe differences in the schooling experiences of
children of similar ages in different parts of the world.
4. Students will understand and articulate the differences and
similarities in the relative valuations and expectations placed on
schooling across the world.

Overview
In this unit, students see the school as a potential market for their chocolate.
Students observe their own school cafeteria, taking note of the products that are
sold there and the various forms of product differentiation. Students may also

146
test prototypes of the chocolate they’ve produced and give out samples in the
school so that other students can provide them with feedback. They extend this
further to an examination of schools and school life in different parts of the
world. Students also examine some of the motivations behind attending school
and explore trends related to, for example, school enrollment and dropout rates.

Activity 3.5.1
The School as a Market and Testing My Prototype
The students take a tour of their school and their cafeteria and are asked to take
field notes and to interview students buying goods from the vending machines
and the cafeteria. Alternatively, students can create samples of different kinds of
chocolates in their school kitchen and then use their school cafeteria as a site in
which to get feedback on their products. Students can collect and collate data
and learn to take polls and to organize their data in percentages. (Note that these
concepts can be linked with the math curriculum at this stage.) Based on the data
they’ve collected, they will answer the following questions in their teams and
then present their analyses to the class:

1. What goods and candy did they find in their school vending machines
and cafeteria?
2. Do these products look the same as they do in regular markets? What
is different or similar? (For example, are there packages or contents
different?) What might be the reasons for these similarities and
differences?
3. Why do they think people purchase more of one type of product than
another? What attracts them to a product?
4. Would students still buy this product if it were located a little farther
away in another part of the building? How much does location
matter?

Activity 3.5.2
School Life across the World
Students are then asked to think about how they might want to sell their
chocolates in their target-market countries. But before that, the teacher asks the
students if they indeed can reach all children by selling their products in schools
—what if there are children who don’t go to school?

The students are then asked to find out more information from their pen pals by

147
asking them the following questions:

1. What percentage of children attend school in these countries? (Note

that students may also find this information in reports, such as the
UNESCO Education for All: Global Monitoring Report.)
2. Why do they think that some children in these countries don’t go to
school?
3. What does a regular school life look like across the world? Is it the
same as their school life, or are there differences?
4. Why do their pen pals go to school?

The teacher also shows the students excerpts from the PBS Series Time for
School

(http://www.pbs.org/show/time-school/) and
(http://www.thirteen.org/programs/time-for-school/)

In a video journal, the students reflect upon why they themselves go to school
and on the relative value that is placed on schooling in different parts of the
world. Students also may reflect on the ways their schooling experiences differ
from others’ schooling experiences. Students reflect on those similarities and
differences and consider their interactions with their pen pals and what they’ve
seen in the PBS series.

(Note that this could be an important time for the students to realize how
different their schooling experiences might be from those in other parts of the
world.)

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Unit 3.6
Topic Child Labor
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics
(trust in institutions, commitment to equality, importance of
global compacts, and commitment to supporting human
Theme
rights); work and mind habits: cross-cultural perspective
taking and innovation and creativity; economic
development; and poverty
Developing world, especially West African cocoa-producing
Region
countries
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the issues related to child labor.

2. Inspire students to examine the nuances of child labor and to
understand its complexities in depth.
3. Act by describing some differences in childhood experiences and by
formulating a call to action for addressing the issue.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become aware of the complexities of child labor and

describe the issues related to child labor in cocoa plantations and
thus in chocolate manufacturing.
2. Students will be informed about the different forms of child labor
across the world and the different ways in which they impact
children.
3. Students will articulate stakeholders’ different approaches to tackling
child-labor issues and debate and defend their own stances on the
issue.
4. Students will be aware of concepts such as organic production and
fair trade certification.
5. Students will be confident about their agency and efficacy in
addressing the issue.

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Overview
Beginning with the cocoa-plantation industry, students are familiarized with the
issue of child labor, which is then discussed in the context of other industries.
Through the use of literature and stories about child labor in different industries,
students will analyze some of the complexities of child labor as well as its
moral- economic-, and development-related causes and effects Students also
learn about the International Labour Organization and its efforts to eliminate
child labor globally. Since students will be involved in creating their own
chocolate, they will collectively seek to discover the most effective way to
combat child labor in the chocolate-manufacturing industry and discuss how
they’d like to tackle the issue.

Activity 3.6.1
Understanding Child Labor
The teams present their findings concerning the different valuations placed on
schooling and the proportion of out-of-school children in each of the countries
to the class.

All of the students are introduced to the issues of child labor in cocoa
plantations and in the chocolate-manufacturing industry.

Use the following link to learn facts about child labor in cocoa plantations and
to study advocacy materials that advocacy-based organizations have used when
advocating with chocolate-manufacturing companies:
http://www.stopthetraffik.org/resources/chocolate/#1.

Each team reads a book that deals with child labor in different industries.

Resources

• A story about a 12-year old boy and his organization, Free the
Children, fighting against Child Labor and international human rights
(http://www.amazon.com/Free-Children-Fights-Against-
Proves/dp/0060930659)
• A story about a boy working in a carpet-manufacturing factory in
Pakistan (http://www.reachandteach.com/s/20050831122910561)

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Based on what they read/learn, students can conduct background research and
then discuss the following questions:

1. What is the role of education in addressing child labor?

2. Why do they think the children who they read/learned about don’t go
to school?
3. What can be done to support families to ensure that they don’t send
their children to work but to school?
4. Are there some types of work that seem more dangerous than others?
5. Should all forms of child labor be banned? Or should only the more
dangerous types be banned?
6. Does helping at home with household chores count as child labor?
7. What can children do to help other children?

Students are then introduced to Craig Kielburger, who, at the age of twelve,
founded Free the Children and traveled to South Asia to understand child labor
in the region
(http://www.reachandteach.com/content/article.php/20050831122910561/2).

Activity 3.6.2
Tackling Child Labor
The teacher introduces the concept of stakeholders to the students and helps
them identify three important stakeholder positions that are part of a civil
society: businesses (e.g., chocolate-manufacturing companies), consumers, and
NGOs.

Students are provided with a challenge that concerns tackling child labor in
their own chocolate-manufacturing businesses. As a class, they have to find a
solution to the child-labor issue, and each group of stakeholders has to take its
own approach to the issue.

The aim is for students to understand the different approaches that may be
adopted.

Each group is then introduced to the different approaches that the other
stakeholder groups have decided to adopt.

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Resources

• Approaches chocolate manufacturers have adapted to prevent child

labor —fair-trade cocoa and chocolate and manufacturing organic
cocoa (http://www.icco.org/about/chocolate.aspx). (Note that an
executive of a chocolate-manufacturing company can be brought into
the class as a guest speaker and that the students can interview him
or her about fair wages and child labor in the industry.)
• Approaches NGOs have used to advocate with chocolate
manufacturers around issues of fair trade and child labor
(http://www.worldcocoafoundation.org/index.html).

The teacher introduces to the students the International Labour Organization

(ILO) and explains its role in advocating against child labor. (See the resources
listed at the end of unit.)

In the end, the groups debate the solutions to child labor, making a case for the
solutions that they believe would be the most effective in addressing child labor,
especially in the context of the chocolate-manufacturing industry.

As teams, students discuss how they can make chocolates without the use of
child labor. They should answer the following questions:

1. Will they donate their profits to help combat child labor and promote
education of children in countries where cocoa is produced?
2. Will they avoid buying cocoa from exporting countries that have a
history of child labor?
3. Will they ensure that their chocolate is certified as child labor–free?

Each team presents its own case and stand, and the teams collectively debate the
best course of action for their manufacturing processes.

Resources

• Background reading for teachers (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-

style/food-and-drink/features/chocolate-worth-its-weight-in-gold-
2127874.html)
• Introduction to the ILO (http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/child-

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 labour/lang--en/index.htm)
• ILO-designed activities and advocacy material for learning about
child labor
(http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Campaignandadvocacy/Youthinaction/C182-
Youth-orientated/lang--en/index.htm)

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Unit 3.7
Topic Taking My Chocolate to the Market
Economics; work and mind habits: innovation and creativity
and cross-cultural perspective taking; ethics: ethical
Theme: frameworks, importance of global compacts, and
commitment to equality; and ICC: interpersonal (diverse
cultural perspectives)
Any/all (based on the countries the students picked to sell
Region
their chocolate in)
Length Four to six weeks (based on interest)

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about different forms of physical markets across the world and
about creating a marketing strategy.
2. Inspire students to further understand how different companies use
leveraged product differentiation to market their products.
3. Act by creating a marketing strategy and an advertising jingle.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become familiar with the interactions between markets

and organizations and with how organizations tap into markets based
on the characteristics of those markets.
2. Students will articulate the role of markets in creating profits and in
economic development.
3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the process of creating
a sound and locally relevant marketing strategy.
4. Students will develop a brand that represents the team’s ethos.

Overview
In this unit, students learn about the ways different markets of the world appear,
they ways they’re organized, and they ways their organization might influence
the sales of products. Students work toward creating a marketing campaign
around their chocolate and examine some of the intricacies behind their final

154
decisions about how they’ll price and market their end product in fair and
ethical ways. Students also pick a brand ambassador and a logo for their
chocolate.

(Note that based on time availability and interest, this could be the culminating
activity of this year, or the teacher could proceed to the next unit. The last
activity in this unit should be fun, competitive, and collaborative.)

Activity 3.7.1
Markets of the World
Each team has to conduct background research on the way the markets in their
country look. Using pictures, videos, and articles, they create a profile of
markets in their target countries. These profiles can answer the following
questions:

– Are the markets open or covered?

– Are the markets crowded?
– Who shops at these markets? Do children come to these markets?
– What is sold at these markets? Are goods cheap or expensive?

Each team also reads a book about the markets of the world. For some
suggestions, see the resources below.

Resources

• This may be a little childish, but it could be used in earlier grades as

an interesting read (http://www.amazon.com/Market-Day-Story-
Told-Folk/dp/0152168206/ref=sr_1_19?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310112472&sr=1-19).
• Two illustrated books for children about markets across the world
(http://www.amazon.com/Market-Days-Around-
World/dp/0816735050/ref=sr_1_5?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310112449&sr=1-5) and
(http://www.amazon.com/Markets-Global-Community-Cassie-
Mayer/dp/1403494134/ref=sr_1_13?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310112472&sr=1-13)

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(Note that if the markets that are listed in the books are not the ones the students
will sell their chocolate in, a parent from one of the target-market countries may
be called to make an audiovisual presentation about the market in that particular
country.)

Activity 3.7.2
May the Best Chocolate Win
After learning about their target markets, the students are informed that they have
been given a chocolate stand at a market and that they have to sell their
chocolate there.

Based on what they’ve learned thus far regarding the culture and lifestyles in
these other countries, students have to design a marketing campaign for their
products. To do so, they should answer the following questions:

1. What differentiates their product from other products? (The answer

could be its content, packaging, or price.) What makes their product
unique and distinct?
2. How will they price it? Why will it be priced that way?
3. Besides schools and sporting events, where else could they sell their
product?
4. Has the chocolate been culturally adapted? (Note that to help students
with this question, the teacher can draw from pictures and menus of a
fast-food chain with restaurants around the world—for example,
McDonalds—to give students examples of how similar foods
undergo a series of adaptations based on the markets they serve.)
5. How, if at all, will they incorporate aspects of free trade into their
market strategy and combat child labor?
6. What will the jingle for their product be? (The students will then
record it.)
7. What logo will they choose, and how will they design it? What will
their logo represent?
8. If they had to choose a brand ambassador for their product, who
would they choose? Why?

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Unit 3.8
Topic Beyond Chocolate
Globalization; ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global
Theme affairs); work and mind habits: innovation and creativity;
and geography
Region Any/all
Length Remaining time (time and interest permitting)

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about global interdependencies in manufacturing for other

food products. Extend the discussion of interdependencies to the
achievement of the SDGs.
2. Inspire students to undertake a comparative study across different
products based on the framework they’ve been introduced to.
3. Act by being smart consumers of different products and by
understanding the process of value addition across different food
products and the controversies associated with it.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become aware of and familiar with value addition in

different food products.
2. Students will compare and contrast similarities and differences in
value addition in different food products.
3. Students will articulate how different stakeholders have addressed
the controversies associated with value addition and free trade in
different food products.

Overview
The aim of this unit is for students to understand the global interdependencies
and linkages in different food products beyond chocolate. Using the framework
they used to examine the interdependencies and associated controversies in
chocolate manufacturing, students can analyze the value-addition process in the
manufacturing of food products such as bananas, milk, or coffee.

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(Note that the teacher can decide whether this unit is necessary based on the
amount of time left in the year.)

Activity 3.8.1
Understanding Value Addition and Controversies in Other
Food Products
The teacher informs the students that many of the issues they confronted around
chocolate manufacturing and cocoa processing (such as child labor, free trade,
and rising prices) are common in the manufacturing of several other food
products.

The class is once again divided into groups, and each group is given a food
product to research. They will use their research on chocolate and cocoa as a
model for this research. The food products can include bananas, milk, cotton, or
coffee. (Note that students may have a hard time relating to coffee, as they
probably don’t drink it. Thus, it’s only a suggestion, and the first three options
might be more appropriate.)The students could then answer the following list of
questions, and possibly even trace some of them using a map:

1. Where are these products grown and manufactured?

2. Where are they are exported to?
3. Historically, what trends have there been in production levels and
prices?
4. What does consumption over the past ten years look like?
5. What does superimposing consumption and production on the same
graph reveal?
6. If certain countries stop producing or consuming these products, what
impact will those changes have on the children in those countries?
7. Is there any form of product differentiation based on where the
product is exported?
8. What fair-trade and child labor–related controversies have
concerned the product?
9. How have these controversies been addressed?
10. In a supermarket or a department store, can one find versions of these
products that are organically produced or free-trade certified?

Activity 3.8.2
Introduce Design for Change in the context of the SDGs
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Using the lesson plans on designing for change offered by UNICEF, engage
students in a discussion around the generation of innovative solutions that
students may use to address one and/or several of the SDGs
(https://teachunicef.org/teaching-materials/topic/sustainable-development-
goals).

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 THE WORLD COURSE
FOURTH GRADE: THE RISE (AND FALL) OF
ANCIENT AND MODERN CIVILIZATIONS

Theme
H ow civilizations evolve over time, and how understanding the past is
helpful to make sense of current events.

Description
In this year, students learn how and why civilizations are formed and examine
how humans interact with the environment, studying two civilizations with
enduring influences on modern times: Egypt and China. Concepts that are central
to this year include how ancient humans conceived of nature, as evidenced by
mythology; how human settlements and ancient civilizations were built around
the essential natural resources of water and arable land; how social hierarchy
was established and power was distributed; and how varying systems of
governance arose and with that, how various groups conceived citizenship and
the relationship of varying classes of people to the state. Each area will be
studied both as an ancient civilization and as a modern civilization. The learning
in this unit will be activity based throughout and will focus on understanding,
not simply recalling, facts. Through this study, students will link the modern
with the historical and gain an appreciation of the science of archaeology as
well as of the study of modern cultures unlike their own. Furthermore, in the
study of both the ancient and the modern, they will gain critical and analytic
skills.

Looking Back
Understanding Global Interdependence through Entrepreneurship in Chocolate
Manufacturing

Looking Forward
160
Freedom and the Rights of Individuals: Social Change around the Rights of
Individuals

Overview of the Units

1) Archaeology Today
2) Ancient China and Modern China
3) Ancient Egypt and Modern Egypt

Capstone
Students design a game in small groups that represents components of Chinese
and Egyptian civilization (government, religion, economy, arts, technology,
settlement, and system of writing).

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Unit 4.1
Topic Archaeology Today
ICC: interpersonal; investigation and analytical skills; and
Themes
history
Region All, focus New York City
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the skills involved in the science of archaeology, the

questions that archaeologists seek to answer, and the study of history
through the examination of material remains.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for the links between the ancient
past and the modern day.
3. Act by participating in several activities concerning the challenges
and opportunities of archaeology, by thinking critically about modern
culture and how it may be perceived thousands of years from now
based on remains, and by learning more about one another at the start
of the new school year.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will follow the process of an archaeological excavation.

2. Students will use critical-thinking skills to evaluate material remains.

Overview
This unit kicks off the study of the ancient and the modern with an activity that
may be messy: a simulated archaeological dig. It is recommended that the
teacher partner with the Archaeological Institute of America
(http://www.archaeological.org/about/whoweare), which is based out of Boston
University but also has a center in New York City. Students will need to keep an
archaeological notebook (a composition book or other notebook) for record
keeping in this unit and throughout the year.

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Activity 4.1.1
Time Capsules
In this activity, students create time capsules that include artifacts that they
would want archaeologists to find many years from now and clues about
themselves (e.g., clues about their likes, dislikes, family structure, values, and
more). The objects in their time capsule should be placed in a container, and the
outside of the container should be decorated to depict their daily life. For
containers, consider using small plastic bins, boxes, or coffee cans. (Note that
the students should not bring items of value to school. They can take a picture of
the items or draw a picture of them to include in their box instead.)

Students should exchange their time capsules with one another. (The teacher
should manage this so that the students do not know whose time capsule they
receive). Without explaining the time capsules to one another, students should
take careful notes and create drawings about them and then come to their own
conclusions about the importance and meaning of the objects. They should then
share their observations with a partner. Finally, they should try to figure out
whose time capsule they have.

Students should get into larger groups (at least groups of six to eight students,
although if the groups are larger, the students will have more artifacts to work
with) and combine the artifacts from all of the groups. Students should
categorize the objects by theme and summarize the contents of the entire group.
They should make generalizations about the modern US culture using the
artifacts of the group.

Activity 4.1.2
Simulated “Shoebox” Dig
As an activator, the teacher should place a toilet seat in the center of the room
and ask the students to pretend that they have no idea of the purpose of the item.
The teacher should guide the students and encourage them to think of other uses
for the item that archaeologists far into the future might come up with (e.g., a
religious object or a game) Students should be guided to understand that
archaeology is a science of inference based on artifacts and sites (context).
Many of our interpretations of artifacts are shaded by our current culture and
beliefs. Suspending our modern beliefs to scientifically uncover the mysteries of
the past is an incredibly difficult task, and at best, the conclusions we come to
are always inferences.

163
Students simulate an archaeological dig. See the following resource for detailed
information.

Resources

• This resource includes an introductory and explanatory video for

teachers. It will also be helpful to remember to encourage less mess
and more thinking.
(http://www.archaeological.org/education/lessons/simulateddigs)
• http://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/education/digs/Digs_everything.pdf

Note that this activity will require a considerable amount of time to set up.
Teachers should solicit help from at least five or six parents. As a modification
to the above activity, teachers can create much larger, flatter dig sites using
specialized under-the-bed bins (i.e., shallow, wide, large plastic bins on wheels
like the ones found here http://www.amazon.com/Sterilite-Under-Wheeled-
Storage-Container/dp/B0000CFH7G). This way, students can use string to
create grids over the “dig sites,” and although the bins will be heavy with layers
of soil, the wheels will make them movable. Between four and six students
should be assigned to each dig site, and the dig sites should together tell a story
of a culture that left artifacts behind. Students should keep meticulous records of
their findings in their archaeological notebook. Students should present a
summary of their findings to the class, and then the class should come together to
discuss and reflect on the project, both in whole-class discussions and through
reflection in the student notebooks.

There are quite a few additional lesson plans on the following site:
http://www.archaeological.org/education/lessonplans. Of particular interest is
the “What Will Survive” lesson plan
(http://www.archaeological.org/sites/default/files/files/What%20Will%20Survive-
edited.pdf), which allows students to think about what is not left behind (most
organic matter, such as food and clothes) and, therefore, the gaps that
archaeologists have to fill in.

Activity 4.1.3
Read Motel of the Mysteries
Students should read Motel of the Mysteries, by David Macaully (ninety-eight
pages). In this book, archaeologists from the year 4022 excavate artifacts in the

164
United States that were buried after a catastrophe in 1985. Most of the
conclusions are absurd (for example, considering a bathroom to be a religious
inner sanctum, which also connects to activity 4.2.2). This book is mainly
entertaining, but it also shows the cultural biases often present when one makes
inferences about the past.

Activity 4.1.4
Archeology in New York City
The teacher may form a partnership with the New York chapter of the
Archaeological Institute of America in order to create a walking tour of
archaeological sites in New York City. The teacher can also use the following
online tool from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic
Preservation: http://www.nysparks.state.ny.us/shpo/online-tools/. The tool is a
Geographic Information System that identifies all of the state’s archaeologically
sensitive sites (users can zoom in to the New York City level). The students
should start with the school building itself and use pictures, videos, and primary
documents from the construction of the school—and from before the
construction of the school—to try to figure out the prior uses of the building.
They can then visit some of the archaeological sites in New York City.

165
Unit 4.2
Topic Ancient China and Modern China
ICC: interpersonal; ICC: intrapersonal; ethics; work and
mind habits; economic development; demography; politics;
Themes
arts; communication; technology; world history; and
investigative and analytical skills
Region China
Length Twelve weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the history of both ancient China and modern China; to apply
the components of civilization (government, religion, economy, arts,
technology, settlement, and system of writing) to ancient China; to
understand the arts and culture of modern China; and to draw
comparisons and links between ancient and modern times in the
context of China.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for the accomplishments of great
ancient and modern civilizations.
3. Evaluate ancient and modern China by participating in several
activities to develop an understanding of ancient Chinese history and
culture as well as of modern culture and by conducting self-guided
research projects and class presentations.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand (as opposed to recall) the components of the

major periods of Chinese history, including
• the Xia dynasty (around 2070 BCE–1600 BCE);
• the Shang dynasty (around 1600 BCE–1046 BCE);
• the Qin dynasty, including the unification of China and Shi
Huangdi (around 221 BCE); and
• the Ming dynasty (AD 1368–AD 1644).
2. Students will articulate the role of archaeology in developing an
understanding of the past through the close examination of
archaeological sites and artifacts.

166
 3. Students will evaluate the link between ancient and modern cultures
in China.

Overview
This unit covers the first ancient civilization and modern civilization that will
be studied this year, and students will be introduced to the components of a
civilization (government, religion, economy, arts, technology, settlement, and
system of writing) as a framework for understanding civilizations both ancient
and modern. This unit relies heavily upon a partnership with Primary Source,
and in particular upon Primary Source’s collaboration with the Harvard
University Asia Center and the unit “China Source.”

Note that there are many additional links that can be made to the art curriculum
(e.g., Chinese art and calligraphy), the literacy curriculum (poetry in particular,
and tales are included here), the language curriculum, the music curriculum
(e.g., Chinese opera and traditional and contemporary music), the math
curriculum (e.g., the abacus), and the science curriculum
(http://asiasociety.org/education-learning/resources-schools/elementary-lesson-
plans/chinese-inventions). Ideally, multiple departments at the school will take
part in the study of ancient and modern China as well as in the following unit on
Egypt.

Activity 4.2.1
Ancient Bronzes and Bronze Vessels in the Shang and Zhou
Dynasties: An Archeologist’s Notebook
For this unit, it is recommended that the school purchase a bronze replica
(http://www.galleriapangea.com/bronze_vessel_ritual_bronze_vessel_fu_xin_jue/produc
for the students to handle while they make observations.

Using their archaeologist notebooks, students make detailed notes about the
bronze and make inferences about its significance and use, for example.

Activity 4.2.2
Understanding Civilizations and Ancient China
The following lesson plan from Primary Source should be used to guide students
in developing a framework for understanding that civilizations consist of main

167
components (government, religion, economy, arts, technology, settlement, and
system of writing) and applying those components to ancient China:
http://resources.primarysource.org/content.php?pid=55748&sid=408002

This activity should take about nine separate forty-five-minute lessons to

complete.

Activity 4.2.3
Bringing Ancient Chinese History to Life: A Living Time
Line Activity
The students will create a time line of Chinese history, with partners being
assigned varying points on the time line to research. They will then present to
the class two or three of the major events of their time period in the form of a
short drama.

Activity 4.2.4
Leading up to Modern China
In small groups the students will study the following major periods, people, and
events by using guided Internet searches: Students will then make presentations
to their class on the following topics:

1. The People’s Republic of China in 1949, Mao Zedong (the leader of

the Communist Party), Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and the cultural
revolution;
2. Deng Xiaoping (1976–1989);
3. Tiananmen Square (1989); and
4. China regains control of Hong Kong (1997)

Students in each group should create a slogan or a poster about their period,
person, or event to share with the class.

Activity 4.2.5
Stories from China and Tibet Come Alive
Students should use Favorite Children’s Stories from China & Tibet
(http://www.amazon.com/Favorite-Childrens-Stories-China-

168
Tibet/dp/0804835861) to create theater scripts for class performances. The
tales, many of which involve animals, teach lessons and morals. Students should
discuss these lessons and the cultural differences (and similarities) between
China, Tibet, and the United States. (Notes that students should be given time for
this activity so that they can produce high-quality scripts and performances;
also, teachers should be sensitive to the controversies, both current and
historical, surrounding Tibet.)

Activity 4.2.6
Modern China (Maps and a Research Project)
The following excellent set of lesson plans developed by Professor Knapp
(SUNY) details explorations of modern China using maps:
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/china/geog/maps.htm. The following excellent
research project is included in it:

Plan a trip in China so that you can travel by boat, by train, by car, by
foot, and by camel. Decide which parts of China would be best for
each mode of transport. Imagine what you eat in the different regions
you travel through. If you needed to talk with the local inhabitants,
how many languages would you need to know? Would you need
different clothes in different regions so as not to be too hot or too
cold? If you stayed in the homes of the local inhabitants, how would
these homes be constructed?

Activity 4.2.7
Chinese Children’s Film
Children should watch Nima’s Summer (http://www.amazon.com/Nimas-
Summer/dp/B0043P14SU), a part-anime, part–live action film about a boy who
moves from a rural village in Tibet and then attends a middle school in a
metropolis. Students should take note of the cultural differences experienced by
the boy in the film.

An alternative film to watch is The Rain in Spring

(http://www.amazon.com/Rain-spring-xiaobin-
Zhang/dp/B00480PTQS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1306900790&sr=1-3-
spell), which doesn’t have animation and is about a strong relationship between
a teacher and his students. It’s a very touching story and will provide ample
opportunities for discussions regarding Chinese culture and relationships.

169
Activity 4.2.8
Classroom Connection and Minicapstone: Documentary
Film Project
Students create documentaries about their own classroom and school to share
with students in a partner school in China. Students should base their
documentaries on either of the two films mentioned above. Students should take
care to film the surrounding community, social and geographical context of the
school, to discuss its history, and to show its teachers and students. This should
be a rigorous media project, and the students should take the time to prepare,
plan, and execute a high-quality documentary. Upon receiving a film from the
partner school, students should compare the school experience of their peers in
their Chinese sister school with their own and the context of their peers’ school
with that of their own, noting similarities and differences.

Resources

• New York Film Academy (http://www.nyfa.edu/film-

school/documentary-filmmaking/?
gclid=CKiV5r7flKkCFQl75Qodk0pDcg)
• American Film Institute (http://www.afi.com/)
• Documentary Film Institute (http://www.docfilm.sfsu.edu/education/)
• Lesson plans and information organized by time period from
Columbia University’s Asia for Educators
(http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/)
• The China section of Time Life’s Lost Civilizations
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Lifes-Lost-Civilizations-
DVDs/dp/B00006L942/ref=sr_1_7?
s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1306892602&sr=1-7

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Unit 4.3
Topic Ancient Egypt and Modern Egypt
ICC: interpersonal; ICC: intrapersonal; ethics; work and
mind habits; economic development; demography; world
Themes
history; geography; world religions; comparative
government; arts; and investigative and analytical skills
Region Egypt and the Arab world
Length Twelve weeks

Goals and Objectives:

1. Learn the history of both ancient Egypt and modern Egypt; to apply
the components of civilization (government, religion, economy, arts,
technology, settlement, and system of writing) to ancient Egypt; to
understand current events and culture in Egypt; to draw comparisons
and links between ancient and modern times in the context of Egypt.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for the accomplishments of great
ancient and modern civilizations.
3. Evaluate Egypt by participating in several activities to develop an
understanding of ancient Egyptian history and culture as well as of
modern culture and by conducting self-guided research projects and
class presentations.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand (as opposed to recall) the components of the

major periods of Egyptian history.
2. Students will articulate the role of archaeology in developing
understanding of the past through the close examination of
archaeological sites and artifacts.
3. Students will evaluate the link between ancient and modern cultures
in Egypt.

Overview
This unit covers the second ancient civilization and modern civilization that will

171
be studied this year while still applying the components of civilization and the
link to modern civilization studied in the previous unit. The students are gaining
research experience, so this unit includes more independent research. It also
includes a focus on current events, particularly on the protests in Tahrir Square.

Activity 4.3.1
What Are the Meanings behind this Artifact?
The school should purchase the following replica artifact from the Museum
Store for classroom use: An offering to Isis and Osiris—Temple of Isis, Philae,
Egypt. Dynasty XXVI, 530 BC (http://www.museumstorecompany.com/An-
offering-to-Isis-and-Osiris-Temple-of-Isis-Philae-Egypt-Dynasty-XXVI-530-B-
C-p5583.html). The artifact itself can serve as a springboard for a discussion of
the relationship between the rulers of Egypt and the gods, myths, rituals, and
hieroglyphics.

The students should examine the artifact and take careful notes about its physical
qualities. As it is a stone relief, students can make paper and wax rubbings of
the stone to examine in small groups. Students should then research the site the
Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt, using the following website:
http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/isisphilae.html#gate.

The story of Isis and Osiris is told here in language appropriate for fourth
graders: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/gods/home.html

Students could also depict a scene of importance in their family history and
include inscriptions in hieroglyphics around its outer edges.

Also, later in the unit, students can follow the same lesson plan to examine
canopic jars.

Activity 4.3.2
Hieroglyphics Tablet Activity
In conjunction with the art department, students create hieroglyphics tablets of
messages to one another. The messages need to be one sentence in length and
should describe one detail of the Egyptian time line. The tablets are then broken
into parts (aim for a manageable number of pieces, as they will need to be
reassembled later), placed into a box, and mixed with the parts of another tablet

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(the more tablets, the more difficult this activity will be) and sand. The students
will then trade their boxes and excavate their tablets, working carefully to make
detailed notes in their archaeologist notebooks as they go. They must piece the
tablets back together to receive the historical message. All of the tablets are
read together to review the ancient Egyptian time line.

The book Fun with Hieroglyphs is an excellent, child-friendly resource

(http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Hieroglyphs-Metropolitan-Museum-
Art/dp/1416961143/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306891614&sr=1-
2), as are numerous other children’s books on hieroglyphics.

Students should examine the Rosetta stone, the key to understanding the
hieroglyphics system. A high-resolution image of the Rosetta stone can be
ordered from the British Museum
(http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.asp
objectId=117631&partId=1).

As an extension of this activity, students can consider the controversy around the
Rosetta stone (whether the British Museum should keep possession of the stone
or whether it should be returned) using the following easily adaptable lesson
plan from MacMillan Global:
http://www.macmillanglobal.com/elessons/lesson-plan-5-the-rosetta-stone.

Activity 4.3.3
Independent Research Projects
Students will form groups to research the components of civilization established
in the previous unit on China (government, religion, economy, arts, technology,
settlement, and system of writing) in ancient Egypt. Some achievements of
ancient Egyptian civilization, such as shipbuilding, mathematics, medicine,
construction techniques, glass, art, and architecture, could also be subjects of
independent study within the small groups.

The groups will present their research to the class, and the teacher should guide
the students in taking notes in their archaeologist notebooks.

This unit can be supplemented by a field trip to view ancient Egyptian art at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-
met/curatorial-departments/egyptian-art).

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Resources

• A lesson plan from National Geographic

(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/06/g35/kingtut.html
• A lesson plan from Discovery Education
(http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-
plans/ancient-egypt.cfm)
• A lesson plan on mummy masks (http://www.art-
rageous.net/MummyMask-LP.html)
• A lesson plan from the Museum of Science, including a “planning for
your afterlife” game (http://www.mos.org/quest/teaching.php)
• High school lesson plans that can be adapted from
(http://www.pbs.org/empires/egypt/pdf/lesson7.pdf)
• Information on the Nile
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/nile_01.shtml#three)
• An accessible, interactive, clickable map of the Valley of the Kings
(http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/atlas/index.html)
• A link to purchase replicas of canopic jars, which could be used as
an extension of activity 4.3.1
(http://www.museumstorecompany.com/Set-of-Canopic-Jars-
Egyptian-Museum-Cairo-650-B-C-p5538.html)
• The Egypt section of Time Life’s Lost Civilizations
(http://www.amazon.com/Time-Lifes-Lost-Civilizations-
DVDs/dp/B00006L942/ref=sr_1_7?
s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1306892602&sr=1-7)

Activity 4.3.4
Modern Egypt: Protests, Culture, and an Introduction to the
Arab World
Students examine maps of Cairo and identify Tahrir Square, the site of protests
demanding the removal of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency. Students use
current-events articles
(http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/subjects/currentevents_egyptprotests2011.htm
to determine the reasons for the protest, the forms of the protest, the responses to
the protest, and the outcomes of the protest.

Activity 4.3.5
Modern Egyptian Culture
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Students will examine modern Egyptian culture through a study of the modern
city of Cairo, linking the ancient history with the modern, with Egyptians of
today, and with globalizing influences.

– Students will use maps to identify the cultural, historical, and

political landmarks of Cairo.
– Students will identify Islam as the majority religion in Egypt and
describe the major tenets and sacred texts of the religion. Students
will use maps and primary sources to identify places of worship in
Egypt.
– Students will identify evidence of cultural and historical tradition in
Cairo, as well as of its globalized nature
– Students will map the geography of Egypt, linking it back to how
geography shaped the ancient civilization
– In small groups, students will use what they have learned to create an
illustrated tour guide for modern Cairo.

Activity 4.3.6
Classroom Connection and Minicapstone: News Project
Students will create a newscast of current events at the school that covers, for
example, what the students are studying, how they are studying, and how they
are acting as historians as well as cultural events in New York City and other
features. Students will share this newscast with a classroom in Cairo, and that
classroom will share a newscast with their school. Teachers should film the
students’ reactions to the news programs. Students will discuss their reactions
and the perspectives of their peers.

Special Activity
Film and Media Festival
Students will hold a film and media festival during which they will show their
documentary and the documentary of their partner school from unit 2 and their
newscast and their partner school’s newscast to parents and the community.
Each film will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session with
audience members.

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Unit 4.4
Topic Capstone Activity: Civilization Games
Economic development, demography, world history,
Themes geography, world religions, comparative government, arts,
and investigative and analytical skills
Region China, Egypt, and All Length
Length Three to four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to apply the components of civilization (government, religion,

economy, arts, technology, settlement, and system of writing) to both
ancient Egypt and China by playing student-created games.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for the complexities of
civilizations and the achievements of civilizations.
3. Evaluate Egypt and China by creating and playing games that
reinforce the learning from the year.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the components of civilization (government,

religion, economy, arts, technology, settlement, and system of
writing).
2. Students will evaluate the components of civilization within two
contexts.
3. Students will compare the two contexts in a systematic and logical
way.

Overview
In this capstone activity, students review the components of civilization
(government, religion, economy, arts, technology, settlement, and system of
writing) by creating games in small groups. The fourth grade is divided into
groups of students who then create games focusing on Egypt and China. Each
group will consist of smaller sub-groups of between two and four students. (The
goal is to form ten groups total throughout the fourth grade, so groups will be

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larger or smaller depending on the student body. See below for more detailed
plans.)

Activity 4.4.1
The Creation of the Games
Each group will research one game from ancient China or Egypt (depending on
which group they are in) and create a version of the game to be played during
the game days. Some examples include dice games, Senet, Mahjongg, and
physical games to be played outside.

Each group will also create one board or physical game that illustrates the
components of civilization. Students may consider building on existing board
games, such as Trivial Pursuit—each pie piece could represent a component of
civilization—or the electronic Civilization games; role-playing games; or
strategy games.

Note that sufficient time should be given to this activity. It may stretch across
several weeks, with the teacher checking in on students’ work periodically. Or
the teacher may choose to more intensively prepare for these games over a few
weeks. Either way, the games should be well developed, with all of the
necessary pieces or components made by students and fully functional, and
demonstrate a clear understanding of the components of civilization. Students
should be given rubrics to evaluate their own games for these quality
components, and teachers should also use the rubrics to communicate to students
the areas that need improvement before the games are played.

Activity 4.4.2
Let’s Play: The World Course Fourth-Grade Game Day (i.e.,
the Playing of the Games)
Students will divide into groups on two different days. On one day the students
will show one another how to play the games at various game “stations,” and on
another day, they will play the games that the other students created.

Note that this can be set up like a typical elementary school field day across two
days, with plenty of parent volunteers to help. Stations can be set up both within
the school for the board games and outside of the school for the physical games.
Alternatively, the games could be woven throughout several partial days or

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could be played in the evening. Not all students need to play all games.

Activity 4.4.3
Let’s Collaborate: Collaborating for Humanity’s Sake
Download the lesson “Working Together to Achieve the Global Goals” and
engage the students in the activities outlined in it
(https://teachunicef.org/teaching-materials/topic/sustainable-development-
goals).

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 THE WORLD COURSE
FIFTH GRADE: FREEDOM AND THE RIGHTS
OF INDIVIDUALS: SOCIAL CHANGE AROUND
THE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS

Theme
U nderstanding how civic engagement helps people improve themselves
and their communities.

Description
In this grade the primary focus is on individual rights and freedoms as well as
on social change. It builds from the creation of a classroom community. It then
moves into historical explorations of various independence movements (the
United States is the primary focus, and the French, Haitian, and South African
resistances to oppression are also discussed). In this sense, it is meant to build
on immediate concepts and them move back through history, starting with the
most familiar contexts and expanding to other global contexts. This unit also
stresses nonviolence as a successful path to resistance to oppression and to
independence. The MDGs and SDGs and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights provide the foundation for students to identify and examine organizations
promoting human rights historically and helping students can organize around
issues through the capstone activity. The year ends with a capstone in which the
students create their own media documentary about one of the SDGs.

Looking Back
The Rise (and Fall) of Ancient and Modern Civilizations

Looking Forward
How do people in societies organize themselves? Social contracts, individuals
and society, and the study of society.

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Overview of the Units

1) Creating Classroom Rules and Building a Classroom Community

2) American Revolution (Literature Link: Johnny Tremain)
3) French Revolution (Literature Link: Les Misérables)
4) Haitian Revolution (Arts Link: Jacob Lawrence and Literature Link:
Wordsworth)
5) Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Poverty SDG
6) South Africa and Resistance to Oppression

Capstone
Create an awareness-raising project on the topic of one of the SDGs using some
medium (e.g., a video, a PowerPoint presentation, a dance, a work of art, or a
speech).

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Unit 5.1
Topic Creating Classroom Rules
Themes ICC: intrapersonal; ethics; and scenario building
Region Any/all
Length Two lessons

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the meaning and the uses of rules by comparing them to

possible misuses of rules.
2. Inspire students to develop and live by an equitable set of rules for
the classroom and to take an interest in the American Revolution.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of rules and by creating
equitable rules.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify the need for rules and understand why rules are
important.
2. Students will compare equitable rules with inequitable rules.
3. Students will judge rules based on their fairness to all and their
usefulness in enabling the classroom to work together for the
common goal of learning.

Overview
The students and the teacher will collaborate to create a set of rules for the
classroom.. Students will be guided in thinking about concepts such as fairness,
individual rights and responsibilities, freedom from tyranny, and
communication.

Activity 5.1.1
It’s Tyranny!
The teacher has a prewritten set of rules for the class and reads them to the

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class. The list starts out rather reasonably but then gets progressively more
tyrannical and unreasonable, such that by the end of the list, the students know
that those aren’t the real class rules. The following rules are only suggestions.
Some of the rules below foreshadow some of the causes of the American
Revolution:

1. All students must treat one another with respect applying the golden
rule.
2. All students are expected to help one another learn.
3. All students must turn in homework on time, with the proper heading.
4. All students should raise their hand to speak and will wait to be
called upon before speaking.
5. Students are not allowed to question the teacher’s grading of papers.
6. Students are not allowed to talk among themselves in class if the
purpose of the discussion is to question the authority of the teacher.
7. Students must bring the teacher ten dollars every day and give the
teacher half of any money that they are given or earn.
8. Students will not be a part of the process of making rules and must
abide by all rules.

The teacher should notice some surprise when the last rules are read and then
should lead a discussion. The teacher should ask the students whether these
rules are like the rules they had in previous classrooms. Are they fair? Which
ones aren’t fair? Why not? The teacher made these rules, so would another rule-
making process result in rules that were more fair? Why do we need rules?

Activity 5.1.2
The Veil of Ignorance2
The teacher separates the class into two teams. The teacher tells the students that
each team will create two rules that are specific to their team. Note that these
rules should be completely unfair and clearly advantage one team over the other.
Write this example on the board: “All members of team A get credit for turning
in their homework whether they turn it in or not.” Allow the teams to come up
with two rules like this one.

The teacher has a bag with yellow and green slips of paper in it (there should be
an equal number of each and one for each student). The teacher goes around the
classroom, and the students close their eyes and pull out one slip of paper. Once
everyone has their paper, the teachers says, “If you have a green slip of paper,

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you are a member of team A. If you have a yellow slip of paper, you are a
member of team B.”

Some students become members of the other team (that is, they switch teams),
which will place them at a disadvantage because of the rules that they
themselves created. Ask them for their response to this change. Those who
haven’t switched teams will still be advantaged; ask them for their response.

The teacher explains the “veil of ignorance” and the idea that the rules should be
fair to all regardless of which team they’re on. One can determine if a rule is
fair by imagining one’s self making that rule from behind the veil of ignorance—
that is, without knowing to which groups others belong (e.g., others’ gender, age,
race, creed, or religion). The rule maker should then consider whether the rule
would still be fair if he or she were a member of a different group.

The students should free write about this experience in the journals they keep in
class. For those students who have trouble getting started, the following prompt
can be used: How did you feel when the rules that were added either
advantaged you or disadvantaged you? Did you want to keep those rules? Why
or why not?

Activity 5.1.3
Classroom-Rule Creation
What are the goals of this classroom? What rules would help us achieve those
goals?

Through discussions in small groups and sharing, the classroom will develop a
statement of the goals of the classroom (or a mission statement) and develop a
shared set of classroom rules.

If necessary, use the following prompt: Think back to one of the days or lessons
when you learned a lot in school. What made it so successful? Think back to a
time when you didn’t learn anything or felt frustrated in school. What made that
experience so unsuccessful? What do you need others to do to help you learn as
well as you can?

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Unit 5.2
Topic From Colonialism to Democracy: The US Revolution
ICC: interpersonal; ethics; work and mind habits; economic
development; world history; geography; comparative
Themes
government; arts: literature, visual, and drama; analyze and
assess; the use of technology
Region United States
Length Nine weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the key events leading up to the American

Revolution and the causes of the Revolution; to identify the
philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment and its relation to the
Revolution; and to describe the formation of a democratic nation.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for a momentous historical event
that set in motion many of the modern systems of governance used
today.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the historical time line and
philosophical underpinnings of the American Revolution.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the key events leading up to the American

Revolution and the causes of the Revolution and identify the
philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment and its relation to the
Revolution.
2. Students will describe the formation of a democratic nation.
3. Students will evaluate the vision of the founders, using many sources
to identify varying perspectives.

Overview
In this unit, students will study the American Revolution with a focus on the
rights of the individual and on the organizations for social change concerning
these rights. They will begin with a story from literature, Johnny Tremain, and

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move into a close reading of the Declaration of Independence. They will then
build a historical understanding of the reasons for settlement in the New World,
the causes of the American War of Independence, and the outcomes of the war.
They will also examine Benjamin Franklin as a unique personage with
tremendous personal agency in the social movement. Several optional
enrichment activities as well as a field trip are suggested.

Resources
https://books.google.com/books?
id=mZd6bUoNwNIC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=oxford+university+press+history+
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-american-revolution-
9780199324224?cc=us&lang=en&

Activity 5.2.1
Johnny Tremain
Ideas for this unit are taken from the following site:
http://www.lengel.net/hebron/5ssunit1.html.

Students will read Johnny Tremain as homework during the American

Revolution unit, and then they will spend one day a week discussing it. (Or the
teacher may incorporate the book into the core historical study of the Revolution
in any other variety of ways.) Students will read approximately forty pages each
week.

Each Friday (for example), short journal entries told from the perspective of
Johnny will be due. The journal entries will discuss the problems and issues
that are important to him and reflect on them. The teacher will give the students
some journal prompts that will tie together the historical themes and the
socioemotional themes.

The purpose of this section of the unit is to personalize and personify historical
understanding from the perspective of a (fictional) fourteen-year-old main
character who is imperfect (arrogant and a bully at the beginning of the story)
and then changes during the course of the story as he meets adversity. As Johnny
“meets” important figures of the American Revolution, the “history” comes
alive.

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Activity 5.2.2
The Declaration of Independence
Note that this lesson starts with one part of the document itself. One of the
concluding activities of this unit is to read the entire document.

Start with this text: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Many of the revolutionary ideas are right here in this one sentence. The teacher
will direct a discussion on the meaning of each part of it. Model close reading
and thought about the meaning of each phrase as well as the sentence as a whole.

Use the following statements to extend the lesson. Divide the class into four
small groups and give each group one of the two sentences. In their small
groups, the students follow the same process to closely read and think about the
sentence, about what each phrase means, and about what the sentence means.
After they’ve had a chance to evaluate the sentence, have the groups get together
according to which sentence they worked on to compare their evaluations of it.
Later, regroup, and have the students compare the sentences. Use the following
sentences:

1. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
2. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Activity 5.2.2b
In English, Please!
The students can work individually or in groups to write a paragraph that
explains the three sentences they examined in modern English.

As an extension of the activity, students can compare the passage of the

Declaration of Independence to this section of John Locke’s 1690 Second
Treatise of Government:

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 The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on
earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but
to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in
society is to be under no other legislative power but that established
by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will,
or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according
to the trust put in it.

Activity 5.2.3
Who Were the Colonists? Where Did They Come from and
Why? A Comparison of the Jamestown and Massachusetts
Settlements
(Consider including New York in this activity as an extension.)

In a guided research activity, students research the Jamestown settlement.

The students could complete a table, placing information about Jamestown on

one side and information about Massachusetts on the other side. Guide the
students in finding the following information about Jamestown:

1. the date of the first settlement

2. the purposes of the settlement
3. what life was like in the colony
4. how the colony was governed
5. the relationship between the colonists and the Native Americans who
were there

In a computer lab, the students should work in pairs to find information about the
Massachusetts settlement. Back in class, groups should get together to discuss
their answers and to make sure that all of the important information is included.

The teacher leads a discussion on the two colonies’ similarities and differences.
The major topics that should be included are religious freedom and economic
opportunity (both for the colonists and the English).

As an extension of this activity, students should research the other Eastern

Seaboard colonies, either in class or as homework. The students pretending to
be colonists should then hold a mock meeting to discuss the challenges and

187
opportunities they have found in the New World. Note that this could also be
developed into an activity that simulates the First Continental Congress, but if it
is, it should be included later in the unit.

Activity 5.2.4
Growing Discontent: An Exploration of the Causes of the
American War of Independence
(Note that the recommended approach is to have the students use the sources to
determine the causes of the war.)

Through reading texts, primary sources, and other historical documents and
sources of information, students create a time line of events leading up to the
American War of Independence. From this activity, they should develop a sense
of the several causes of the war. The teacher should split the class into four
groups. Each group should create a tableau for one of the causes of the war. The
tableau should include objects that represent the particular cause of the war.
Each group should explain its tableau to the class. The tableaux can include the
students themselves if they want to get into character. Assign the following main
causes of the war to the students: taxation, representation, a reaction against acts
seen as unjust, and a will for independence (self-rule).

Resources

• http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/
• http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/the-
american-revolution-causes.cfm

Optional Activity
The Printing Press: A Closer Look

In this activity, students use a scaled time line to show how quickly history
changed after the development of literacy (visual and written) and, more
importantly to the Revolution, after the invention of the printing press. The
following points in time are given to the students:

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 1. Earliest cave paintings (about 30,000 BCE)
2. Earliest writings (pictorial) from Ancient Sumer (about 4000 BCE)
3. Hammurabi’s Code (about 700 BCE)
4. Signing of the Magna Carta (AD 1215)
5. Invention of the printing press (AD 1465)
6. Publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which became the
most widely sold and circulated book in American history to that
point (AD 1776)
7. Invention of the silicon chip, the basis of personal computers, by Jack
Kilby and Robert Noyce (AD 1961)
8. Invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee (AD 1991)

Students should create a drawing and a brief description of their assigned event
to be posted in the classroom.

The teacher and students create a scaled time line. This needs to be done along a
long hallway or outside. The teacher needs to determine the amount of available
space ahead of time. Once that is determined, the period between 30,000 BCE
and AD 2000 (32,000 years will be scaled in more compressed form than the
rest of the timeline. If you have one hundred feet of space, then each foot will
represent 320 years, for example. The students assigned the cave paintings will
stand at the far end of it. Then the students assigned the earliest writings will
stand at the appropriate distance from them. In the end, the first few events will
be very far away from one another and very widely spaced out. Then after the
signing of Magna Carta or the invention of the printing press, the students will
stand very close to one another. They will learn that the development of the
written word and the development of technology that can spread the written
word quickly have led to many rapid developments.

(Note that the Morgan Library in New York City is an excellent resource for
printing history and printed resources.)

Activity 5.2.5
The Life of Benjamin Franklin

After a brief introduction, the students should research the life of Benjamin
Franklin. This research should focus on the following topics:

1. His life as a thinker and an inventor

189
 2. His role in the expansion of the printing press as a popular medium
3. His role in gaining support for the American War of Independence
from the French and his role as the first American ambassador to
France
4. His use of wit and comedy

Resources

• http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/
• http://www.webenglishteacher.com/franklin.html

Optional Activity
The Colonial Times Newspaper: An Exploration of the
Ideas of and Motivations for the War
(See appendix A for detailed instructions.)

Activity 5.2.6
Propaganda and Imagery in the American Revolution
First, the teacher should introduce the class to the following slogans (additional
slogans can be used):

• “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

• “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang
separately.”
• “No taxation without representation!”
• “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

The teacher could print these slogans on separate pieces of paper and then cut
them up into jigsaw pieces. Students are then each given one “puzzle” piece, and
they have to find the other students whose pieces fit with theirs to form the
slogan. They then discuss the possible meaning of the slogan and record their
thoughts in their notebook. Each group shares its slogan and thoughts with the
class.

Second, the teacher can collect images from the Revolution (example, a sign

190
saying “Don’t Tread On Me”) and from art. Students should discuss the
symbolism and meanings of the images.

Activity 5.2.7
The Declaration of Independence: A Second Look
The teacher should prepare the students to read the document by explaining its
parts: the introduction and thesis statement, the list of grievances, and the
resolutions of the colonies. The students review the causes of the war, the
philosophy of the age of reason, and many aspects of the unit as a whole through
this reading. It is not expected that the students will master the document.

Consider showing students this YouTube video of a reading of the document by

famous actors and actresses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxTvS-kyHzs.

Activity 5.2.8
Field Trip
The students may take a field trip to Philadelphia, Colonial Williamsburg, the
Jamestown settlement, and the Yorktown Victory Center.

Resources

• Colonial Williamsburg’s electronic field trip

(http://www.history.org/history/teaching/eft/index.cfm.)
• Jamestown and Yorktown (http://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-
settlement.htm)
• Oxford University Press’s series A History of US
(https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/h/a-history-of-us-
hus/?cc=us&lang=en&)
• “Teaching with Documents,” from the National Archives:
(http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/revolution-images/)
• Colonial history (http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/tguide_2.html)
• Archiving Early America
• (http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/)
• Brain Pop video on the causes of the American Revolution
(http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/causesoftheamericanrevolu

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Unit 5.3
Topic French Revolution
ICC: interpersonal; ethics; work and mind habits; poverty;
Theme world history; geography; comparative government; arts:
literature and drama; and analyze and assess
Region France
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the injustices that led to the French Revolution and the
links and differences between the French Revolution and other
revolutions.
2. Inspire students to think about injustice and how it can be remedied.
3. Act by evaluating what makes a democratic movement successful.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about the three estates.

2. Students will learn about absolute monarchies and government
symbols.
3. Students will learn about art and how it can portray historical events.
4. Students will practice independent research skills.
5. Students will continue developing comparative skills.
6. Students will examine the French Revolution using the same criteria
that will be used to examine South Africa later in the year.

Overview
The students will expand their understanding of social movements around the
rights of individuals from the American Revolution to the French Revolution.
The same frameworks for understanding the causes, events, and outcomes of the
war should be carried over to this unit to aid in understanding. Students will
again begin with literature and then take a deeper look into social hierarchy and
poverty as well into issues of fairness and human rights.

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Activity 5.3.1
French Revolution and Art: Les Misérables
The teacher assigns an abridged student version of Victor Hugo’s Les
Misérables3 at the beginning of this unit. Periodically over the course of this
unit, the teacher asks the students to write in a journal on the topics highlighted
by the scenes listed below:

1) Jean Valjean’s imprisonment after stealing bread for his nephews and
nieces
a. Hunger
b. Law versus justice
2) The scene between the priest and Jean Valjean after he’s been
captured for stealing from the priest
a. Major concepts in Christianity (forgiveness, grace, mercy,
redemption, and rebirth)
3) Jean Valjean’s role as mayor and how he helps Fantine and Cosette
a. The use of power
b. The notion of caring for others and taking responsibility
4) Marius’s role as a student in the Revolution
a. The role of ordinary people in the Revolution

(Note that later on in the year, when the students are studying SDG 1, poverty;
SDG 2, hunger; and the UDHR—especially articles 11 and 25, which deal with
law and justice—it may be useful to refer back to these topics.)

Once the students have completed the book, the class watches the musical film
adaptation of Les Misérables. The teacher asks the students to take note of the
clothing of the period, the symbols of the revolution (on both sides), and the
architecture. They will look at contemporary pictures of French clothing,
symbols (including currency—both the now-defunct Franc and the Euro), and
architecture and note how they have changed, how they reflect current and
historical French beliefs, and how certain aspects of the French Revolution have
been incorporated into modern French culture.

Next, the students will be given a copy of the lyrics of some of the songs in Les
Misérables (chosen at the discretion of the teacher). They will discuss the
accuracy of the songs in portraying the Revolution and how effective they are in
creating an emotional response, such as sympathy, for the characters or cause.
The teacher will lead the class in a discussion of how both novels and songs can
be used to convey emotion, build a movement, and share history.

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Resources

• Currencies of France over time (Banknotes.com)

• What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good
Fifth-Grade Education. (ISBN 978-0385411196)
• Hugo, V. & Kulling, M. (1995). Les Misérables. New York, NY:
Random House Books for Young Readers. (ISBN 978-0679866688)
• “Those who have and those who have not”
(http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/3432)
• Information on Marie Antoinette from PBS
(http://www.pbs.org/marieantoinette/)

Activity 5.3.2
The Three Estates
(This activity is adapted from Kevin Huntley’s “The French Revolution: Those
who have and those who have not”: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/3432.)

Prior to class, the teacher sets up different stations around the room with articles
from French culture and history. These items should reflect France as it is/was
and should not simply be clichéd symbols of France. The purpose of this is to
orient students in the French context so that their study of France is not out of
context.

Once the stations are prepared, the teacher should fill the classroom with the
smell of freshly popped popcorn. After the students arrive and while they are
getting settled, the teacher explains that they will be taking a tour of France. She
tells them each to visit all of the stations and to makes notes about what the
stations say about France. While they are doing that, the teacher shares popcorn
with around 6 percent of the class (just a few students) without saying why or
saying anything to the students who don’t get popcorn. Students will no doubt
begin to complain, and the teacher will observe their reactions.

Once the students have finished touring “France,” the teacher initiates a
discussion with the students about injustice, how they felt about getting/not
getting popcorn, and why they should have all gotten popcorn. The teacher will
introduce the three estates (clergy, nobility, and the rest), explaining what
percentage each group was of the total population, the percentage of wealth that
each group held, and the amount of power that each group held in eighteenth-
century French society. The teacher then explains that this social and economic

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inequality was one of the primary reasons for the unrest that led to the French
Revolution. The teacher should point out the connections between the cases that
the students are making for equality and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. The teacher should also help the students make comparisons between the
context of the American Revolution and the context of the French Revolution,
and students should note the fact that the French were revolting against their own
government rather than against a colonial government. It is important that the
connections to the previous unit on the American Revolution be made clear to
the students in preparation for the rest of the unit on the French Revolution.

Activity 5.3.3
“L’Etat, C’est Moi!”
In this activity, students will learn about Louis XIV. They will read pages 156–
158 of What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know.4 Once they have read these
pages, the teacher will ask the class what Louis XIV did that was good for
France. They may say, “He built a magnificent palace,” “He made France
powerful,” and “He commissioned plays and concerts,” for example. The
teacher lists these in a column on the board. Next the teacher asks what Louis
XIV did that angered the people. They may say, “He made France poor,” “He
spent money on plays but not on his people,” and “He did not share any power
or wealth with anyone, including the third estate.” Next, they will talk about the
role of government in people’s lives, how government can help people, and how
it can hurt people. The class will create a third list of the things that they would
want their government to do for them.

They will next analyze the symbol of the sun and the saying “L’état, c’est moi”
and compare those to the symbols and slogans of the Revolution—for example,
the Bastille, La Marseillaise (national anthem), and the saying “Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity.” This connects to the previous unit on the American
Revolution, particularly to lesson 5.2.6. They will next look at other
governmental figures’ symbols (e.g., symbols from Obama’s 2008 campaign and
the US national anthem). Finally, each student (or pairs of students) will be
tasked with making a symbol for their ideal government and writing a paragraph
about what the symbol represents to them.

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Unit 5.4
Topic The Haitian Revolution
ICC: interpersonal; ethics; work and mind habits; poverty;
Theme world history; geography; comparative government; arts:
literature and visual; and analyze and assess
Region Haiti and the Caribbean
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the Haitian Revolution, why it is important, and how it

has been represented in art.
2. Inspire students to reflect on how the French Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen not only influenced Haitian history
but also developed the framework for the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
3. Evaluate art not only for its aesthetics but also for deeper historical
and cultural meaning.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian

Revolution.
2. Students will make comparisons between the UDHR, the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the US Declaration of
Independence.
3. Students will learn about the power of art to share history.
4. Students will learn about how historical “facts” are often a matter of
perspective.
5. Students will practice using intercultural skills to work with a class
of students in Haiti.

Overview
The students will again extend their understanding of social movements around
the rights of individuals by looking at a less commonly understood revolution,

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the Haitian Revolution.

Activity 5.4.1
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
versus the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Declaration of Independence
The teacher explains to the class that the Haitian Revolution began, in large part,
because France did not extend the rights listed in the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen5 to Haitians. During the French Revolution, the
assembly that was created during the reign of Louis XVI drafted a document that
outlined the equal rights of all citizens. The class begins a discussion on the
freedoms that French people were seeking during the Revolution, the freedoms
that Americans were seeking during the Revolution, and the freedoms that
Haitians were seeking. Next, the students, with the help of the teacher, discuss
the similarities and differences between the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen, the US Declaration of Independence, and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights,6 using close-reading methods to study selections
of text from these primary documents.

Activity 5.4.2
Art and Toussaint Louverture7
The teacher begins the class by explaining that, just as the French Revolution
did, the Haitian Revolution inspired people all over the world, including artists.
Haiti was the first colony of blacks that gained independence, and unlike many
African nations, they fought for it, rather than had it bestowed upon them. For
this reason, the Haitian Revolution remains a very important piece of history
that has been commemorated through art.

The charismatic yet controversial figure of Toussaint Louverture has been a

particularly rich subject for art and poetry. The teacher first reads William
Wordsworth’s poem “To Toussaint L’Ouverture.” (Note that this poem can be
very difficult for young learners to understand, so the teacher should take care to
explain the complex language and to focus the learning on how Louverture was
unhappy because he was not free.)

The class is paired with a class of students in Haiti so that they can learn about
how Haitian students learn about the Haitian Revolution. The teachers of each

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class collaborate to show their students the paintings of Jacob Lawrence,8
which tell the story of Louverture’s life and Haiti’s struggle for independence.
The teachers show their classes one painting at a time and asks the classes to
describe the story each painting tells. The American teacher then shares
biographical information about Louverture from a source like The Louverture
Project (see resources below). The Haitian teacher asks his or her students to
use what they have learned previously about the Haitian Revolution to caption
the paintings. Next, the students break into pairs and share how they interpreted
the paintings and their thoughts on the similarities and differences in the stories
they tell. Ideally, the students will talk about how Louverture is represented and
about what devices the artist used to convey information and feeling.

(Note that the teachers should both take care to explain to the students that while
these particular paintings tell a particular story, there is no “right” way to
interpret art.)

A possible student-level resource for the Haitian Revolution is a leveled reader

(the sixth-grade reader is available below, on, above grade level) from
McGraw-Hill MacMillian (https://www.mheonline.com/) called Timelinks:
The Haitian Revolution (2009).

Resources

• Frederick Douglass’s 1893 lecture on Haiti

(http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/progress/jb_progress_douglass_1.html
• The Louverture Project (http://thelouvertureproject.org/index.php?
title=Main_Page)
• National History Day Essay Winner Jim Thomson’s “The Haitian
Revolution and the Forging of America”
(http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.1/thomson.html)
• Africans in America’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man” from PBS
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h1577t.html)
• Teaching for Change’s “Teaching About Haiti”
(http://www.teachingforchange.org/publications/haiti)
• Teaching History’s “Teaching About Haiti”
(http://teachinghistory.org/nhec-blog/23787)
• The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

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Unit 5.5
Topic UDHR and Poverty and Hunger
ICC: interpersonal; ICC: intrapersonal; ethics; work and
mind habits; economic development; poverty; geography;
Theme
comparative government; global risk: economic; arts:
literature and drama; and analyze and assess
Region United States, India, and Africa
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the representation of rights and needs in the UDHR and
the SDGs and understand the centrality of SDG 1 and SDG 2 to the
other SDGs.
2. Inspire students to reflect on the causes of poverty, its consequences
for different groups in society, and the stigmas associated with it; to
understand that it’s a dynamic concept that can affect anyone
disproportionately at a given point in time; and to undertake action
and contribute in the best possible way
3. Act in informed ways while trying to understand the issues
associated with poverty and by treating poor people in respectful
and dignified ways without stigmatizing them.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will increase awareness of the UDHR, of its value as a

normative framework in articulating the rights and freedoms of all
individuals, and of how it came into being.
2. Students will express thoughts and opinions regarding these human
rights, and understand and exhibit the behavioral competencies
associated with the UDHR.
3. Students will examine the complexities of poverty and understand it
as an evolving concept over time that can disproportionately affect
different groups of people for reasons that may not even be in their
control.
4. Students will draw clear links between the SDGs and the UDHR.

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 5. Students will differentiate between hunger, starvation, malnutrition,
and overeating.
6. Students will understand that statistics concerning the poor and
hunger are based upon measurements that are variable, and see the
links between poverty and hunger
7. Students will increase awareness of the different stakeholders
involved in addressing SDG 1 and SDG 2.
8. Students will understand the stereotypes associated with poverty and
also the importance of treating everyone equally with dignity and
respect, even if they’re poor.

Overview
The following unit takes the principles of the revolutions, human rights,
freedom, and the social movement around human rights and applies them to the
modern global compacts of the SDGs and the UDHR. It begins with concrete
explorations and then links to the document of the UDHR. It applies the
principles to poverty, and although there may not be any (or many) students in
the school living in poverty, the students will be well aware of the realities of
poverty that it addresses. The capstone at the end of this year allows the students
to raise awareness about an SDG that they care about. The ability to raise
awareness provides students with a sense of agency, which is fundamental to the
World Course.

Activity 5.5.1
What do I need to function?
In this activity, students are divided into groups and provided with large poster-
size paper on which the shape and form of an individual has been drawn. The
teacher asks each students to imagine that he or she is that individual and asks
what each needs to function on a day-to-day basis. While most students may say
basic things such as food or water, the teacher should push the boundaries of
their thinking further by asking leading questions about security and safety, rules
and norms, and health-care services.

The teacher then shows them pictures of children from across the world. He or
she should show a good mix of children from different parts of the world, of
different ethnicities and races, and from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
The teacher asks the students to define what these children in particular might
need and to make comparisons between what they said they needed and what
they said those other children needed. The purpose of this is for children to be

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able to see the universality of needs.

The teacher then proceeds to introduce students to the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights (UDHR), a global value framework granted to all human beings
in the world.

Activity 5.5.2
What’s the UDHR?
In this activity, the teacher shares a copy of a child-friendly version of the
UDHR, and the children read it together in class. The class is once again split
into groups, and those groups are given name cards belonging to a fictitious
nation or to a certain society. The teacher then informs the students that they will
be given particular situations and that they have to decide what they would do in
those situations using the texts they’ve been provided with.

The teacher introduces “violations”—that is, actions that would violate the
UDHR and that may not be used to solve the situations they students have been
given:

1. They may not blame a particular group without proof that that group
is guilty.
2. They may not take away the students’ right to a nationality.
3. They may not treat a group unfairly and discriminate against it on the
basis of race, color, or sex.

The teacher then asks the students to defend themselves by drawing on certain
specific portions of the text. Through this activity, the teacher introduces the
concept of the UDHR as a normative framework that is holistic and that grants
individual rights.

Resources

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2008/oct/17/amnesty-
declaration-human-rights-children#/?picture=338702813&index=6
• http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/hreduseries/TB3/appendices/kidsversi

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Activity 5.5.3
Human Rights Day: Every Day or One Day?
Using technology, students communicate with other students in different schools
in different parts of the world and work to examine how HR day is celebrated in
each of the countries. Do the countries do certain symbolic things? Is the day
even marked or observed?

The students then present their findings and talk about Human Rights Day. The
teacher asks the students how they would celebrate HR Day in class. She then
pushes the discussion further by asking how they would celebrate the day in
class if every day were Human Rights day. The purpose of this activity is for
students to draw out a list of the guiding values and principles that govern their
own actions in class. The list should include the essentials related to treating
everyone with equality, respect, and dignity.

Activity 5.5.4
What Did I See on My Way Back Home Today?
Students are shown a short clip: http://www.agarota.com/e_mk_release.html.

The teacher then asks the students to carefully observe what they see on their
way back home from school that day. They should then answer the following
questions:

1. Did you see poor people?

2. What makes you think that those people are poor?
3. Why do you think those people are poor?
4. Were those people doing something in particular that classified them
as poor?
5. Were they wearing certain kinds of clothes?
6. What kinds of homes might those people live in?

Stereotypes will emerge from this discussion. The teacher should allow the
students to record the stereotypes and their reactions to them in their journals.
They can them form partnerships to share the stereotypes and their reactions to
them, highlighting the similarities and differences in the stereotypes and
reactions. Students can then lead a class discussion about each of these
questions, and the reasons behind what they saw,. through the lens of poverty,
articulating the many complex reasons that influence poverty at an individual

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and household level.

The aim of the activity that follows is for students to examine the underlying
causes of poverty and for the teacher to address some of the stereotypes that
emerge.

Activity 5.5.5
The Web of Poverty
In this activity, students are provided with name cards that represent fictitious
people of different ages in different roles and occupations. Students are
informed that collectively, these cards mirror a society in which the old people
are not working, some of the young people are in school or don’t have jobs,
some of the people are earning lots of money, and some are earning less. The
teacher informs the students that he or she will gradually introduce certain
situations that some people will have to alter their behavior to address. The
teacher should introduce this as a dynamic game in which each group of people
responds to the others group. The teacher gradually begins introducing different
situations. The following is a suggested list of situations:

1. The costs of health care and education rise, or certain individuals

don’t have access to health-care facilities when they need care.
2. Some students drop out of school or don’t have access to learning
opportunities.
3. There is a disaster in the country, and all of the family’s assets are
lost.
4. The price of food increases owing to less agricultural output.
5. Some people lose their current jobs, and thus, their families don’t
have money.

The teacher should stress the importance of finding a solution to the issue
despite the constraints at hand. The aim of this is to bring to light the agency of
ordinary people who may be poor.

Based on this activity, the teacher helps the students draw various
interconnections between poverty, education, livelihoods, and access to health
care and realize that poverty is a dynamic concept that evolves over time owing
to the complexity of the issue at hand.

The students write a blog post about what they learned and reflect on one

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particular instance that influenced their way of thinking about poverty.

Note that in this simulation, the teacher should be especially careful to ensure
that the students understand that anyone can become poor for reasons outside of
their control and to address any emotions associated with feeling superior or
“helping the poor.” It’s important that the students understand the complexities of
poverty. The teacher can help them understand those complexities by imposing
two simultaneous constraints (e.g., some people have lost their jobs, and the
prices of food are escalating simultaneously, and thus, poverty impacts those
without jobs even more severely).

Activity 5.5.6
The SDGs from the UDHR
For homework, the teacher asks the students if there’s anything about the
simulations that draws students’ attention to human rights that are not being
fulfilled, as articulated within the UDHR. The teacher asks the students to
present their thoughts in class.

The teacher introduces the students to the SDGs, the seventeen goals of the
world until 2030. Through visuals and graphics, the teacher showcases each of
the seventeen goals and speaks about them.

The teacher then gives the students a sheet that lists the UDHR and the SDGs
side by side and asks the children to match the two and to see which parts of the
UDHR the SDGs draw from.

Use the lesson “A Global Goals Assembly” to remind the students of the SDGs
(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/).

Activity 5.5.7
Children in Poverty
Here the teacher introduces SDG 1, poverty, and SDG 2, hunger. The students
are asked to monitor what they eat for the next two days. During these two days,
the teacher shows the children the foods that children in different parts of the
world eat. (Pick a good mix from across the world and across different SES).
The teacher presents a fictitious dietary chart and uses that to count the calorie
counts of foods (http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/), to discuss the concept of a

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minimum calorie requirement, and to examine issues related to nutrition and
poverty.

The students are asked to answer the following questions:

1. How long can they go without food?

2. Why is food important to them?
3. What would they do if they couldn’t access food?
4. What could they not do if they didn’t have access to food?

The teacher draws links between food, school attendance, learning, livelihoods,
and, most importantly, good health. The teacher further elaborates on the
concepts of calories, food for energy, undernourishment. Through this activity,
the teacher helps the students distinguish between concepts associated with
hunger, overeating, malnutrition, and starvation.

Activity 5.5.8
Escalating Food Prices and Who’s Affected the Most
The teacher then divides the students into two groups, one of which will live on
$1.25 a day and one of which will have a higher budget. He or she presents a
scenario in which students have a defined budget, but the prices of food are
escalating. The students are provided with food costs and are asked to cut out
food items from their budget. They should be asked what they will choose and
why. The teacher compares what the two groups can afford and what they will
cut out and highlights the fact that those with a budget of $1.25 a day can barely
afford anything.

Activity 5.5.9
Relation between Poverty and Hunger
The teacher then presents students with a poverty map of the world and a hunger
map of the world and asks students to overlay one on the other. The students are
asked to list countries that appear on both maps. The students should identify
three countries that appear on both maps. The teacher will then divide the class
into three groups, and each group will research one country to figure out why
poverty and hunger are linked in that context. They will then share their
understandings with the class. During the class discussion, the following
extension questions may be asked:

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 1. If poverty was defined in another way, would this situation change?
2. If hunger were defined in an alternate way, how would it change?

Activity 5.5.10
What Did I See Today on My Way Home, and How Should
We Treat the Poor?
In this activity, the students go back to some of the thoughts they had about the
poor in activity 5. The teacher may also ask the students to reexamine their
thoughts and observations in light of what they’ve learned thus far.

The next day in class, the teacher addresses some of these concerns and attempts
to trash the stereotypes that the students have about being poor and about who
they believe to be poor. The teacher then asks the students the following
questions:

1. How do they think the poor should be treated?

2. What does the UDHR say about how to treat people?
3. What do respect and dignity mean in our interactions with people?

This could possibly result in a debate about different perspectives, but the
teacher’s aim should be to ensure that the students understand that all human
beings must be treated with respect and dignity.

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Unit 5.6
Topic Developments in South Africa
ICC; ethics; work and mind habits; economic development;
Themes poverty; world history; geography; comparative
government; arts: literature; and analyze and assess
Region South Africa
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the different methods and approaches that individuals

have used to resist oppression.
2. Inspire students to develop an in-depth understanding of how history
has shaped the current processes and forms that one sees in certain
parts of the world.
3. Act in informed ways when referring to Africa and understand the
diversity of experiences and events of South Africa in particular.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the importance of looking at the past to

examine the present.
2. Students will become aware of the different ways that individual and
collective rights and freedoms can be gained.
3. Students will be well versed in the historical context of the
oppressions in South Africa.
4. Students will become aware of Nelson Mandela and of his influential
role in shaping the agenda for reform in South Africa.
5. Students will relate to the experiences of others, develop empathy,
and articulate emotions.

Overview
This unit on South Africa is a case study on human rights, and it is particularly
important to include because the social movement around human rights is based
on nonviolent protest rather than on war. It is critical that students receive this

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alternative message within the context of the concepts of this year.

[Note that this is not a unit on African history. Important turning events in the
history of South Africa have specifically been addressed so as to frame this
discussion within the context of the larger theme for this year.]

Activity 5.6.1
South Africa Today
The teacher introduces this unit by showing students a map of Africa and South
Africa. The teacher then shows the students some pictures of South Africa and
discusses its flag, its national anthem, and some interesting facts about the
country. [See http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/places/find/south-africa/.)
The teacher proceeds to talk about the SDGs (which students were already
introduced to earlier in the year). For each of the SDGs, the students are
presented with data tables and asked to answer follow-up. The following is a
list of possible follow-up questions:

1. What percentage of the students are boys? What percentage of the

students are girls?
2. What is the percentage of malnourished children in South Africa?
3. What is the poverty rate in South Africa?

The aim of this activity is to get students interested in and curious about South
Africa. The teacher informs the students that to understand the current situation
in the country, they must examine what was happening in South Africa many
years ago (fifty years ago).

Activity 5.6.2
Making One’s Self Heard: The Defiance Campaign of 1952,
Sharpeville, and the 1960 Arrest of Mandela
The students write a petition or protest in nonviolent ways to change the
situation explored in the above activity. Through this activity, the teacher
introduces the students to the 1952 Defiance Campaign, in which eight thousand
volunteers defied the laws by entering places that they were forbidden to enter
and by not carrying their registration passes. Nelson Mandela is introduced as
one of the pioneers and leaders of the movement driven forward by the African
National Congress.

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Activity 5.6.3
Sharpeville and the Arrest of Mandela
The students are introduced to the events that took place in Sharpeville in 1960,
when sixty-seven Africans were killed while protesting against apartheid, and
to the arrest of Nelson Mandela in 1961 for creating trouble in the country.

Activity 5.6.4
Collectivism versus Individualism
Students are introduced to the following lines from Mandela’s speech from the
dock in 1964:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the

African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have
fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a
democratic and free society in which all persons live together in
harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to
live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am
prepared to die.

Using these lines, the students compare and contrast what they’ve learned about
Africa with what they learned in the units on the American Revolution, the
French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, which were revolutions for
rights. The students are asked to post online their reflections on what these lines
mean and how they differ from what they learned earlier. The teacher uses this
as an opportunity to discuss with the students the ideologies of collectivism and
individualism, the latter of which is represented by South Africa’s struggle.

Activity 5.6.5
Twenty More Years of Apartheid9
Students can read one of the following two texts:

• Journey to Jo’Burg, which is about Mma, a character who lives and

works in Johannesburg, far from the village that thirteen-year-old
Naledi and her younger brother, Tiro, call home. When their baby
sister suddenly becomes very sick, Naledi and Tiro know deep down
that only one person can save her. Bravely, they set off alone on a
journey to find Mma and to bring her back. It isn’t until they reach the

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 city that they come to understand the dangers of their country and the
painful struggle for freedom and dignity that is taking place all
around them (http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Journey-Joburg/?
isbn=9780064402378).

Out of Bounds, which tells stories set in different decades during the last half of
the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It features
fictional characters caught up in very real events. Included is a time line across
apartheid that recounts some of the restrictive laws passed during the era, the
events leading up to South Africa’s first free democratic elections, and the
establishment of the new “rainbow government” that still leads the country today
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Bounds-Seven-Stories-Conflict/dp/0060508019?
ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0). Using the backdrop of this story and
facts, students should maintain a first-person journal entry or write a blog post
about what they see happening around them and how it makes them feel.

Activity 5.6.6
The Release of Nelson Mandela and the 2005 World Rugby
Cup
The teacher shows the students pictures and clips from 1990, when Nelson
Mandela was released after twenty-seven years of imprisonment. Students
collect newspaper clippings and articles from that period, and, acting as
reporters for a newspaper, trace the developments leading up 1994, when
Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. Students are
given the text of Nelson Mandela’s momentous speech on hope and glory and
are asked to pay special attentionto the last line of his speech:

We must therefore act together as a united people, for national

reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let
there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work,
bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body,
the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves. Never,
never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again
experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity
of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign.

The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!

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 God bless Africa!

Time permitting, the teacher could lead a discussion about how Mandela used
sports as a strategy for nation building, and selected scenes from the movie
Invictus can be shown to the students.

Optional Activity Wavin’ Flag: The FIFA 2010 World Cup

Time permitting, students are then shown K’Naan’s “Wavin’ Flag” song and
video clips about the hype created around the FIFA World Cup in Africa. In
groups, students analyze the symbolism behind each of these songs and discuss
why these matter for Africa (and for South Africa in particular).

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Unit 5.7
Topic Capstone: What Can I Do?
ICC: interpersonal; ethics; work and mind habits; economic
Theme development; poverty; analyze and assess; creative
communication; and the use of technology
Region Not applicable
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn that they have personal agency and can make a difference by
raising awareness of an SDG that they care about and to
communicate effectively and creatively.
2. Inspire students to see themselves as having personal agency.
3. Act to raise awareness of an SDG.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will express their thoughts and opinions regarding these

human rights and understand and exhibit the behavioral competencies
associated with the UDHR.
2. Students will assimilate information across various sources to
communicate effectively about poverty and poverty reduction.
3. Students will create a video documentary to raise awareness of the
issue of poverty and of possible solutions to it.

Overview
The students create awareness-raising projects (documentaries) to promote
awareness of an SDG that they care about. They will share their work with a
partner school in India or South Africa.

Activity 5.7.1
What Can I Do?

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The teacher throws out a challenge to the students. The teacher says, “The poor
are helpless, and I don’t think I can do anything to change the situation.” The
teacher asks the students to challenge that statement and to pick one country as a
class and one thing that they would like to focus on as they challenge the
teacher’s statement. The students create documentaries (shorts) to promote
awareness of poverty and of their challenge. These documentaries should be
shared with a sister school in India or South Africa whose students will create
similar documentaries. The teacher introduces the notion of designing for change
using the lesson plan on the following web page and engages students in the
design of innovative approaches to tackling poverty:
https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/taking-action/.

Resources

• A short video on how different people will spend USD 10

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0XTPSYdP08)
• What have different people done?
(http://www.youtube.com/inmyname)
• Free Rice (http://www.wfp.org/students-and-teachers/teachers)
• Publications and media resources designed for human rights
education purposes
(http://www.ohchr.org/EN/PublicationsResources/Pages/TrainingEducation.a
• Resources for educators to teach about poverty
(http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/schools/index.shtml)

Because the documentary will be shared with a sister school in India or Africa,
an important component of this capstone is a study of what good communication
looks like across cultures.

During the year, students looked at how people communicated ideas through
songs, art, and other means during various revolutions. In particular, during the
SDG unit, they looked for and researched different examples of good
communication about topics relevant to the SDGs.

They now make the connection between what worked then—that is, how people
were able to communicate ideas effectively during revolutions—and the new
tools available and what good communication looks like today.

In this culminating unit, they examine ways to communicate about topics of

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interest to them by studying modern examples of communication and advocacy,
including Bono’s ONE Campaign, other groups’ efforts, documentaries, and
movies.

Guest speakers and workshops can include people working in the film, media,
documentary and advocacy, videos, communication, and marketing industries in
New York City.

Resources
A collection of lesson plans on this topic (this is just a short selection of the
many that are available on the subject):

• http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson158.shtml
• http://propaganda.mrdonn.org/lessonplans.html
• http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/39376.aspx

2 This is based on the philosophy of John Rawls in A Theory of Justice.

3 Hugo, V. & Kulling, M. (1995). Les Misérables. New York, NY: Random House Books for
Young Readers. [ISBN 978-0679866688]
4 Hirsch, E.D. Jr. (ed.) (1993). What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a
Good Fifth-Grade Education. New York, NY: Dell Publishing. [ISBN 978-0385411196]
5 Available here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h1577t.html
6 http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
7 An alternate spelling is “L’Ouverture.”
9 Note that details about the Soweto uprising have been deliberately removed since the
uprising involved the massacre of seventy schoolchildren, which could possibly frighten fifth
graders. The teacher should use discretion when deciding whether to talk about it.

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 APPENDIX A COLONIAL TIMES INSTRUCTIONS

T his activity consists of fifty-two assignments designed to produce a

newspaper in 1775.

The following are four news-story prompts to be written by twelve students

(four groups of three reporters):

1. Write an article about the Stamp Act riots, explaining why the Stamp
Act is not being enforced. Explain how tempers are rising as a result
of the passing of the Quartering Act and the Stamp Act. Include
interviews with the Massachusetts governor, Thomas Hutchinson;
Andrew Oliver; and Patrick Henry. Ask the following questions
(among others): Is it ever right to break the law? When you
intimidate a tax collector, is that a crime? Isn’t it inhumane to tar and
feather someone? Do tax collectors deserve such punishment?
(The important personages are Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew Oliver,
and Patrick Henry.)
2. British Parliament Debates the Repeal of the Stamp Act Based on
your interviews with Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, explain
why the British Parliament is likely to repeal the Stamp Act.
Interview Lord Dunmore about what a terrible mistake it will be for
the king to display weakness toward the colonies. Interview
Benjamin Franklin about what’s going on in Britain. Interview
Samuel Adams to find out why repealing the Stamp Act won’t be
enough to quell the colonial desire for independence.
(The important personages are Lord Dunmore, Benjamin Franklin,
and Samuel Adams.)
3. Write a news story about the Boston massacre. Interview Captain
Thomas Preston, Paul Revere, and John Adams. Write an
investigative report titled “The Truth About the Boston Massacre.”
Discuss whether the popular Paul Revere is exaggerating what really
happened and whether Preston is trying to escape blame for “losing
America.” You will find the truth!
(There are a few important personages. You will need to look at
British sources to tell the story of the skirmish from Preston’s point

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 of view and to explain why he feels that he did nothing wrong. As
John Adams, explain why you defended the soldiers in court. As
Paul Revere, tell the reporter the colonists’ version of events. Be
prepared to talk about your famous etching and to explain why your
etching isn’t historically accurate.)
4. Write an account of the Boston Tea Party. Interview a colonist who
wants to tell you everything about the Boston Tea Party but won’t
allow you to print his name because he’s afraid that if you do, the
British will arrest him. You can print his quotes but not his name.
Also talk to Samuel Adams, find out if he’s taking credit for the raid,
and learn whether any Sons of Liberty have been arrested by the
British.
(The important personages are your anonymous-source colonist and
Samuel Adams.)

The following are two news-story prompts to be written by six students (two
groups of three reporters):

1. Profile of Governor Thomas Hutchinson: Loyalist or Toady? Write a

profile about the life, times, character, and political beliefs of
Hutchinson. Interview Hutchinson himself. Talk to the Reverend
Jonathan Boucher about Hutchinson. Ask Boucher whether
Hutchinson is being unfairly smeared, and give Boucher a chance to
defend Hutchinson. Then interview Thomas Paine about Hutchinson.
(The important persons are Hutchinson, Jonathan Boucher, and
Thomas Paine. You will have to use British sources to find material
sympathetic to Hutchinson for this assignment.)
2. Profile of George Washington: The Most Admired Man in America
Who is George Washington, and is he the best man to lead the fight
against the British? Interview people who know him to learn whether
George is as honest, brave, and smart as he’s cracked up to be. And,
in an exclusive interview with George Washington himself, learn his
thoughts on where the British are vulnerable.
(The important personages are Augustine Washington, George’s
father, who can tell you about that cherry-tree story; Virginia
Governor Dinwiddie, who gave Washington his first military jobs
and saw him through his early successes and failures; and George
Washington.)

The following is a list of fourteen historical characters. Note that two students
will be assigned to some characters because those characters need to be

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interviewed by more than one reporter:

1. Thomas Hutchinson (two students)

2. Andrew Oliver
3. Patrick Henry
4. Lord Dunmore
5. Benjamin Franklin
6. Samuel Adams (two students)
7. John Adams
8. Captain Thomas Preston
9. Paul Revere
10. Jonathan Boucher
11. Thomas Paine
12. Anonymous-source colonist
13. Augustine Washington
14. Governor Dinwiddie

Two artists are required. One should make a drawing or a political cartoon
about the Boston Tea Party, and one should make a drawing or cartoon about
George Washington or Benjamin Franklin.

Four advertisements should be created:

1. A publisher’s ad for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

2. An ad for Benjamin Franklin’s old Farmer’s Almanac
3. An ad for men’s clothing or accessories. What exactly did they wear,
and what did it cost? Design your own ad for wigs, boots, or
anything else, but make it historically accurate.
4. An ad for women’s clothing. What exactly did they wear and what
did it cost? Use the guidelines listed for the previous ad.

Write two editorials:

1. “Why It’s Time to Declare Independence”

2. “Stop Tarring and Feathering”

Write one op-ed using the following prompt:

Benjamin Franklin writes a first-person account of the Hutchinson

Letters Affair: Why I leaked the letters, how I got into trouble with

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 the British, why I confessed, and why I’m now coming home. I’m
sorry for all the fuss, dear readers, but I thought you should know the
truth.

Write the following obituaries:

1. Nathan Hale
2. Crispus Attucks

Write letters to the editor from the following people:

1. Samuel Adams
2. Patrick Henry
3. An ordinary colonist warning that unless things calm down, the
colonists might be headed toward a war with the British. This
colonist feels fondly toward Britain and thinks that a war would be a
terrible tragedy and must be prevented.

Create an arts page with a theater review, a poetry review, an article covering
sports, and an article about food. One reporter should work on each article.

Theater Review
One reporter should write a review of one of Mercy Otis Warren’s plays. Tell
the readers what the play is about, whether you would recommend that they
attend it, and whether readers are likely to feel angry after seeing it. Tell the
readers whether the actors and the playwright have received any threats. Please
include information about where and when the performances are held and about
how much they cost.

Poetry Review
You are the newspaper’s poetry editor. Pick a poem by Phillis Wheatley that you
would like to print, and write a note to the readers explaining who she is, why
she is becoming famous, and why this particular poem is so important that you
have decided to publish it. Please comment on the significance of the fact that
she’s a black woman poet at a time when most black women in the colonies are
illiterate slaves.

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Sports
Write an account of a rolling-of-the-hoop contest you recently covered.

Food
With all of the tea dumped into the Boston Harbor, what are the colonists
drinking instead? Offer some alternate suggestions. Also, offer readers a recipe
for a hearty winter meal to enjoy during a cold Boston winter based on the food
that is actually available to the colonists.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
SIXTH GRADE: HOW VALUES AND IDENTITIES
SHAPE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS

Theme
U nderstanding cultural values and their impact in people’s lives and in
institutions and societies.

Description
In the sixth grade, students move from looking at the fight for the rights of
individual people and peoples to looking at the way that values and identity
shape people and institutions, including governments. After establishing norms
for the classroom, the students first look at their identities and reflect on their
complexities. They will read books like The Light in the Forest and The Conch
Bearer to enable them to think about values and identity in another place and/or
time. They will then learn about how individual choices and values play a role
in the need for government and civic organizations through an examination of
commons. After that, they will be introduced to civil society and to different
types of civic participation, using their own identity maps as a basis for the
concepts. Next, the students will do an extended comparison of governments,
focusing on the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. They will read
biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to understand how
their particular values helped shape American democracy. The final section
deals with indigenous peoples and the complex roles they play as members of
not only indigenous nations but also nation-states.

Looking Back
Freedom and the Rights of Individuals

Looking Forward
Social Movements and Change Makers

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Overview of Units

1) Creating a Classroom Constitution

2) Introduction to Complex Cultural Identities: Identity Mapping
3) World Values: Organization, Respect, and Freedom
4) The Commons
5) Civil Society and Civic Participation
6) Comparative Study of the Three Branches of Government
7) Indigenous Peoples

Capstone:
The capstone is an advocacy project. The students choose a current issue and
create an advocacy project around it, working with government and civil society
to raise awareness or to influence policy.

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Unit 6.1
Topic Creating a Classroom Constitution
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture); ICC:
intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills); ethics: trust in
Theme institutions; knowledge: politics (government/politics and
comparative government); arts: literature; and skills: global
problem solving (scenario building)
Region Not applicable
Length Three lessons

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the purpose of creating constitutions, their functions, and their

limitations.
2. Inspire students to develop concrete frameworks for creating their
own constitutions to help achieve the group’s goals.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of and creating a classroom
constitution.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify the purposes and limits of constitutions.

2. Students will judge current events as they apply to the US
Constitution.
3. Students will judge constitutions and their usefulness in enabling the
classroom to work together for the common goal of learning.

Overview
The purpose of this unit is to organize the classroom and to define its rules and
purpose. The students will also review their summer reading, a book on the
American Revolution.

Activity 6.1.1

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Simulation
The students are divided into three separate governments. Each group will be
given a task, but they need to complete the task under the general governing
structure to which they are assigned.

Structure A is a true democracy with majority rule,

Structure B is a representative democracy in which there are five elected

representatives who ultimately make the decisions.

Structure C is a monarchy in which one person makes the decision.

In all three structures, there is a constitution that states (among other things) that
all people have the right to keep their property and that no property shall be
seized by any other citizen or by the governing structure itself.

Now students imagine that there is an extreme shortage of textbooks. While

electronic resources are one solution to the textbook shortage, many schools in
the area lack computers. There are seven schools and enough books for every
student in three schools to have textbooks. The teachers own the textbooks and
bought them using his or her salary. How will the government structure ensure
that all students can access the textbooks?

The goal is for the students to solve the problem using any one of a variety of
solutions. But they must reach a consensus according to their structure, and they
must not violate the constitution (unless, perhaps, they are in a monarchy, in
which case they must be very careful about the population’s reaction).

Students should be guided to learn that

1. A constitution provides some guidance about what one can and cannot
do
2. The differing structures have clear strengths and weaknesses
3. The United States is most like structure B
4. The classroom itself might be a mixture of C and A or B (at the
discretion of the teacher)

Activity 6.1.2
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Summer Reading Discussion
The students discuss their summer reading book in light of the simulation above.
The summer reading book should be a novel about the American Revolution,
such as My Brother Sam is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier; Chains, by Laurie
Halse Anderson; or Duel in the Wilderness, by Karin Clafford Farley. They can
also refer to Johnny Tremain, which they read in the previous grade. They can
talk about the perspectives of the Loyalists and the Patriots in each of the stories
and about how their views reflect the structures that the students played out in
the simulation.

Activity 6.1.3
Creation of a Classroom Constitution
With guidance from the teacher, the class will create a constitution in which

1. The purposes of the classroom (the mission) is defined

2. The governing structure of the classroom is described
3. The rights of the students and the teacher are defined
4. The obligations of the students and teacher are defined.

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Unit 6.2
Introduction to Complex Cultural Identities: Identity
Topic
Mapping
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, others’ identities and cultures, and
working in intercultural teams); ICC: intrapersonal
(recognizing prejudice and minimizing the effects of
Theme
prejudice); ethics: religious diversity; work and mind habits:
cross-cultural perspective taking, cultural change, and
variation within cultural groups; and knowledge: culture
(world religions and philosophical traditions)
Area Not applicable
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about complex identities, including the students’ own identities

and others’ identities.
2. Inspire the students to reject stereotypes and useless generalizations
and to see nuance and complexity in others’ identities.
3. Act by recognizing the students’ myriad roles as well as those of
others and by understanding how those roles shape who people are.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will think about their roles in their families, their

communities, and the world.
2. Students will learn abstract mapping by making identity webs.
3. Students will practice working on an intercultural team.
4. Students will practice reflecting on their own identities and on how
they are influenced by (and how they influence) culture and
institutions.

Overview
Students will be introduced to the idea that identities are complex, composed of

225
many facets, and can change with context, roles, and perspectives. They will
examine how their perspectives might change with different experiences, roles,
and knowledge.

Activity 6.2.1
Identity Web
The teacher will model an identity web, drawing him or herself at the center of
it, and then list and describe the aspects of it that are important to him or her.
For example, the teacher might list his or her

1. Family roles
2. Leisure activities
3. Professional roles
4. Volunteer roles
5. Demographics (e.g., ethnicity and age)
6. Talents
7. Favorites (e.g., music, foods, art, sports teams, etc.)
8. Key experiences (experiences important to his or her identity)
9. Favorite superhero and what his/her superpower and superhero name
would be if he or she were a superhero.

Next, students create their own identity webs and then share them with one
another in class, commenting on what they have in common and how they differ.
They then try to create a class identity web and name those items that they have
in common and the ways they differ.

Students then partner with students from different parts of the world (one school
from each of the BRIC countries), share their identity webs with one another,
compare and contrast the different presentations, and discuss cultural
similarities and differences.

Students can continue the interactions by interviewing other students from

different countries. They can ask about and compare their roles and
responsibilities as

– daughters or sons
– sisters or brothers (elder/younger/middle)
– students in a class
– friends

226
 – teammates (in sports)
– other roles they might have

The students should then ask their partner what those identities mean to him or
her and whether or why one means more to him or her than the others.

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Unit 6.3
Topic World Values: Organization, Respect, and Freedom
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, others’ identities and cultures, working
in intercultural teams, and etiquette); ICC: intrapersonal
(minimizing the effects of prejudice); ethics: showing
humility and respect, religious diversity, ethical frameworks,
and common values; work and mind habits: innovation and
Theme
creativity, cross-cultural perspective taking, cultural
change, and variation within cultural groups; knowledge:
culture (world religions and philosophical traditions); arts:
literature; skills: analytical and investigative skills (local-
global link and creative communication); and global problem
solving: produce media and the use of technology
Area India, the United States, and teacher’s choice
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives:

1. Learn about how individuals and cultures have both different and
similar values.
2. Inspire students to explore and respect cultural differences.
3. Act by becoming aware of the cross-cultural variations in these
values.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about cultural values in different cultures.

2. Students will learn about how people show respect in different parts
of the world.
3. Students will learn about the types of people and things that people
show respect for in different parts of the world.
4. Students will practice interacting with other students from different
parts of the world.

228
Overview
Students begin by extrapolating cultural values from the values they see
demonstrated in the actions of characters in two novels, and then they try to
determine the cultural values present in their own complex identities. They then
share the values that they’ve identified with classmates in another part of the
world through a discussion of respect (e.g., who it is given to, how it is given,
and why). At the end of the unit, the students create a video showing how to
properly greet different types of people in different countries.

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Activity 6.3.1
The Conch Bearer and The Light in the Forest
Half of the class reads The Conch Bearer, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and
the other half reads The Light in the Forest, by Conrad Richter. While they are
reading the books, they should reflect on what the main characters value, how
they come to value those things, and how they show that they value them. The
teacher prompts the students to write journal entries using language such as “It is
important for [character] to do [action] because [reason].” After each group has
finished reading its book (and also periodically throughout), the two groups
come together to talk about the motivations of the characters, and what values
the books share. In the end, each student should write an essay about what they
value most and why and about the people or institutions who shaped their
values.

Activity 6.3.2
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Values
The students think not only about their personal values but also about the values
that shape their society. They begin by trying to extrapolate from the two books
they read the larger societal values of the Lenni-Lenape, the American
frontiersmen, and those in modern India. They then conduct research to find out
and compare the groups’ religious views, major philosophies, and national
mottoes as well as other value-based information. The teacher may want to
share some of the information from the World Values Survey slides with the
class to show the shift from away from religion and toward secular-rationalism
as a global trend. They can discuss how the Lenni-Lenape Indians’ values are
different from today’s values in India and how the old man is portrayed in the
story about India (and how religion/spirituality can be portrayed as something
from the past).
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

Activity 6.3.3
How Do We Show Respect?
Each student is paired with a student from another culture (an American student
attending school in a Native American community, for example, or a student
from another country) using a tool such as iEARN.10 Ideally, they will have
access to students from a number of different cultures (that is, the class will not

230
be paired with students from only class but with students from different classes
in different countries or cultures).

Each student (in both groups) is instructed to think of one person whom he or
she respects. That person could be a politician, a historical figure, a relative, or
a celebrity. The students should then write a short essay on what qualities of that
person they respect and why. They then share their essays first with their own
class and then with their cross-cultural partners. They will discuss similarities
and differences in the essays.

Next, each student is instructed to imagine an encounter with the person he or

she respects. Each student should write a second essay that describes the
encounter and places special emphasis on how the student would dress, behave,
and address the person; what the student would say to the person; and how the
student would express respect.

Again, the students share their essays with their own class and then with their
cross-cultural partners. They will discuss similarities and differences in the
essays.

Activity 6.3.4
Greetings around the World
Since a resource describing greetings around the world does not appear to exist,
the students will create one themselves! The students gather information on the
proper way to greet someone in another culture. They each pick a culture (some
may pick the same one), and they find out the proper ways to greet someone
older, someone the same age, and someone very important.

They can use the Internet, travel guides, and family members and friends to
collect information. They will then create a video that shows how to greet
people in many different cultures.

Resources

• World Values Survey

(http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_ba

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Unit 6.4
Topic The Commons
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
trust in institutions, breakdown of trust in institutions, and
the importance of global compacts; knowledge: economics,
trade, and demography (economic development and
Theme demography); politics: government/politics and comparative
government; global risk: environment and globalization;
skills: analytical and investigative skills (evaluate sources of
information and the local-global link); and global problem
solving: scenario building and being a critical consumer
Area: Any/all, but specifically the United Kingdom and Canada
Length: Five weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to bring into focus the complicated and valuable relationship

between individuals and their government.
2. Inspire students to reflect on the motivations of those who wish to
increase or decrease the government’s role in individuals’ lives.
3. Act by understanding that individuals can work with their
government to create healthier, more just societies.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about the important relationship between

individuals and their government by examining commons.
2. Students will learn about the tragedy of the commons and
government’s role in protecting the environment.
3. Students will learn about the important role that common spaces have
played in allowing the free exchange of thought and criticism of
governments.
4. Students will reflect on common spaces within their contexts,
including on what they are used for, what value they provide, and
how they are regulated.

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Overview
In this unit, students learn about the commons in two different contexts. First
they learn about how competing individuals’ choices can result in the need for
government and civil society. They will watch a documentary and play a
simulation game to learn about global overfishing. Second students learn about
how commons can provide a space for individual expression and particularly
for demonstrations against governmental policies.

Activity 6.4.1
Film
Show the class a film about the world fisheries crisis. For example, the class
can watch The End of the Line11 or Taking Stock.12 Ask the students to take
notes on the film and to answer the following questions:

– What is the problem?

– Why is the problem hard to stop or fix?
– Who in the film do you sympathize with the most?
– What role can and should governments, international organizations,
and supragovernmental organizations play in regulating commons?

The teacher should then lead a discussion based on the reflections of the
students. Ask them to imagine that they are fishermen/fisherwomen, and ask them
if they think that they would be a part of the problem.

Activity 6.4.2
The Tragedy of the Commons
(Note that this activity is adapted from Alabama Learning Exchange’s “The
Tragedy of the Commons,” by Kelly Morton.)

Using what they learned from the fisheries film, the students will try to avoid a
tragedy of the commons during this simulation. The teacher will need to provide
two cups (or, alternatively, two small bowls) of different colors, straws (one for
every student), and a large quantity of M&M’s or other similar candy. One cup
will be “cup 1,” and one will be “cup 2.” The students are given a lab sheet.
They will play several rounds of the simulation.

ROUND 1

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Students need to be divided into groups of four. Each person represents the head
of a household that must be fed. The only food source is a small pond that can
hold only sixteen fish. The pond begins with sixteen fish and is adjusted after
each round. After each round of fishing, the fish will double in number
(spontaneous reproduction). Each head of a household can take as many fish as
he or she wants but must take more than one to keep his or her family alive.
Each head of a household can only fish for thirty seconds at a time. Cup 1 is the
common pond. The straws are the fishing poles. The students try to suck fish (the
M&M’s or Skittles) up through the straw until they think they have a fish, and
then they take the fish off of the straw (the fishing pole). The pond should be
taken to the teacher after each round of fishing so that the fish can “reproduce.”
(Remember, each fish can double; therefore, three fish become six, and six fish
become twelve, etc.). Each student will fish three times. For each round of
fishing, the order should be rotated so that each head of a household gets to go
first. There is to be no talking during this round. The students are not permitted
to look in the pond in this round. Complete the data table after each round of
fishing.

ROUND 2
In this round there will be the common pond (cup 1, with the same rules as last
time) and a private pond (cup 2, which will have one pond per student). The
students can talk in this round and can look in the pond while they are fishing. It
will be possible to see how many fish are available at all times. The private
pond can hold only four fish. The common pond still begins with sixteen fish.
Each student must take at least one fish from each pond during each round. Each
student may remove as many fish as he or she wishes from each pond, as before.
The fish will reproduce (they will be taken to the teacher, as they were in the
last round) after this round. Complete the data table after this round of fishing.
Upon completion of this round, the students should answer the questions in the
“analysis” section of the lab sheet. (See the “Tragedy of the Commons” lesson
plan.)

After completing this activity, the students should choose an environmental-

management issue to which the idea of the tragedy of the commons is relevant.
They should research the issue thoroughly, and create a multimedia presentation
that is presented to the class in the form of a brochure, PowerPoint, or mock
newscast.

Activity 6.4.3
The Opportunities of the Commons

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The teacher explains to the students that they are shifting gears from tragedy to
opportunity: they will next examine the important role that common spaces have
played in history. The class will be divided into groups, and each group will be
assigned a common area (e.g., a park, a common, or a square) that was
influential in history. These areas could be famous or infamous for the rallies
and protests held there, for the military stationed there, or for the executions or
public events that occurred there. For example, students may study Boston
Common, which has been used as a common grazing ground, as a public park,
for public executions, and as housing for British troops during the Revolutionary
War.

The students will write research reports on the important role that the space
assigned to them played in the history of its region or city.

Activity 6.4.4
Contemporary Commons
This activity instructs students to be amateur anthropologists in their own
community. The students are each assigned one common area in their
neighborhood. They might be assigned, for example, a sidewalk, a street, a local
park, the school cafeteria, or a hallway in school. They are instructed to write
an investigative report that answers the following questions:

– What sorts of activities take place there?

– Who is the common area used by?
– What exchanges of culture or ideas takes place there?
– What are some of the threats to the common area? (For examples,
threats could include littering, fighting, or noise.)
– Who regulates the common area, and how is that person or group
effective?

They must then create some sort of exposé in the style of a nature documentary
that shares with the class their assigned common area.

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Unit 6.5
Topic Civil Society and Civic Participation
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture and
empathy); ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills);
Theme ethics: trust in institutions, common values, and the value of
human potential; and work and mind habits: innovation and
creativity
Area Not applicable
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn what a civil society is and what social capital is.

2. Inspire students to build social capital in their communities and to
join voluntary organizations.
3. Act by becoming active members of civil society.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students study the concept of civil society and various civil-society

organizations, such as unions, political parties, religious
organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and community
organizations.
2. Students examine the different forms of social capital.

Overview
In this unit, students will look at the roles they play in organizations and, through
their experiences, learn about civil society. They will identify the organizations
and groups they belong to and describe how they’re governed, how membership
is decided, and how differences are resolved. They will learn about different
types of social capital and about why it is important.

Activity 6.5.1

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What Is Civil Society?
Students turn back to their identity maps. The teacher instructs them to look for
the roles they play as members of organizations. They may find that they are
members of community sports leagues, churches, or volunteer groups. Once they
have made note of all of their membership roles, the teacher leads the class in a
discussion of those organizations. He or she asks, for example, about what
organizations they belong to, the purposes of those organizations, why those
organizations exist, and why the students belong to them.

The teacher then explains that these types of organizations help to form civil
societies. The teacher asks the students if they can define “civil society,” given
the discussion they’ve had. Ideally, the students will decide that a civil society
brings people together to do things that individuals alone cannot do and that the
government does not do.

Activity 6.5.2
Student Projects
In small groups students research one organization in a civil society, its history,
and its major accomplishments and examine in particular how it is organized
and governed, how membership is recruited, and the patterns in the growth of its
membership. These projects are then presented to the class as a PowerPoint or
through the use of other media, and they lead to a discussion on the collective
role of civil society in a democracy.

Activity 6.5.3
What Is Social Capital?
The teacher presents the class with a dilemma that demonstrates how much
social capital each student has. The teacher should say the following: “Imagine
that you are alone on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue13 with
no money and no cell phone, and you are carrying a large box—one that is too
big for you to carry all the way home alone. What do you do?”

The students should brainstorm ideas, like visiting a friend who lives in the
neighborhood, asking for help from a safe adult, or asking a cabdriver to take
him or her home and to wait for payment from another adult. Once the students
have generated a few plans, the teacher asks the class the following questions:

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 1. How did you come up with the plans?
2. How do you know they would work?
3. Who would you rely on to execute the plans?
4. How do you know that they would help?
5. How likely is it that you’ll be in this situation?

After the class discusses these questions, the teacher explains to the students that
all of the answers have to do with social capital. The teacher explains that
“capital” means “wealth” (like money), and “social” means “having to do with
people.” As such, having social capital means having resources of people and
know-how concerning interacting with people. The teacher refers the students to
the main character in The Light in the Forest and explains that he has a lot of
know-how when he’s among the Lenni-Lenape but that he has to build new
social capital when he rejoins his original community. To deepen their
understanding of social capital, the students write a short essay describing the
social capital that they would miss if they suddenly found themselves whisked
off to an alien community. They may describe the lack of the language skills, the
lack of an understanding of the culture, and the lack of friends and family as
problems.

Activity 6.5.4
Bonding and Bridging Capital at School
The students are instructed to think of a small project that they could each
undertake that would build social capital among the school community. For
example, a student could create a new club, pledge to invite a different student
to eat lunch with him or her each day, or try to get to know his or her classmates’
brothers and sisters. The students should write a series of journal entries that
describe this experience.

Resources

• Robert D. Putnam. (2000). Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster.

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Unit: 6.6
Topic: Comparative Study of the Three Branches of Government
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture and
others’ identities and cultures); ethics: trust in institutions
and commitment to equality; knowledge: culture (world
Theme:
history and philosophical traditions); politics:
government/politics and comparative government); and
arts: literature
Area The United States, the United Kingdom, and China
Length Twelve weeks

Part 1
The United States

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the three branches of government in the United

States and their functions; to describe the Constitution, its purpose,
and its content; and to describe the relationship between the three
branches of government and the government’s relationship with the
citizens.
2. Inspire in students a desire to reach out to representatives in the US
government and to participate in organizations working within the
political system.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the three branches of
government and the Constitution through an in-class assessment as
well as through an application of this understanding of the respective
role of each branch to a discussion of a current policy issue.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the three branches of government in the United

States and their function and describe the Constitution, its purpose,
and its content.
2. Students will evaluate current events in terms of the branches of
government that are involved and in terms of the constitutionality of

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 the decisions that are made.

Overview
Students learn about the three branches of the US government and about the
cultures and experiences of the individuals who helped to form the US
government by reading biographies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas
Jefferson. They will study the first country case in the extended comparison of
the three branches of government: the United States.

Activity 6.6.1.1
Balancing Three Branches at Once: Our System of Checks
and Balances
(Note that this activity is taken from the National Endowment for the
Humanities’ Edsitement!)

With the class, do the four activities concerning the three branches of
government listed on the NEH’s “Edsitement” page
(http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/balancing-three-branches-once-our-
system-checks-and-balances#sect-activities):

1. “No More King” from Schoolhouse Rock

2. The Colonies Complained
3. “Three-Ring Government” from Schoolhouse Rock
4. Accounts of Checking and Balancing

Activity 6.6.1.2
Extended Role-Playing of the Three Branches
The teacher divides the class into three groups: the executive branch, the
legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Each group receives a description of
its role:

The executive branch (three to five students) includes the president

of the United States, the vice president, and the major departments of
the government, such as the Labor Department, the Department of
Defense, the State Department, and the Department of the Treasury.
Each department has a leader appointed by the president. Together,

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 all of the leaders, along with the president, the vice president, and a
few other people, make up the cabinet. The job of the executive
branch is to enforce the laws.

The judicial branch (three or five students—it must be an odd

number) is made up of the Supreme Court and other courts, and its
job is to interpret the laws.

The legislative branch (the rest of the class) is made up of Congress,

which is composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Its job is to make the laws. Congress also decides who and what to
tax and how to use tax money. Each house of Congress meets
separately. However, they can come together for joint sessions.

The students must elect a president and a vice president to lead the executive
branch. (If this will be too fraught a situation for the students, the teacher may
randomly—or deliberately—assign roles.) The president then assigns cabinet
positions to the other students in the executive branch. Students in the legislative
branch group must be divided into senators and congressmen/congresswomen.

For the remainder of the unit, the teacher will ask the students in each group to
think about what role their branch would play in a given situation. This can be a
journaling activity as well as an independent research and essay activity.

Activity 6.6.1.3
The Constitution
The students and the teacher should read the preamble together and discuss its
role as a thesis and mission statement:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect

Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The students should make a chart with the purposes of the government on one
side and the purposes of the school and the classroom on the other side, using
the preamble and the school’s mission statement as a guide.

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The teacher should lead the class in the writing of a similar thesis and a mission
statement for the classroom.

The articles of the Constitution describe and list the responsibilities and limit
the power of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.
The teacher should quickly lead the class in a discussion of the articles of the
Constitution.

After the discussion, the class can be assigned reading from The History of US
Book 4: The New Nation 1789–1850. The reading should focus on the
Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton.

Extension of the Activity

Learning Through Dilemmas
The teacher should split the class into three groups: the legislative branch, the
judicial branch, and the executive branch. (See the role-play activity in 6.6.2.)
The teacher should then present each group with a dilemma, and the group
should review their articles of the Constitution to determine what is
constitutional. For example, the dilemma could be that an eighteen-year-old
from Illinois would like to run for election in the House of Representatives as a
representative of California.

Optional Extension Activity

Jefferson and Hamilton: A Debate about the Role of the
New Government
Students should be divided into two groups. One group will read a book about
Alexander Hamilton, and the other will read a book about Jefferson. The
Hamilton group may read James Lincoln Collier’s The Alexander Hamilton You
Never Knew or Nancy Whitelaw’s More Perfect Union: The Story of
Alexander Hamilton, which discuss his youth and family and the experiences
that shaped his perspective on government. The Jefferson group may read
Jennifer Armstrong’s Dear Mr. President: Letters from Philadelphia Bookwork
or Russell Shorto’s Thomas Jefferson and the American Ideal.

After reading the books, the students should prepare, for their use, a brief fact
sheet on the historical background and points of view of Hamilton and Jefferson.
Then in class, the teacher should lead a formal debate between the two groups.

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The teacher should remind the students to stick to the facts and to what they
learned about these two historical figures.

They should prepare a short skit that depicts the debates of the original writers
of the Constitution, the controversies, and the differing viewpoints of the
original founders of the nation.

Activity 6.6.1.4
A Closer Look at the Three Branches
Each group from the previous exercise should research their branch of
government and present to the class what they’ve learned. They should be able
to answer these questions:

– What is the purpose of the branch?

– What are the powers of the branch?
– What are the limits to the power of the branch?
– Who can be elected to this branch, and how are some of its members
appointed?

Students create a large classroom diagram of the three branches of government.

The diagram should show the interactions among the three branches. It should
also show how the system of checks and balances works. Teacher should
consider posting these questions so that the students can refer to them in the
comparative activities below.

Activity 6.6.1.5
The Amendments
The teacher will lead a general discussion on the amendments to the
Constitution, their history, and the first ten (the Bill of Rights).

Each student will be given an amendment to review and to understand through

research. Note that not all of the amendments should be included. The suggested
amendments are the first, the fourth–the seventh, the thirteenth, the fifteenth, the
nineteenth, the twenty-fourth, and the twenty-sixth. The student should keep the
amendment they have been assigned secret from the other students. The student
should prepare a dilemma, much like those in activity 1. The class should be
broken into four groups. Each student will present his or her dilemma to the

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class, and the groups should work together to identify the amendment that
addresses the dilemma and to describe a resolution based on the amendment.
Consider the following example: A city has decided to allow citizens to vote
only if they pay a tax. The groups should identify amendment twenty-for and
describe the resolution of this dilemma. The student who prepared this
amendment should then explain the history of the amendment, why it was put in
place, and what protections it affords.

Activity 6.6.1.6
Current Events and the Three Branches of Government
Students should research current events and how the three branches of
government interact with the events. They should do this in groups of two to
three. At this point, the teacher should stress that not all new laws become
amendments to the Constitution (e.g., the No Child Left Behind Act, the National
School Lunch Program, and the Affordable Care Act).

For example, the students can read Sam Dillon’s “Education Secretary May
Agree to Waivers on ‘No Child’ Requirements,” which appeared on June 12,
2011, in the New York Times. The students can discuss the role of the education
secretary (who is appointed by the president and a member of the executive
branch) and the role of Congress in creating (and overhauling) No Child Left
Behind.

Other topics that they may want to pursue include privacy, freedom versus
security, immigration, and freedom of expression and speech.

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 PART 2
The United Kingdom

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the three branches of government in the United

Kingdom and their functions, to describe common law and the lack
of a written constitution (as compared to the United States), and to
describe the purposes of modern monarchies.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for governing systems very much
like our own but different in key ways.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the three branches of
government in the United Kingdom and of the functions of a modern
monarchy through an in-depth study of UK governance and history

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the three branches of government in the United

Kingdom and their functions, describe common law and the lack of a
written constitution (as compared to the United States), and describe
the purposes of modern monarchies.
2. Students will identify key points in British history, particularly those
that pertain to the creation of the modern governing structure.
3. Students will describe the system of common law in the United
Kingdom and compare it to the US Constitution.
4. Students will compare very similar systems and highlight the key
differences in them.
5. Students will evaluate the two systems for their respective
opportunities and challenges.
6. Students will extend their knowledge of the United Kingdom’s
monarchy to other European monarchies.

Overview
In this unit, students will examine the second case in the extended comparison of
governments: the United Kingdom and its constitutional monarchy.

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[Note that at this point, the students have studied the three branches of
government in the United States and should have developed some analytic tools
that will help them move on to an analysis of the three branches in the United
Kingdom more independently. As a method of engagement, the unit starts with
biographical studies of historical and modern monarchs.]

Activity 6.6.2.1
King George III of England
The teacher will review the life of King George III of England. This will be a
review for most who have studied the American Revolution (in the fifth-grade
World Course), but the teacher should be prepared for students to need more
review or for those who have transferred to the school to be unfamiliar with
King George III.

Students (in groups) should be given a variety of choices of ways to summarize

their knowledge of King George III. They could, for example, write a play,
compose a letter from King George to George Washington, or write an editorial
for the Colonial Times newspaper as King George III.

Individually, students should research historical and modern monarchs. Ideally,

the students will be given many choices from which to choose, but try to have as
many students researching modern monarchs as historical monarchs. They
should “become” this monarch and present themselves with a brief introduction
summarizing who they are, what time period they are from, some of the
challenges they faced, and their power or the limits to their power (if any). They
then can take questions from the other students.

Activity 6.6.2.2 (One Week)

The Three Branches of Government and the Modern
Monarchy in the United Kingdom
In small groups, students should complete independent research projects on the
subject of the three branches of government and the modern monarchy in the
United Kingdom. They should be able to answer these key questions as well as
to provide additional details:

1. When was the current system in the United Kingdom formed? For
what purposes was it formed? In what historical context was it

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 formed?
2. What are the powers of each branch of government?
3. What are the limits to the power of each branch?
4. What is the role of the monarchy? What is the power of the monarchy,
and what are the limits to the power of the monarchy?

Students should research a current event in the United Kingdom and examine
how that event is affected by the three branches and the monarchy as part of their
analysis.

The teacher should discuss with the students the lack of a constitution in the
United Kingdom and how the system of common law is similar to and different
from a constitution.

Activity 6.6.2.3
Comparison between the United States and the United
Kingdom

The students should create a chart comparing the powers and the limits to the
powers of the three branches in the United States and the United Kingdom. They
should use this chart to write a one-page essay on the similarities and
differences in the branches of government of the two nations. This essay should
be considered a draft, as a more formal essay will be written after the next unit
is completed.

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 Part 3
China

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the three branches of government in China and

their functions and to compare how the three branches function in a
communist regime with how they function in other systems.
2. Inspire in students an appreciation for governing systems very much
like our own to inspire cooperation with China.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the three branches of
government and by comparing those of the United States and China.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the three branches of government in China and

their functions and compare how the three branches function in a
communist regime with how they function in other systems.
2. Students will identify key points in Chinese history, particularly those
that pertain to the creation of the modern governing structure.
3. Students will evaluate key differences between the three branches as
they operate in China.
4. Students will compare dissimilar systems and highlight the key
differences.
5. Students will evaluate multiple systems for their respective
opportunities and challenges.

Overview
In this unit, students will examine the third case in the extended comparison of
governments: China.

Activity 6.6.3.1
The Three Branches of Government in China
The teacher should lead a discussion about the three branches of government in

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China as a general introduction to the topic. The students then conduct their own
research projects on the three branches and how they operate. The students
should present these projects to the class.

The teacher should split the class into three parts (the three branches). Current
events in China should be presented to the class, and the groups should be given
time to develop an idea of how their branch of government is interacting with
the events. They should also answer the following questions about their branch:

Who makes decisions?

What powers do each branch have in this case?
What are the limits to the power of the branches?
How do the three branches function together?
What are the limits to civilian action?

Activity 6.6.3.2
A Final Comparison
The teacher should guide the students in adding China to the comparison chart of
the United States and the United Kingdom. Once all of the students have a
complete chart, they should use their chart to finish the comparative essay begun
in the previous unit. This essay should be a formal writing assignment.

As an extension, students could also compare the governing systems in the

United Kingdom and Japan.

Resources

• The US Constitution
(http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html)
• Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
(http://free.ed.gov/subjects.cfm?subject_id=19)
• Teaching With Documents
(http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/constitution-workshop/)
• Teaching American History (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/)
• The Constitution of the Republic of China
(http://www.taiwandocuments.org/constitution01.htm)
• UK Parliament
(http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/parliament-government/)

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• UK Government (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm)

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Unit 6.7
Topic Complex Identities: Code Talkers
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives, one’s own
identity and culture, others’ identities and cultures, and
empathy); ICC: intrapersonal (recognizing prejudice,
minimizing the effects of prejudice, and conflict-resolution
skills); ethics: showing humility and respect, trust in
institutions, breakdown of trust in institutions, commitment
Theme to equality, the value human potential, and commitment to
supporting human rights; work and mind habits: cross-
cultural perspective taking, cultural change, and variation
within cultural groups; knowledge: economics, trade, and
demography (economic development and poverty); culture:
world history; and investigative and analytical skills:
evaluate sources of information and use evidence
Region United States and Mexico
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the role that some indigenous cultures are playing in the
fight for the environment.
2. Inspire students to reflect upon the power of the disenfranchised, the
importance of land, what constitutes a “good” life, and the role of
governments and corporations.
3. Act by identifying major actors and groups in the indigenous
environmental movement and by recognizing that “traditional”
lifestyles can also be dynamic, modern, and prosperous.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about different indigenous communities that are

fighting to preserve the environment. They learn what they call
themselves, where they are located, some of their major traditions
and philosophies, and the history of their pursuit of environmental
rights.

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 2. Students will become aware of governments’ and business’
perspectives on land use and their benefits and costs.
3. Students will understand notions of sovereignty, colonialism,
exploitation, and segregation.
4. Students will have an understanding of the important roles that
indigenous people play today—and not just within a historical
context.
5. Students will know the power of the figures who have become
symbols in indigenous-rights disputes.

Overview
In this unit, students prepare to learn about Navajo code talkers by examining
injustice in their own lives. They further learn about sovereignty and identity by
doing research projects on other indigenous groups.

Activity 6.7.1
Unfairness and Me
In this activity, students will tell a three-minute-long personal story of a time
when they were treated unjustly or unfairly. Students should make the narrative
interesting and answer the following questions:

– Why do you think that you treated unfairly?

– What do the concepts of fairness and justness mean to you?
– How could amends be made?

The story should be a personal one that touched the student in some way.

Activity 6.7.2
Code Talkers
In this activity, students are taken back through history by exploring the web
page “Native Words, Native Warriors,” . (See
http://www.nmai.si.edu/education/codetalkers/.) Students are introduced to the
American Indian code talkers in the First World War. Students write an op-ed
that answers the following questions:

– What was the role of the American Indian code talkers (From the

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 Navajo community)?
– Was the treatment of the code talkers and the lack of recognition of
them after the war fair or unfair?
– What were some of the difficulties they had in finding jobs after
returning from the war? How do you think leaving their native
communities (which many had to do) affected them?
– Why did it take until 2000 for them to get recognition?
– What are the other ways beyond medals that the code talkers could
be honored, respected, and remembered?

Activity 6.7.3
Sovereignty
This particular unit begins with a simulation wherein the teacher divides the
students into groups representing nationalities (fictitious ones or real ones based
on the nationalities of the students). Each group is asked to come up with a list
of things common to its culture. Such a list could include the language used at
home, the customs and festivals, and art and other forms of cultural expression.

The teacher then systematically introduces some situations in which certain

groups are marginalized and are not allowed to express their freedoms and their
culture in specific ways or are denied essential rights. The teacher asks the
students to reflect on whether that practice is fair or unjust (and why), on how it
makes them feel, and on how amends could be made.

Next the teacher introduces the concepts of sovereignty and indigenous people’s
right to sovereignty. Students are split into groups, and each group compares its
own country case and eventually presents to the class on the case of Indigenours
Rights in Mexico and the United States. In their presentations, the groups should
answer the following questions in particular:

– Do the constitutions of each of the nations provide for the right to

sovereignty?
– When did the right to sovereignty come into place?
– What are some of the provisions of it?
– How many recognized tribal governments exist in each country?
– Are there official reservations recognized by each of the
governments?
– Is there a government agency or department that specifically looks
into the affairs of indigenous people in each of the countries?
– What are the rights and benefits of tribes? Are there differences in

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 their rights from state to state? (There are in the case of the United
States.)

Students will analyze the census of Mexico, which reports not only racial
ethnicity but also political ethnicity as way to recognize the indigenous people
in the country

Activity 6.7.4
Taking Sides
(Note that this could be an optional activity based on the availability of time
and the interest of the class. Alternatively, it could be included in activity 5,
which concerns comparisons.)
In this activity, students will be introduced to the background of the Zapatista
rebellion in Mexico in 1994. Students will be divided into groups wherein they
will get information about the Puebla Panama Plan and the criticism around it in
2001. One group will represent the government of Mexico and will defend the
economic gains from this investment, and the other will represent the indigenous
groups.

Activity 6.7.5
Comparisons
In this unit, students conduct in-depth background research, using a number of
online resources, the census, and newspaper articles, students compare the
status of indigenous people in the United States and Mexico.

– Students should discuss socioeconomic indicators, like access to

health services, jobs, and education and graduation rates. (Students
could compare New York City to Mexico City if data is available for
Mexico City.)
– Students should describe the languages spoken in schools. (In
Mexico, the Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous People
recognizes sixty-two indigenous languages as “national languages,”
which have the same validity as Spanish in all territories in which
they are spoken. For the United States, study the 1990 Native
Americans Language Act and the story of boarding schools in the
United States.)
– Students should discuss the amount of recognized indigenous tribes
in each of the countries.

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 – Students should discuss reports of racism in both countries.

Activity 6.7.5
Reporting on the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples
In this unit, students are introduced to the basis of the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In particular, students will examine the case of the
United States and why it signed the declaration only in 2007. The teacher may
also present portions of the UDHR to bring the concept back later this year and
to encourage debate about the universality of the UDHR, given some of the
previous instances of exclusion of indigenous peoples from human rights
legislation.

Students are introduced to some of the proceedings of the 2010 White House
Tribal Nations Conference and to President Obama’s designating November
2010 as National Native American Heritage Month.

Students create and post online a video of an interview with a Native American
tribe member brought into the classroom as a guest. They can ask for the guest
speaker’s perspectives on the challenges that his or her tribe continues to face in
dealing with government authorities.

Resources

• http://www.pbs.org/circleofstories/wearehere/culture_gallery.html
• http://www.pbs.org/circleofstories/educators/lesson2.html
• http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/indigenous-
rights-and-self-determination-mexico

10 http://media.iearn.org/
11 Rupert, Murray (Dir.) (2009). The End of the Line. Arcane Pictures. Eighty-five minutes.
http://endoftheline.com/
12 Markham, Nigel (Dir.) (1994). Taking Stock. National Film Board of Canada. Forty-seven
minutes. http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=32271
13 Use any intersection or address that is likely to be familiar to the students.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
SEVENTH GRADE: DRIVING CHANGE IN
SOCIETY BY ORGANIZING AS A COLLECTIVE AND
THROUGH THE STUDY OF CHANGE MAKERS

Theme
U nderstanding the power of ordinary citizens to improve society and the
world.

Description
This year expands the concept of organizing to include the concept of taking an
organization and creating a movement. Individuals who have been instrumental
in furthering voting rights, human rights, and environmental movements are
studied, and their roles as uniters and collaborators are emphasized, as real
change makers inspire and work with others—they don’t go it alone. Students
will learn about gender equity and equality, people who are trying to create a
fundamental shift in global energy policy, and the role of inventors in bringing
social change. Throughout the year, they will work on an extended service-
learning project to bring their study of movements to life, and the year
culminates in a socially conscious business-plan exercise that will be
implemented in the eighth grade.

Looking Back
How Do People in Societies Organize Themselves?

Looking Forward
Movement and People: A View from Thirty Thousand Feet

Overview of the Units

256
 1. Organizing a Just Community: Stranded Island
2. Governance
3. The UDHR and the SDGs
4. Introduction to a Yearlong Service-Learning Project
5. The Civil Rights Movement and Change Makers
6. SDG 5: Gender and Equity
7. The Environmental Movement: Energy Change Makers
8. Inventors as Change Makers
9. Social Entrepreneurship Business-Plan Exercise

Capstone
Drawing on the principles of design thinking and of creation of business plans
for social enterprises, students develop a project that is aligned with one of the
Sustainable Development Goals.

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Unit 7.1
Topic Introduction and Classroom Organization
ICC: interpersonal (working in intercultural teams); work
Theme and mind habits: innovation and creativity; and ethics:
common values
Region Any/all
Length One week

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about membership in society, to organize toward attaining

some kind of common goal, and to reflect on their own practices and
interactions with one another.
2. Inspire students to reflect on their own practices and interactions
with one another in order to create a well-functioning classroom and
a positive classroom environment.
3. Act by collectively working toward sustaining and enabling a
positive classroom environment.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will discuss what it means to have a functioning, “good”

community in the classroom, their own roles in the classroom, and
the role of fair procedures and processes in the classroom.
2. Students will learn about the process of voting.
3. Students will experience the process of organizing themselves.
4. Students will learn about themselves and one another, particularly
about their leadership qualities.

Overview
In this unit students are given an overview of the year so that they will be aware
of the focus of the units as well as of the big picture that emerges when studying
these various pieces. Students partake in a voting process to understand the
nuances behind it and to understand that voting is a way to elect leaders and to
organize themselves toward a common goal. Students specifically organize

258
themselves with little direction from the teacher and in the process are asked to
reflect on the team dynamics and the differences that play out.

Activity 7.1.1
Road Map of the Year
The first activity serves as an introduction to and an overview of the year and its
key ideas and activities. This is a teacher-led activity, and it provides students
with a road map of what to expect during the year so that they can be aware of
the big-picture theme of the year.

Activity 7.1.2
Who Am I?
Students will introduce themselves by composing and then reading aloud short
“I am” poems based on the resource given below. This link contains a sample of
a typical “I am” poem and will help students articulate their own identity and
help the class identify common themes in their collective identity.

Resources
The I Am Poem that relates to students’ identities
(http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/score_lessons/symbols_freedom/pages/i_am_poem.html

Activity 7.1.3
Organizing Ourselves
(Note that there are three variations of this activity and that the teacher may
choose to pick one or a combination of all three. Each option is different in that
each approaches the concepts associated with organizing ourselves as
individuals and as a larger collective in a different way.)

OPTION A

1) On the second or third day, students will come into the classroom and
find the teacher holding a sign that says “I will not be speaking today.
All of the instructions for today will be shown on the projector
screen.” The projector screen will say the following:
a. We were on a class field trip to Fiji when our plane suddenly

259
 crashed onto a deserted island. Unfortunately, none of the
teachers or adult chaperones survived. Take thirty minutes to
organize yourselves, and decide the following:
i. how you will make decisions
ii. how to obtain food, water, and shelter
iii. what you will do to be rescued and how you plan to be
rescued
iv. any other concerns you might have
b. The teacher stands or sits in the back and takes notes. Once the
group has come to some consensus, he or she will put up the
following instructions:
i. “Divide yourselves into five groups. Using only the items
in the classroom/backpack, each group should build a
tower. You have five minutes.”
c. After five minutes, the teacher will put up the following
instruction:
i. “Now do one thing to a tower that belongs to another
group.”
d. For homework, students reflect on the day’s activities and answer
the following questions:
i. What did you learn about yourself and your classmates?
ii. Was what happened realistic? Why or why not?
iii. If you were stranded on the island with your classmates
for six months, would you be concerned? Why or why
not?
iv. What did you like about the way the group organized
itself? Why? What didn’t you like about it? Why? How
would you have done things differently?
v. Who assumed leadership? How?
vi. Do you have other reflections about today’s activity? If
so, what are they?
2) The following day, the class will debrief the activity and discuss the
reflection questions, noting uses of power and authority, decision-
making processes, leadership, democratic participation (or lack
thereof), destructive tendencies (or lack thereof), and so on. This
activity will be referred to during the rest of the year and can be
revisited every few weeks, with variations. (For example, before the
unit on the women’s movement, set up the same scenario, but say that
only the girls can vote on decisions or lead. Note, though, that some
of these variations can create conflict and will need to be managed
tactfully by the teacher.)

260
OPTION B
Students will reflect on good and bad classroom experiences and brainstorm on
what could have led to those experiences (e.g., student and teacher
characteristics, procedures, processes, etc.). They will discuss and come to an
agreement on the behaviors and norms they want to practice and see practiced in
this year’s classroom.

1) Students will be given selected quotations about citizenship and will

discuss what it means to be a good citizen in a classroom.

Resource

The following web page contains quotes by famous eminent political

leaders going back in time regarding the value of citizenship and its
importance in a functioning civil society:
http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/mock/lessonplans/2010/Lesson%201-
%20Citizenship.pdf
2) Students will hold elections to elect three people to represent them
for the first six to twelve weeks in decisions made about classroom
proceedings. Students can nominate each other or themselves, and
each nominee will give a short platform speech. The idea is that
elections should be held every six to twelve weeks and that the
election process should become more elaborate as they learn more
about political processes.
a. This activity will be referred to during the rest of the year and
can be revisited with variations in different units.
i. For example, before the unit on the civil rights movement,
the teacher can say that only students wearing a certain
type or color of clothing can vote on that day’s decisions.

OPTION C

1) Introduce the concepts of membership, inclusion, exclusion, and

responsibility, and pick any applicable Facing History and
Ourselves lesson. The teacher can choose from a variety of different
lesson plans that focus on membership in society from the Facing
History database (https://www.facinghistory.org/educator-
resources).

261
Resources

1) Stranded on an island activity

(http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/education/k-
12/curricula/bpm/lessons/lesson01/L1_act_stranded.htm)
2) Stranded on an island activity with an emphasis on economics and
distribution of resources
(http://www.lessonplanspage.com/SSSurvivalStranded45.htm)

262
Unit 7.2
Topic Governance
Ethics: trust in institutions, breakdown of trust in
institutions, ethical frameworks, commitment to equality,
Theme and valuing human potential and ICC: intrapersonal
(minimizing the effects of prejudice and conflict-resolution
skills)
Region United States, Brazil, and India
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the history of voting in the United States, the expansion
of the right to vote to include both genders and all races, and the right
to vote across different cultures.
2. Inspire students to feel compelled to vote when they reach majority,
to feel excited about their voting future, and to encourage others both
personally and through collective action to vote
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the voting process through
an accurate historical analysis and through the creation of a narrative
for the purposes of a campaign.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify the key elements of movements to expand the

right to vote (to women and to minorities), including the change
makers in each movement.
2. Students will describe voting movements in other cultures.
3. Students will appreciate the nuances of voting and understand that
“free and fair elections” are a fundamental tenet of a functioning
democracy.
4. Students will identify and articulate the methods used by change
makers to bring to the forefront universal adult suffrage.
5. Students will create a voting campaign and examine its nuances.

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Overview
This unit seeks to provide students with an understanding of suffrage. Through
the cases of various suffrage movements in the United States, students will
examine issues associated with prejudice and inequality and begin to understand
why voting is crucial to establishing legitimacy in a functioning democracy. The
examples then extend to include different parts of the world where suffrage has
been emphasized in both historical as well as more contemporary contexts.
Students are familiarized with change makers in the US suffrage movements and
the methods that they used. Students also examine the ways that voting is being
promoted in different parts of the world. The activities aim to create excitement
and ownership around the students’ responsibility to vote when they come of
age.

(Note that this entire unit on governance is divided into three parts, with
suggested activities in each part. Part three can be optional depending on how
much time is left.)

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 Part One
Suffrage in the United States

Activity 7.2.1
Warm-Up and Introduction to Suffrage Movements
The teacher gives each student a card with his or her “identity” on it. These
identities should vary by race, age and gender. Almost all of the cards should
represent people with the right to vote in a state or federal election. Include
around one card whose identity is seventeen years old and around one card
whose identity is a non-naturalized immigrant. Make sure that only two or three
students have identities that would have allowed them to vote in 1790. Have all
of the students stand up.

Then say the following: “The year is [current year]. All citizens of eighteen
years of age or older have the right to vote. If you do not have the right to vote,
please sit down.”

(The seventeen-year-old and the non-naturalized immigrant sit down.)

Then introduce the following scenarios:

“The year is 1919. Women are not allowed to vote. Native Americans are not
US citizens and are not allowed to vote.” (In 1920 the nineteenth amendment
was enacted and guaranteed women the right to vote; both male and female
citizens can vote. In 1924 Native Americans were granted citizenship and the
right to vote.)

“The year is 1869. African American citizens, though have been free since the
Civil War ended, are not allowed to vote.” (In 1870 the fifteenth amendment
was enacted and gave former slaves the right to vote; adult male citizens of any
race could then vote.)

“The year is 1849. If you do not own property, you are not allowed to vote.” (In
1850 the requirement that voters own property and pay taxes was lifted.)

“The year is 1790. Only white male property owners can vote.”

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Activity 7.2.2
Understanding the History of the Right to Vote in the United
States
The teacher splits the class into four groups. Each group researches one of the
following suffrage movements: women’s suffrage, African Americans’ suffrage,
voting rights based on property (the lifting of property requirements), and
Native Americans’ suffrage.

Each group should undertake its research based on the following questions:

1. What were the arguments for and against suffrage?

2. Do you believe those arguments were justifiable?
3. Why did the right to vote not extend to these groups in particular?
4. What methods were used by each of the groups to bring their cause to
the forefront?
5. How does the granting of the right to vote to each of these groups
affect citizens’ right to vote today?

(Note that the students can analyze data on demographics from the
US Census Bureau’s site to examine the trends in elections in the
United States over time:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p20/2008/tab

Based on this information, each group presents its analysis to the class, and the
class creates a time line of the history of suffrage in the United States.

Resources

1. A sample lesson plan on understanding voting rights in a historical

context and on the ways in which a historical time line of suffrage in
the United States can be created
(http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume4/september05/te
2. The American Memory Time Line, which represents historical facts
about each of these suffrage movements and includes primary
documents that students can use in their research
(http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/p
3. A high-quality lesson plan on women’s suffrage and a background on
their voting rights (http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/voting-

266
 rights-women-pro-and-anti-suffrage#sect-introduction)

Activity 7.2.3
Change Makers in the Suffrage Movement
Each group should identify change makers in each suffrage movement. Each
member of the group should research one change maker and create a short
biography on his or her life based on some of the following questions:

1. Who is the change maker and what is his or her background?

2. Why did the change maker take responsibility in the suffrage
movement?
3. What were some of the challenges that he or she faced, and how did
he or she overcome them?
4. Were the methods used by the change maker justified? Did the means
justify the ends?
5. Are these same methods relevant today?

An alternative to this is for each student to take on the persona of the change
maker he or she chose to study. There should be one change maker from each
suffrage movement in a new group. This group will have a round-table
discussion, and each will present the story of his or her life. Other group
members should ask him or her questions (meaning that this shouldn’t be a
round-robin presentation but a conversation).

Resources

1. A multimedia- and story-based introduction to the works of Elizabeth

Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony that explains their roles in the
suffrage movement
(http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/)
2. The last two books in this list (http://www.the-best-childrens-
books.org/suffragette-movement.html)

Part Two
The Expansion of the Right to Vote in Other Countries and the use of the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights to advance human
rights

267
Activity 7.2.4
Universal Adult Suffrage in the World
In this activity, students are divided into various groups in which they examine
the differences in universal adult suffrage across the world at different points in
time. Students may be divided by time periods or by regions of the world, and
they will create a brief profile explaining who was excluded in their time
period or country prior to adult suffrage and then present the profile to the class.

Examples may include the case of Brazil, where priests were excluded from the
right to vote, and the events that led to formal universal suffrage in India (e.g.,
the creation of the Indian constitution after independence).

Resources

1. This table of universal suffrage by country, which the students can use
to examine the discrepancies between male and female suffrage
across the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage
2. Recent news items associated with granting women the right to vote
in the UAE and Kuwait as recently as 2005
3. An excellent site that includes lots of child-friendly information about
women’s role in political participation across the world through
different case studies and a time line of different suffragist
movements across the world to ensure that suffrage is inclusive of
women
http://womenshistory.about.com

Activity 7.2.5
Universal suffrage through the UDHR
The students are introduced to article 21 of the UDHR and particularly to
section 3: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of
government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections
which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote
or by equivalent free voting procedures.”

The following key ideas (among others) should be highlighted in this discussion:

268
 – the will of the people and the authority of government
– genuine and free and fair elections
– universal and equal suffrage
– secret vote

Resources

1. Subarticle 3 of article 21 in the UDHR

(http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a23)

269
 Part 3
Voting Campaigns

Activity 7.2.6
Voting Trends
(Note that this activity can be optional depending on how much time is left.)

In the computer lab, students compile voter-turnout data over time.

Students create a spreadsheet with voter-turnout rates for presidential elections

in Brazil, India, and the United States. It will immediately become obvious that
the voter-turnout rate in the United States is far lower than those of Brazil and
India.

The teacher should lead a discussion around the students’ reactions to this
information. (In the seventh grade, some of the theories around why voting has
decreased may be too complicated, but some of the primary theories concerning
social capital, apathy, and levels of trust among different populations can be
discussed.)

Resource

1. Source of data for examining voting trends

(http://www.idea.int/vt/country_view.cfm?CountryCode=IN)

Activity 7.2.7
Promoting Voting
Students research different organizations that aim to increase voter turnout.
Suggested resources are listed below.

1. Rock the Vote, a campaign started to promote greater youth

engagement in elections and to create an ownership in the political
processes in the United States (http://www.rockthevote.org/)
2. Project Vote (http://projectvote.org/?gclid=CM-
v2cWc9aYCFQFM5QoddRJVBg)

270
 3. Native Vote, a voting campaign run by the National Congress of
American Indians (http://www.nativevote.org/)
4. You Don’t Need a Home to Vote, a campaign to increase voting in the
homeless population
(http://www.nationalhomeless.org/projects/vote/index.html)

Students should spend time perusing these and other websites. They should then
decide on one in particular to research in depth. Students will create a media
documentary or write a paper that uses information from their research to
encourage voter turnout.

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Unit 7.3
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Change Makers
Topic
Who Have Expanded Rights, and an Overview of the SDGs
Work and mind habits: variation within cultural groups;
ethics: trust in institutions, humility and respect, ethical
frameworks, the value of human potential, and the
Theme
importance of global compacts; ICC: intrapersonal
(recognizing prejudice and minimizing the effects of
prejudice); and globalization
Region Developing world
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the universality and centrality of needs and rights as an

expression of ensuring that universal human needs are met. Students
also learn about the SDGs and their role in ensuring that rights are
guaranteed.
2. Inspire students to take action to preserve human dignity for other
children in the world and to reflect on how their own actions can
make a difference in the arena.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of and an appreciation for
rights and by behaving in ways that are mutually respectful and
preserve human dignity.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify the differences and commonalities in needs

across the world and understand the importance of rights.
2. Students will understand and appreciate the concepts of dignity,
equality, nondiscrimination, and justice.
3. Students will develop trust, see value in the UDHR as a normative
framework, and become familiar with its history.
4. Students will personalize the principles enshrined in the UDHR and
the importance of responsibilities in upholding these rights.
5. Students will draw linkages between the UDHR and the SDGs.

272
 6. Students will become inspired to develop an action orientation and to
infuse HR principles and themes within their service-learning
projects as well as within their day-to-day actions in class

Overview
Students begin with an understanding of needs and wants, and through exchanges
with peers, they seek the centrality of human needs. They are familiarized with a
brief history of the UDHR and with its value as a normative framework in
protecting the rights of all people. It also stresses the responsibility of
individuals to embody these HR principles in their day-today lives and actions.
Links and associations are also drawn with the SDGs so that students can see
the SDGs as an expression of the rights themselves.

Activity 7.3.1
Needs, Wants, and Scarcity of Resources
Students connect with their pen pals or existing sister schools and exchange
information regarding what they currently need to lead full lives. Students then
draw a laundry list of needs and wants in different parts of the world. The
teacher facilitates a discussion with the class concerning the following
questions:

1. What are needs?

2. What are wants?
3. Are there similarities and differences between the two?
4. What are some differences and similarities in needs and wants across
the world?

The teacher then asks the students to consolidate all of the lists together to form
one list and to identify the most important needs.

(Note that the teacher should also play the role of the devil’s advocate and get
the students to defend their stances about their needs. The aim of this exercise is
for the students to learn to work collaboratively through their differences and
conflicts. Through this, the teacher should also be able to facilitate an
understanding that resources on the earth are limited, that sometimes, there can
be a scramble for resources, and that countries may want to prioritize certain
needs over others.)

273
Resource
A list of needs identified by children in Ethiopia, South Africa, Lebanon, and the
United Kingdom that has been created for schools in the United Kingdom but can
be easily adapted for the purposes of this activity
(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/developing_rights/files/lesson2_the_next_

Activity 7.3.2
Introduction to the UDHR
The teacher introduces the students to the UDHR and provides the class with a
brief history of it using the resources listed below

(Note that since the Second World War has not been covered yet, the teacher
should avoid going into in-depth detail about the war as a critical point for
necessitating the UDHR. Instead the focus should be on the UDHR as an
articulation and expression of humanity that works toward respecting and
preserving the rights and dignity of one another.)

Students then undertake a text analysis of the preamble of the UDHR as well as
of article 1 of the UDHR using a child-friendly version of it (listed under
resources).

Resources

1. Excerpts from these two animated films about the story of the UDHR
and what it embodies:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=hTlrSYbCbHE&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3BbLk5UIQ&feature=related)
2. Child-friendly text of the UDHR (the first two pages)
(http://www.eycb.coe.int/compasito/chapter_6/pdf/1.pdf)

Activity 7.3.3
The UDHR and the SDGs
(There are two options for this, and the teacher may use both or either one based
on the existing levels of knowledge about the SDGs in the class.)

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OPTION A
Students are asked to undertake a background study about the SDGs and to write
a biographical sketch of the SDGs that answers the following questions about it:

1. When were the SDGs introduced? Why?

2. What are the goals of the SDGs? What do the SDGs represent
collectively?
3. When are the SDGs to be achieved by?
4. Are all of the SDGs equally important, or do you believe that one
may be more important than the others?

Students examine the SDGs and the UDHR side by side and draw out any
overlaps between the two documents. Students are asked to articulate any direct
or indirect linkages that they find between the two.

Students read the following comic book on the SDGs:

https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/read-comic-book/

The teacher reviews the SDGs using the lesson “A Global Goals Assembly”
(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/).

(Note that the teacher should facilitate the discussion so that students understand
the SDGs as an expression of rights and the achievement of the SDGs as a
fulfillment of the most basic HRs enshrined in the UDHR to ensure that the
dignity of all individuals is upheld.)

OPTION B
The teacher may choose to pick excerpts from reports that draw linkages
between the UDHR and the SDGs.

The students can also map out countries where HR violations are common,
identify the progress of the SDGs in those countries, and examine whether there
are any associations between the progress of the SDGs and those violations.

Resources

• Excerpts from the 2000 UN Human Development Report

(http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2000/)

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 • Excerpts from the UN Human Development Report on the SDGs
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2003/
• The State of the World’s Human Rights, Amnesty’s annual report
http://www.amnesty.org/en/annual-report/2011
• Sustainable development goals
(http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-
development-goals/)
• Sustainable Development Goals progress tracker and relevant
statistics (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?
Content=Products/ProgressReports.htm)

Teacher Resources

• Sample lesson plans on the UDHR

(http://hrwstf.org/education/Ten_UDHR_Lesson_Plans.pdf)
• Sample lesson plans from UNICEF about the SDGs
(https://teachunicef.org/teaching-materials/topic/sustainable-
development-goals)
• The World’s Largest Lesson
(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/the-goals/
• Teaching the SDGs
(https://www.populationeducation.org/content/teaching-sdgs-easy-1-
2-3-sustainable-development-goals-your-classroom)
• A good resource from Oxfam with lesson plans (recommended)
(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_st
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/sustainable-
development-goals)

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Unit 7.4
Topic Democratic Life and Participation
Work and mind habits: innovation and creativity; ICC:
intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs and conflict-
Theme
resolution skills); and ICC: interpersonal (working in
intercultural teams)
Region Developing world (since the project relates to the SDGs)
Two weeks and then subsequently two hours per week since
Length
this relates to the capstone project

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the following strategies for successful project planning:

identification of an issue, research, action planning, implementation,
reflection, and evaluation. Students also learn about the process of
civic participation by experiencing it themselves.
2. Inspire students to take on projects related to issues that are
important to them and to see themselves as change makers with
agency and efficacy.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of civic participation through
the completion of an experiential civic project.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will use various strategies to identify an issue and to create

a project to help solve it. They will research the causes of and key
levers of influence on the issue, identify potential partners and build
relationships with them, plan and execute a project to address the
chosen issue, and continuously monitor and reflect on their progress
and process.
2. Students will connect the experience of the project with that of civic
life and specifically with organizing, campaigning, and acting in the
public sphere.
3. Students will connect the project to the SDGs that were the subject of
unit 3.

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Overview
The teacher introduces the topics of working together to achieve the SDGs and
Design for Change. Collectively, students pick an issue and an SDG that they are
passionate about and want to influence. Students identify possible ways in
which they can best impact the issue. While deciding on an issue as well as on a
project strategy, students use some of the skills and tools they learned
previously, such as organizing themselves so as to arrive at a consensus and
apply the principles of Design for Change. This experiential learning is based
on the principles of civic engagement and is completely student driven with
minimal interference from the teacher.

Activity 7.4.1
Learning Design for Change
The teacher leads a session on Design for Change using the following resources:

https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/taking-action/
http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/
http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/toolkit/
https://www.ideo.com/work/toolkit-for-educators

Activity 7.4.2
Picking an Issue
Students review the SDGs with the goal of creating a project in mind. (Note that
examples of sample projects are given at the end of the activities in this unit.)

Students conduct research on issues around the SDGs that interest them. Students
brainstorm projects and issues; the teacher assists the students in settling on one
issue. They could use an affinity diagram and create a “campaign” for their
issue.

(Note that in this lesson, to create an affinity diagram, the students write ideas
for issues or projects on sticky notes and put them on the board randomly. The
students then organize the ideas into categories or broader themes and vote for a
category or theme. After voting for a category or theme, they generate a new list
of issues or project ideas that fall under that category or theme. Students then
vote to choose one issue under the theme. This final vote decides the issue
around which the students will build a project.)

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Activity 7.4.3
Background Information on the Issue
Once the issue is decided upon, students conduct specialized research into that
one issue. In groups, students seek to find out about the issue and its

1. causes;
2. history;
3. measurement tools and metrics; and
4. people, groups, and organizations and their mission and actions.

Groups present their findings to the class. If the issue is complex, the class will
vote on a particular subissue.

Activity 7.4.4
Brainstorming about a Project to Address the Issue
The class brainstorms possible projects to address the issue. The project should
involve multiple entry points into the problem. Ultimately, part of the project
should involve education and awareness building, part of the project should
involve direct action, and part of the project should involve political
interaction.

Activity 7.4.5 (Twenty-Four Weeks)

Project Continuation
At this point, the students work on the project for two hours per week for about
twenty-four weeks.

The teacher should guide the students through the phases of the project:

1. In phase 1, the classroom organizes around one issue or subissue.

2. In phase 2, students research the topic broadly, identify potential
partners, reach out to them to form relationships, and conduct
interviews.
3. In phase 3, they narrow down the issue into a manageable potential
project and identify how the project’s “baseline” can be measured.
4. In phase 4, they brainstorm the project’s action plan and come to a
consensus on elements of the project that involve education and
awareness building, direct action, and political interaction

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 5. In phase 5, they create a time line and a calendar.
6. In phase 6, they implement the action plan, formatively evaluate the
project’s progress and impact, and make changes.
7. In phase 7, they perform a summative evaluation of the project and
redesign it.
8. In phase eight, they continue with the redesigned action plan and
evaluate progress.
9. In phase nine, they celebrate the project and hold a showcase.

Note that the following elements of a good experiential learning design should
be present throughout the project. They have been adapted from the National
Youth Leadership Council’s guidelines for service learning, by Shelley Billig:

1. Curriculum integration—that is, opportunities to integrate the project

into civic education, language-arts instruction, mathematics, history,
and other subject areas depending on the issue—should be
continually capitalized upon. The students should also recognize the
integration into and connections with other areas of learning.
2. Reflection on the project is necessary. Students should reflect on both
their progress and process continually throughout the project.
Students should always be encouraged to suggest project changes
based on their reflection. Reflection should be cognitively
challenging (not simply journal writing).
3. The youth voice should be emphasized. This should be the students’
project. The skilled teacher will guide the students in the appropriate
directions and help them build the necessary partnerships and
relationships, but the students should have choices regarding the
issue and project. Often students are asked to engage in projects that
the teacher creates, which may have negative effects on the desired
civic outcomes.
4. The duration of this project is important. This project must be given
ample time. The duration of the experience is directly related to the
desired civic outcomes. A common pitfall is to not give students
enough time, in which case the project will have less of an impact or
the teacher will take on work that the students should be doing to
save time. Students should also be given the opportunity to build
relationships that could continue past the project duration. Also,
there should be an opportunity to redesign the project or to make
further plans based on its initial impact and on the students’
evaluation of it.

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Resources

• Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne’s “What Kind of Citizen?,” which

is essential reading
• http://engagestudiothinking.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/threekindsofciti
• Note that even though this unit is not a service-learning unit, this
service-learning literature offers a great deal of information on best
practices and teacher resources:
• CIRCLE
(http://www.civicyouth.org/ResearchTopics/researchtopics/service-
learning/)
• National Service Learning Clearinghouse:
(https://gsn.nylc.org/clearinghouse)
• National Society for Experiential Education
(http://www.nsee.org/eea.htm)
• Association for Experiential Education (http://www.aee.org/)

Some example projects

1. COMIC BOOKS AGAINST HIV/AIDS PREJUDICE

After an analysis of the prejudice faced by people with AIDS, fifth graders
decided to teach younger students about acceptance and respect. As their
project, these students researched local health organizations with help
from these agencies; they created a comic book character and a story line
to teach young people to treat people living with HIV/AIDS with respect.
Copies were distributed to classrooms and at a community fair. Prevention
messages were a key component of the comic books and provided students
with the opportunity to express their own thoughts, opinions, and
creativity.

(Note that this is adapted from “The Complete Guide to Service-

Learning,” Copyright © 2004 Cathryn Berger Kaye. All rights reserved.
Used with permission of Free Spirit Publishing Inc., Minneapolis, MN.
(866) 703-7322. www.freespirit.com.)

2. DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Based on their study of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the
UDHR, students initiated a wide range of projects. For example, they
presented at the city hall on the rights of the child, organized a peace-site

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 rededication and a peace-prize festival, and directed and performed a play
about child labor that inspired the school board of the district to agree to
not buy soccer balls made by child labor.

The projects built on the students’ public speaking, interviewing, and

photography skills and were based on discussions, reflection, and
analyses.

3. BUS IDLING AND AIR-QUALITY IMPACTS

High school students in Vermont monitored the air quality outside of their
school, and after finding high levels of pollutants, they identified idling
vehicles (e.g., buses) as a source. To take action, they presented their
findings and policy recommendations to the school board as well as to the
state legislative transportation committee.

(http://www.kidsconsortium.org/minigrantprojectexamples.php)

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Unit 7.5
Topic Civil Rights Movement and Change Makers
ICC: interpersonal (empathy); ICC: intrapersonal
(recognizing prejudice and minimizing the effects of
prejudice); ethics: ethical frameworks, common values,
Theme commitment to equality, the value of human potential, and
commitment to supporting human rights; work and mind
habits: innovation and creativity; and arts: visual and
literature
United States, India, Myanmar, South Africa, and the world
Region
(based on HR violations)
Length: Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the civil rights movement and the rights it addressed as
well as the ways in which different change makers across the globe
have advocated for human rights and the SDGs using different
approaches.
2. Inspire students to effect change in an issue that is important to them
based on the different approaches used by various change makers.
3. Act by demonstrating an understanding of the different ways through
which change may be created and by reflecting on the direction that
they want their own projects to take.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify important phases in the US civil rights

movement as well as the importance of the movement’s work in
advocating for the right to equality.
2. Students will identify the change makers in each of these phases and
the different approaches they took to ensure that the civil rights
movement would become a mass movement.
3. Students will understand the nature of different HR violations and
demonstrate an understanding of the existing state of HR in the world
today.

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 4. Students will interact with real-life change makers and contrast and
compare the relevance of different methods used by change makers
across time.

Overview
Through the lens of the civil rights movement in the United States, students learn
about the violations of the fundamental right to equality. Students examine the
various turning points in the movement and explore why those points continue to
be a series of relevant landmark events. Students are introduced to the various
forms of HR violations in the world, to change makers in historical and
contemporary times who have made a difference in upholding HR, and to those
who have worked toward the SDGs. Through interactive sessions with real-life
change makers, this unit aims to introduce students to the plethora of approaches
to advocating for HR and the SDGs.

(Note that activity 7.5.1 should be given due time, and thus, the teacher may
choose to make activity 7.5.2 optional and to add portions of it to activity
7.5.3.)

Activity 7.5.1
The Civil Rights Movement: History and Change Makers
Students will learn about the civil rights movement and the key turning points in
the history of civil rights. They also undertake background research on the
different change makers in each of these key events.

Note that there are already many existing lesson plans and units available
online. Some good resources have been outlined in the resources below.

The main thrust of the unit should be on the civil rights movements as a response
to the fundamental violation of the right to equality. By the end of the unit,
students should understand that despite the expression of rights in the UDHR, a
universal declaration doesn’t always translate into the preservation and practice
of these rights; they should also understand that it is necessary for ordinary
individuals to take action and to make an effort to embody these principles and
to ensure that all people are treated with equality, respect, and dignity. The
activities should draw on literature and music from the times, and the students
should closely examine that literature and music. The activity should end with
the women’s suffrage movement, as that relates directly to the next unit, on SDG

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5 and gender equality.

Note also that an optional activity may be included. In the activity, the teacher
will select songs from any of the following resources (or from other resources),
teach them to the students, and sing them together with the students. Each song’s
lyrics can be printed and studied within historical and cultural contexts.
Students will be asked to express in their own words how the concept of
freedom is expressed in each of the songs. Resources for this optional activity
are listed below.

Resources

• Facing History and Ourselves is an excellent resource that has links

to several lesson plans as well as to the Boston Public Schools’
curriculum on civil rights (a 268-page curriculum for tenth graders
that can be adapted based on the needs of the class). Links are also
drawn to a series of PBS documentaries about civil rights. This
resource is rich with reading material for children as well as with
audiovisual aids that can be used in the class.
• Unit on the civil rights movement and PBS’s Eye on the Prize series,
which was developed by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.
This goes into great detail that is not warranted at this stage, but it
has some interesting discussion questions:
http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1992/1/92.01.03.x.html.
Database of lesson plans on civil rights
(http://www.multcolib.org/homework/civilrights/lessons.html#civilrights
• PBS’s Eyes on the Prize “Freedom Songs of Civil Rights”, a
resource that outlines how educators may use freedoms songs of the
civil rights to teach about the historical, political, and social contexts
of the civil rights movement
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/reflect/r03_music.html

Optional Activity 7.5.2

Human Rights Violations
In groups, students research the various kinds of human-rights violations across
the world and the current state of HR.

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Resources

• Video resources
(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/category/episodes/by-
topic/human-rights/page/2/)
• The State of the World’s Human Rights, Amnesty’s annual report
• https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2016/02/annual-report-
201516/

Activity 7.5.3
Change Makers
The students are then introduced to change makers and individuals who have
taken action over time to protect and safeguard human rights. Individuals who
can be discussed include

1. Nelson Mandela
2. Mahatma Gandhi
3. Eleanor Roosevelt
4. Aung San Suu Kyi
5. citizens in India addressing untouchability and breaking down caste
barriers(http://www.viewchange.org/videos/the-untouchables-
breaking-down-caste-barriers-in-india)
6. young people making change (http://www.youthforhumanrights.org/)
7. Craig Kielburger of Free the Children
(http://www.freethechildren.com/getinvolved/youth/craig/)

Students may study these change makers by using a rubric to answer some of the
following questions:

1. Who are these people? What is special about them?

2. Which HR were they trying to protect?
3. What methods did they use?
4. Are the methods they used applicable and relevant in modern times?

Students undertake biographical research on these individuals, and certain

students impersonate these individuals in class while the others interview them
(using the guiding questions above). This will help the students practice their
interview skills and prepare to interview the real change makers who will be

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invited into the class.

Subsequently, real-life change makers in the New York City (or relevant) area
who have made a difference in the field of HR or the SDGs are invited into the
classroom. (Note that a partnership with an organization such as Amnesty
International or Human Rights Watch, both of which have large offices in New
York City, can be fostered and will enable the teacher to bring real-life HR
change makers into the classroom.)

The students can have a classroom discussion or complete a journaling activity

to reflect on the differences between these real-life change makers and the ones
they studied. The students should address the following questions:

1. What are the similarities and differences in the change makers?

2. What are the approaches they adopted to safeguard human rights?
3. Why do you think they decided to take action and responsibility?
4. What does taking responsibility mean to you?
5. What kind of responsibility would you like to take in the global HR
movement?

(Note that these reflections should be documented and used to guide the children
in their service projects. This can be a very powerful and moving unit for the
children if done appropriately and if they are guided through the reflection
exercises. Every attempt should be made to ensure that the children feel
optimistic and are inspired to take action. Students may also read about actions
that other children around the world are taking to effect change. See the book
Real Kids, Real Stories, Real Change: Courageous Actions Around the World:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1575423502/bravegirlsandstrA.)

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Unit 7.6
Topic SDG 5, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture and
others’ identities and cultures); ICC: intrapersonal
(curiosity about global affairs, recognizing prejudice, and
Theme minimizing the effects of prejudice); ethics: commitment to
equality and common values; work and mind habits: cross-
cultural perspective taking); economic development; and
globalization
Region Developing world (as this unit focus on SDG 5)
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the importance of gender parity and its links with the
other SDGs.
2. Inspire students to treat everyone equally and with respect and to
reflect upon how small actions and behaviors can make a difference
in combatting gender stereotypes.
3. Act in ways that are gender sensitive and demonstrate an
understanding of the importance of treating men and women equally.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become familiar with the importance of SDG 5, its

targets, and its indicators.
2. Students will draw links between gender inequality and social,
political, and economic inequality.
3. Students will understand the relevance of and need for women’s
empowerment and its role in national, international and global
development.
4. Students will interact in gender-sensitive ways with one another.
5. Students will examine the nature of gender challenges and gaps
across different parts of the world.
6. Students will develop the reflective capacity to understand gendered
roles in society and identify the role they want to play in bridging the

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 gender divide.

Overview
In this unit students are introduced to the various dimensions of gender
inequality across the world. Students closely examine SDG 5 and its associated
targets and measures. Links are drawn to other units in which students were
introduced to women change makers who made a difference in the different
spheres of human development. Through the use of interactive maps and
audiovisual materials, students examine trends in the gender gaps across the
world. Through the use of literature, students challenge some of their own
existing assumptions about the roles of men and women in society and become
more reflective and aware of the difference they can make in challenging some
of the existing preconceived roles and notions.

Activity 7.6.1
Introducing Gender Inequality and SDG 5
Students interact with peers in different parts of the world to closely examine

1. the chores children in their respective countries do at home

2. the jobs that only men or only women perform and the jobs that both
genders perform
3. whether the country has a history of women political leaders
4. the ratio of the genders in the country.

Using this background information, the students create country profiles and
present them to the class.

Using an interactive map, the teacher introduces the concept of a global gender
gap and asks the students to do a close text study of what the UDHR and the
SDGs say about the role of gender and equality.

Students may begin by reading literature that shatters gender stereotypes (listed
under resources) and by reflecting on why the characters can/can’t perform
certain roles.

Resources

289
 • The lesson plan “Mission Gender Equality”
(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/)
• Jimmy Carter book and Ted talk on Violence against women
• A Call to Action. Women, religion, violence and power.
• https://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_carter_why_i_believe_the_mistreatme
language=en
• Sample lesson plans and ideas for introducing concepts associated
with gender
inequality(http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/wideangle/lessonplans/girlsspeak
• Databases of relevant gender-neutral literature
• (http://journal.naeyc.org/btj/200303/Books4Children.pdf
• http://genderequalbooks.com/Brave_Girls_book_list.html)

Activity 7.6.2
Examining the Dimensions of Gender Equality
The class can be split into three groups, each of which will examine a different
aspect of gender equality, as explained below.

GROUP A. GENDER AND EDUCATION

1. Students in this group read about a day in the lives of girls across the
world. Pick any one of the following readings:
a. Nicaragua
(http://www.unicef.org/dil/haitza/haitza5_content.html
b. India and night school
(http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/wa08.socst.world.glob.nights
c. Benin
(http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/wa08.socst.world.glob.benin/
The students note the similarities and differences in the lives of
each of these girls and the reason for their educational
circumstances.
2. Students in this group role-play, making hard decisions to answer the
question of whether Jaya can go to school. This role-play exercise
examines the decision to send Jaya to school from the perspectives
of different people in her family and brings to light the opportunity
costs associated with schooling and some of the reasons that children
may drop out or not enroll in school in the developing world
(http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_st
3. Students also collect compelling statistics regarding enrollment rates
for girls in primary education across the world. (See UNICEF’s

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 State of the World’s Children annual reports for statistics:
http://www.unicef.org/sowc2011/.)

GROUP B. GENDER AND HEALTH

1. The students in this group superimpose over one another maps that
indicate access to primary health care as well as maps that display
skewed sex ratios in the world.
2. Students are asked to be observant of any interlinkages between
health care and sex rations.
3. Students also undertake background research about malnutrition
among girls and women, female infanticide, and HIV/AIDS.

GROUP C. ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND GENDER

1. Students engage in a discussion about what economic inequality

means and learn to plot gender maps of the world that indicate the
percentage of women who can, for example, own land, get paid as
much as men, and hold jobs.
2. The students undertake background research on the concept of
microfinance and on how it’s beneficial to women across the
developing world. In class students discuss the following videos and
why they think economic empowerment of women is important:
a. Liberia (http://www.viewchange.org/videos/liberia-
microfinance_)
b. Afghanistan (http://www.viewchange.org/videos/kandahar-
treasure)

Activity 7.6.3
Gender and Development

1. The students in the class form a web explicitly laying out the linkages
between poverty, education, health, gender equality, and overall
development. The teacher walks the students through these linkages
and helps them draw the connections between them in a chain-effect
game.
2. The students can also work on projects with peers across the world
to examine the status of girls and young women in different parts of
the world and to draw similar linkages. The following videos can be

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 shown to steer their thinking:
a. “The Girl Effect” http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=1e8xgF0JtVg;http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=WIvmE4_KMNw&feature=relmfu
b. “Women’s Empowerment in Nigeria”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=O9M9seZ497U&feature=player_embedded)
c. Videos from other countries
(http://www.viewchange.org/videos?t=gender)
3. Students may also read parts of UNDPs reports and study the newly
created Gender Development Index
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/gdi_gem/.

Activity 7.6.4
Reflecting on My Role
Students write a reflection paper that answers the following questions:

1. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

2. Has your gender played a role in your strengths and weaknesses?
3. Are strengths and weaknesses linked to gender?
4. What is the role of boys and male teenagers in promoting gender
equality?
5. What is the role of girls and female teenagers in promoting gender
equality?

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Unit 7.7
Topic Energy and Environmental Movements
Global risk: environment; globalization; and ICC:
Theme
intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs)
Region United States, India, Kenya, and Malawi
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about environmental movements and their champions as well

as about energy sources.
2. Inspire students to think about what role they can play in preserving
the environment, particularly when it comes to energy choices.
3. Act by critically evaluating the often-politicized information
presented as energy facts.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will become familiar with the important aspects of an

environmental movement and also know the time line of the modern
American environmental movement. They will also become familiar
with the similarities and differences in the environmental movements
in India, Kenya, and the United States.
2. Students will become aware of the Pickens Plan.
3. Students will identify energy trends since 1945.
4. Students will verify the credibility of information from different
sources.
5. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the link between
energy, war, and politics as well as of the relationship between one’s
energy use and lifestyle.
6. Students will evaluate the costs and benefits of various different
energy types.

Overview
Students are introduced to different environmental movements across the world

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and to their defining characteristics. Students will also be able to identify the
change makers in each of these movements and their approaches to drawing
attention to and support for the issue. Through an analysis of some of the various
sociopolitical, economic, and personal choices that individuals and societies
make collectively, students will be able to articulate these interrelationships and
how they affect communities’ and societies’ choices of an energy source. Using
country and region profiles, students will analyze trends and data to examine the
energy sources in different parts of the world and will form hypotheses about
those different trends. Students will also work toward creating an energy plan
for wind energy specifically through the study of T. Boone Pickens and William
Kamkwamba. Other change makers introduced in this unit include Nobel Prize
winner Wangari Mathai and the activists of the Chipko movement in India

Activity 7.7.1
The Chipko Movement, the Green Belt Movement, and the
Role of Women in These Movements
Through this activity students will

1. learn about the important role that women have played in

environmental movements in three countries
2. learn to identify how women and particularly disadvantaged women
have become change makers
3. learn to determine the different circumstances that can motivate
change makers.

Students research the lives of women change makers in environmental

movements (e.g., Rachel Carson and Wangari Mathai) and compare the
differences in their circumstances and opportunities. Next, students look at the
founders of the Chipko movement in India and at what is known of their lives,
circumstances, and opportunities. The class then discusses whether movements
must be born out of necessity, interest, or some other factor.

Activity 7.7.2
Learning about the Modern American Environmental
Movement
Through this activity in particular, students will

294
 1. learn about the major figures and events of the movement
2. critically evaluate sources for reliability, completeness, and biases
3. analyze what constitutes a movement and how movements gain
power.

First students learn about the modern American environmental movement. They
can compare time lines of the movement as presented by different sources,
including PBS, World Watch, Wikipedia, and other sources (listed below).
Students compare and contrast the time lines. They look for common figures and
events as well as for differences between the time lines. In groups, they use the
Internet to find credible sources to use to research different events and figures in
the story of the modern environmental movement. They then evaluate the
different time lines they looked at to determine whether any of them have an
agenda or whether one tells a more complete story than the others.

Resource

• Different time lines of the modern environmental movement

(www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/earthdays/
http://www.worldwatch.org/brain/features/timeline/timeline.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_movement)

Activity 7.7.3
Energy Options
Through this activity students will learn about the different sources of energy,
learn about cost-benefit analyses, and learn about consumption patterns around
the world.

Students visit energy.gov, and in small groups, they use that resource and others
to research energy sources including bioenergy, coal, fusion, geothermal,
hydrogen, hydropower, natural gas, oil, and renewables (e.g., solar and wind).
The teacher then explains the basic concept of benefits and costs: that one way
people make choices is by weighing how much a given choice will cost against
what its benefits will be. They should include the production, world security,
human, health, economic, and environmental benefits and costs, among others.
Students are then asked to try to determine some way to evaluate what the long-
and short-term benefits and costs of each energy choice could be. Next, the
teacher leads the class in a look at energy consumption patterns throughout the

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world, using a tool such as the UN’s 2007 Energy Balances and Electricity
Profiles (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/energy/balance/default.htm).

The teacher then facilitates a discussion by asking the following questions:

1. Why do some countries use more energy than others?

2. Why do some countries use different types of energy than others?
3. How do these trends compare by region?
4. Which regions or countries tend to be better for the environment in
terms of energy consumption?
5. Are there any associations between energy types and zones of
conflict?

Note that one of the opportunities of this lesson is to show how energy choices
can have a profound effect on human life far and wide. In as many ways as
possible, bring to light the advantages and disadvantages of energy choices in
terms of global security (e.g., war-torn countries and oil), working conditions
(e.g., historic coal miners in Appalachia), and the environment (e.g.,
desertification and drought due to climate change).

Activity 7.7.4
The Pickens Plan and the Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Through this activity, students will learn to critically evaluate the
persuasiveness of an argument.

Students will learn about the lives of T. Boone Pickens and William
Kamkwamba and their trajectories to becoming activists for wind energy. First,
using what they learned in the previous activity, they will brainstorm as a group
on what information they would want and need in order to make a decision
regarding an energy plan. Next they will visit pickensplan.com and
williamkamkwamba.typepad.com and evaluate the websites for their
persuasiveness. They will see whether those websites provide all of the
information that they think they need to make a decision, and they will discuss
what additional information those websites provide.

Resources

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• Advanced Placement Environmental Science, Topic V: Energy
Resources and Consumption
(https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse/ap-environmental-
science/course-details)
• Frontline’s “The Spill” (a sixty-minute-long episode)
• World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate
Change
• PBS’s Earth Days (a two-hour-long film)

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Unit 7.8
Collective Buying Power and Corporate Social
Topic
Responsibility
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); work
Theme and mind habits: innovation and creativity; economic
development; globalization; and politics
Region Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about collective buying as a way to participate in society and

how it has given rise to corporate social responsibility (CSR)
programs.
2. Inspire students to think about the consumption choices they make
and the invisible power of those choices.
3. Act by being savvy and critical consumers.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand and appreciate the power of consumers.

2. Students will be introduced to and become familiar with the history,
power, objectives, and members of OPEC.
3. Students will examine the concepts of supply and demand.
4. Students will analyze the nuances of corporate social responsibility,
including how it is used as a signal tool for effective marketing, and
evaluate CSR programs.

Overview
Through an interactive game, students learn about the concept of buying power
as well as about the role of CSR in signaling to customers. Students learn about
the power of consumers, about how consumers are an important constituency for
organizations that sell consumer goods, and about the ways in which consumers
may significantly influence organizations to use ethical means of production.
Through an examination of OPEC, students are familiarized with the basics of

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the demand and supply of petroleum and with how countries collectively work
toward ensuring the stability of petroleum prices in the global economy.

Activity 7.8.1
Buying Power
The teacher gives each student a certain amount of “money.” Each student is
able to buy products from a classroom store. Each product is produced by a
different company, and each company has a profile card that the students are not
allowed to see. The teacher explains to the students that every time they spend a
dollar on goods from a certain company, that company will be able to use a
portion of that dollar to expand and will thus become bigger and more powerful.
In the first round, there is an equal amount of each product. Before the second
round, the teacher adds one more product for every two dollars that was spent
on that product in the first round. Therefore, the most popular company will take
a larger share of the shelf space. Students are then given more money to spend in
the second round, and the teacher again increases the number of the popular
products. For the third round, the teacher places a card with a company profile
in front of each product and gives the students more money to spend. Some
companies’ profiles talk about the fair wages they pay their workers and the
sustainable manufacturing technologies they use. Other companies’ profiles talk
about how they keep costs low by using cheap labor overseas. In the third
round, the students use the company profiles to make buying decisions, and then
the teacher replenishes the supply of products as before. In the fourth round,
however, the teacher places news articles praising companies for social
responsibility or denouncing them for nefarious practices like child labor and
sweatshop conditions. After the students spend their money, the teacher debriefs
the class by asking which companies were successful when little information
was shared versus when more information was shared.

Note that an alternative activity that will meet many of the learning goals and
can be used in place of this one is the Stock Market Game
(www.stockmarketgame.org). Based on the time available, as a follow-up
activity, students may also undertake background research on the CSR initiatives
of their favorite candy or clothes manufacturer in the market.

Activity 7.8.2
The Price of Gasoline—What’s behind It?
Through this activity students will learn about OPEC, the basics of supply and

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demand, and the ways that several countries have organized themselves around
this particular issue.

Use this lesson plan to learn about the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries and the many factors including demand (which is another way of
looking at collective buying power) that influence gas prices:
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=664&type=afterschool

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Unit 7.9
Topic Inventors as Change Makers and Sustainable Technology
Work and mind habits: innovation and creativity; ethics:
Theme
common values; and global risk: environment
Region Any/all
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about how inventions can lead to rapid social and

environmental change.
2. Inspire students to plan a future in which new technology helps
preserve the environment.
3. Act by becoming more mindful of the technology they use and of its
impact on the environment.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about key inventors who have been environmental
activists.
2. Students will understand that change comes through members of very
different fields and through different approaches.
3. Students will examine how some everyday technologies became more
environmentally friendly because of supply and demand.
4. Students will be inspirited to work together in teams to execute a plan
and to create their own inventions.

Overview
In this unit students examine an everyday technology in great depth. They
analyze its inventor, the situations that led to its creation, the different variations
of it, and how it became popular. Students will chart the progress of the
invention over time and examine its impact at each of these different points. In
addition to performing this analysis and studying existing environmental
problems, students will also engage in imagining what this technology could
look like fifty years hence.

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Activity 7.9.1
Designing a Friendly Future
Students work in teams to research an everyday technology. Students could
research lightbulbs, cameras, or some other technology. Their research will
need to cover the following areas:

1. The inventor(s)
a. Biographical information Training
b. Collaborators
c. Inspirations and/or trailblazers who helped pave the way for the
inventor
2. The idea
a. The first iteration of the idea
b. The idea’s genesis/conception
c. Early champions of the idea
3. The invention
a. The first incarnation of the invention
b. The resources needed for the invention (including manpower,
expertise, raw materials, and funding)
c. The drawbacks of the initial invention
4. The spread
a. How the invention caught on
b. Who marketed it and to whom
c. How quickly it became popular
5. The evolution of the invention
a. How the invention has changed over time
b. How it has gotten better and worse
c. What it will look like in the future
6. The impact of the invention:
a. How it has impacted society
b. How it has impacted culture
c. New inventions that it made possible

They should show the technology and its aspects at different stages, and then
they should try to envision what the technology could look like in fifty years.
They will present the evolution of the technology to the rest of the class.

Resources

302
• Buckminster Fuller Institute (http://www.bfi.org/)
• PBS’s American Masters “Bucky Fuller”
(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/r-buckminster-
fuller/about-r-buckminster-fuller/599/)

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 THE WORLD COURSE
EIGHTH GRADE: MIGRATION

Theme
M igratory Movement and People

Description
Students begin the year with the end in mind, as they are introduced to the
concept of social entrepreneurship and told that they will be building a social
enterprise during the year in the first unit. They then learn about the
opportunities and challenges in current global trends for their project. During
the rest of the year, they tackle the issue of demographic changes and tools,
exploring causes such as migration and consequences such as the interaction
between increased human population and effects on the environment. As they go
on a cultural scavenger hunt of New York City and engage in other activities, the
students recognize that fluctuations in populations are not recent phenomena but
a part of a historical pattern of movement that already exists. They spend twelve
weeks studying the impact of one particular migration pattern—the Silk Road—
and how the cultural exchanges that took place on that road affected art, music,
trade, and belief systems. They then apply what they have learned about
historical patterns and modern tools of demography to a case study of modern
China and India by participating in a mock summit (unit 7). As their culminating
activity, they give a presentation to the school community on their yearlong
social-enterprise project.

Looking Backwards
Driving Change in Society

Looking Forward
Students develop a high school capstone project and select three semester long
courses that help them gain depth in understanding of economic development,

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public health, global conflicts, environmental sustainability and emerging
technologies.

Overview of Units

1) Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship

2) The Population Paradox: Opportunities and Challenges in Current
Global Trends
3) Population Pyramids and Introduction to Basic Demography
4) Human-Environmental Interactions and Comparisons Across Species
5) New York City Scavenger Hunt: Introduction to Immigration and
Migration
6) Migration and International Development: Reasons for and Effects of
Migration
7) Along the Silk Road: An In-Depth Look at the Cultural Exchange and
the Effects of Migration on Art, Music, Trade, and Belief Systems
8) Modern Populations: Case Study of China and India
9) Presentation of Social Enterprise

Capstone Project
Students will create a social enterprise around one of the SDGs and present
their work at the end of the year.

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Unit 8.1
Topic Social Entrepreneurship
Ethics: value of human potential and work and mind habits:
Theme
innovation and creativity
Region Various
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn what social entrepreneurship is and how social entrepreneurs

are addressing some of the major global challenges.
2. Inspire students to initiate a social-entrepreneurial venture to address
one of the SDGs.
3. Act by establishing a social enterprise.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will study the work of various social entrepreneurs.

2. Students will recognize the value of social innovation in addressing
development challenges.
3. Students will identify the steps involved in establishing a social
enterprise.
4. Students will plan a social enterprise and develop an implementation
plan.

Overview
This unit builds on the last unit of the seventh grade, when the concept of social
enterprise was studied. The students begin eighth grade with an introduction to
—or a review of—social enterprises and create a social enterprise around one
of the SDGs for their end-of-the-year project. This enterprise is developed and
put into practice during the year, and students periodically reflect on the results
of their enterprise. They use those reflections to review the theory of action of
the enterprise and to make adjustments to their business plan. The year ends
with a presentation of the enterprises created by the students and a discussion of
their results.

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Activity 8.1.1
What Is Social Entrepreneurship?
The teacher will introduce this activity with a presentation that explains the
concept of social entrepreneurship. The students will describe the growing role
played by the citizen sector in generating innovation to address global
challenges and will provide a range of examples of social entrepreneurs. The
introduction will highlight the various approaches to financing social
enterprises (e.g., for profit, hybrid, and not for profit). If possible, invite actual
social entrepreneurs to visit the class and to make short presentations describing
their work and sharing their passion.

Resources

• A resource featuring examples of youth who are social entrepreneurs

(https://www.changemakers.com/blog?page=17)
• Videos on innovations in addressing social challenges
(http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/educators/social_entrepreneurs.html
• Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, by David
Bornstein and Susan Davis
• Tactics of Hope: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing Our
World, by Wilford Welch
• The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your
Organization, by Peter Drucker and Jim Collins
• Start Something that Matters, by M. Mycoskie.
• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries.
• The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson

Activity 8.1.2
What Are the Sustainable Development Goals?
In a class discussion, students will review the SDGs and discuss examples of
how social entrepreneurs are addressing them. Students can work in small
groups, and each group can have a discussion about a different SDG. The groups
will then summarize their work for the entire class.

Resources
The following are good resources for teaching the SDGs and can be used to
provide students with context when they choose topics to focus their social

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enterprise on:

• Comic book on the Sustainable Development Goals

(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/read-comic-book/)
• The lesson plan “A Global Goals Assembly”
(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/)
• https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300
• https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/the-goals/
• https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_how_we_can_make_the_world_a_b
language=en
• https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_drummond_how_to_set_goals_for_the_worl
language=en

Activity 8.1.3
Designing a Social Enterprise
In small groups of between five and six, students will design a social enterprise.
They will draw on the SDGs to define a problem area. They will then define a
mission for their organization, identify their business model, and develop a
business plan. Teachers will review the concepts of Design for Change and
Design Thinking, which were taught in the previous year.

Once the social enterprise is designed, students will implement it throughout the
year, checking in periodically in class to review how the concepts learned in
activities 8.1.1. and 8.1.2. apply to what they are experiencing. Ideally, students
will be paired up with mentors who are actual social entrepreneurs or with
volunteers who work with social enterprises in their city, and the mentors will
provide coaching. Parent volunteers may also be able to contribute in this way.

At the end of the academic year, in weeks thirty-five and thirty-six, there will be
a capstone exhibition for which the students will prepare a written report and a
PowerPoint presentation (or another media presentation of their choice)
summarizing their enterprise and what it accomplished. Students will also make
a short presentation to peers, parents, and local entrepreneurs describing what
SDG they set out to address, the value proposition of their enterprise, their
business model, how they assessed their plan’s impact, and what they learned
along the way. It would be helpful if people with experience in philanthropy,
corporate social responsibility, or social enterprise could be invited to serve as
a panel of jurors and to offer feedback to each team of students.

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Resources

• Consider the following resources on Design for Change:

○ https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/explore-global-
goals/, https://www.ideo.com/work/toolkit-for-educators, and
http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/
• The following organizations provide curriculum to teach business
skills to middle school students:
http://www.teachingkidsbusiness.com/Home.htm and
http://www.jany.org/
• https://www.nfte.com/
• Wolk, A. and K. Kreitz. 2008. Business Planning for Enduring
Social Impact: A How-To Guide. Students should read pages 1–26 of
this book from Root Cause. This book covers business planning for
enduring social impact, planning to plan, and articulating a social-
impact model. It will become a reference guide that the students will
refer to during the year as they implement their business plan.

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Unit 8.2
The Population Paradox: Opportunities and Challenges in
Topic
Current Global Trends
Theme Environment, geography, and demography
Region Global, the United States, India, Kenya, and Japan
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the opportunities and challenges of current demographic

trends.
2. Inspire students to ask questions about global action or inaction in
light of foreseeable demographic trends.
3. Act by using tools such as demography when making decisions about
the future.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will increase their depth of understanding of demographic

issues.
2. Students will be introduced to the population paradox.
3. Students will use mathematics concepts including exponential
functions, best-fit lines, and more to answer a real-world question.

Activity 8.2.1
Exploring the Population Paradox on NOVA
(This lesson in adapted from NOVA’s teacher guide on World in the Balance:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/activities/pdf/3108_worldbal.pdf.)

The purposes of this activity are to increase the depth of the students’
understanding of demographic issues and to introduce the students to the
population paradox.

Prior knowledge needed for this activity includes basic math skills and a basic

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understanding of demography.

The teacher uses this guide

(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/activities/pdf/3108_worldbal.pdf) to
support the viewing of NOVA’s film World in the Balance.

(Note that this activity will allow students to use their math skills. In fact, it may
be useful to have students complete all or part of this activity in their math class
after watching the film in the World Course.)

Resources

• NOVA’s World in the Balance

(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/)
• Population Reference Bureau (www.prb.org)

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Unit 8.3
Topic Population Pyramids and Introduction to Basic Demography
Theme Global risk: economic; demography; and poverty
Region Various
Length Two weeks

Overview
This unit builds on an introduction to the study of demography and population
studies and introduces the concepts of mortality, fertility, marriage, and
migration levels and patterns. Students will be introduced to the main sources of
demographic information. The teacher will introduce the concept of distribution
of populations by categories (age, sex, race, and ethnicity) and the concepts of
density, distribution, and scale. Concepts of birthrates, mortality rates, fertility
rates, age-dependency ratios, and age-sex graphs are explained. The teacher
also introduces several sources of demographic data and displays and explains
several population charts.

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the basic concepts of demographic analyses and population

studies.
2. Inspire students to pursue independent studies of populations using
the sources provided in this unit, and ask questions such as the
following: How does the study of past demographic trends help to
predict future demographic structures? How do changes in
demographic structures affect social, political, and economic events?
3. Act by examining the relationship of populations to sociological and
cultural changes and to political and economic development.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn the categories for demographic analysis (age,

gender, and race).
2. Students will learn to describe the concepts of birthrates, mortality
rates, fertility rates, and dependency ratios.

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 3. Students will learn the major sources of demographic information.

Activity 8.3.1
Introduce this activity with the Gapminder video “200 countries, 200 Years, 4
minutes.” A discussion of the following video would be a good warm-up to this
unit:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/

Activity 8.3.2
Foundations of Demography
The teacher will introduce the concept of distribution of population by
categories (age, sex, race, and ethnicity) and the concepts of density,
distribution, and scale. The concepts of birthrates, mortality rates, fertility rates,
age-dependency ratios, and age-sex graphs will also be explained. The teacher
also introduces several sources of demographic data and displays and explains
several population charts.
http://www.prb.org/Educators/LessonPlans/2005/
PopulationBuildingaFoundation.aspx

Activity 8.3.3
Population Pyramids
The teacher will introduce the field of demography, explaining population
pyramids and the concept of population levels and trends. In class students will
examine how population pyramids change over time in the same country and
compare population pyramids across countries. charts. These data can be found
here: (http://www.prb.org/Educators/LessonPlans/2000/PyramidBuilding.aspx}

Data on population pyramids across different countries

(http://www.un.org/esa/population/)

The teacher will organize the students into small study groups, and the groups
will examine how the youth bulge in some regions of the world relates to
political developments—for example, to unrest in the Middle East.

Activity 8.3.4

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The Relationship of Population Composition and Change to
Political and Economic Development
The teacher will introduce the field of population studies, examining how
population change influences political and economic processes.

For example, this video explains the relationship between poverty and
population growth:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/population-growth-explained-with-ikea-
boxes/.

Resource

• The following are lesson plans for population studies:

○ http://www.prb.org/Publications/Lesson-
Plans/MakingPopulationRealNewLessonPlansandClassroomActivities.a

Teacher Resources

• Shyrock S, Siegel JS, Stockwell EG. The Methods and Materials of

Demography. Academic Press. 1976.
• For teachers and students who can read French, the website of the
INED (Institut national
d’études démographiques) of France has a section aimed at children
and teachers with a number of nice animations
(http://www.ined.fr/fr/tout_savoir_population/)

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Unit 8.4
Human-Environmental Interactions and Comparisons across
Topic
Species
Theme Global risk: environment; geography; and demography
Region The Arctic
Length One week

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about how two species—humans and polar bears—interact

with their environment.
2. Inspire students to reflect on the impacts that human migration,
reproduction, and consumption are having on the environment.
3. Act by becoming well-informed stewards of the environment.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will apply demographic concepts to humans as a species and

to polar bears as a species.
2. Students will learn about polar bears and threats to their existence.
3. Students will learn to evaluate humans as a species relatively
dispassionately.
4. Students will practice their comparative skills.

Overview
The students are introduced to the basic ideas behind human-environmental
interaction by watching the film Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.

Activity 8.4.1
Comparing Species with Demography
(Note that if the teacher wants, this activity can extend throughout all of the units
on demography rather than just spanning one week. If it is extended, students can
add information to their comparisons as they learn new concepts.)

315
This unit can begin, if the teacher chooses, with a fun film that brings up issues
of global warming and the threat to arctic life, such as Ice Age 2: The
Meltdown. After watching the film, the teacher explains to the class that they
will be completing a structured comparison between humans as a species and
polar bears. They should be scientific in their approach and evaluate humans as
though they have little prior knowledge of their habits, characteristics, and
motivations. The teacher can use his or her discretion in determining the criteria
for comparison, but some ideas may include

1. major food sources

2. population threats
3. migration patterns
4. reproduction rates
5. life-spans
6. relationships to the environment.

Students should present their reports to one another and to the class as a whole.

Resources 8.4.1

• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (film)

• Population Reference Bureau (www.prb.org)

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Unit 8.5
NYC Scavenger Hunt: Introduction to Immigration and
Topic
Migration
ICC: interpersonal (all subcategories); ethics: religious
diversity; work and mind habits: cross-cultural perspective
Theme
taking and cultural change; culture: world religions;
demography politics: globalization; and the local-global link
Region New York City
Length Eight weeks

(Note that this topic is illustrative. If your school is in a different city,

change the topic as is appropriate.)

Overview
This unit is an introductory exploration of the concepts of migration and
immigration in New York City. It leads the students on a scavenger-hunt
research study of New York City via searches on the web and walks along city
streets. Students will research different boroughs and neighborhoods and their
changing demographics over time.

Optional Preparatory Activity 8.5.1

Students would be asked to describe the neighborhood of the school and would
be guided through the activity by the teacher. (See below for a list of possible
aspects of the neighborhood to describe.) This activity would prepare the
students for their own scavenger hunt in the subsequent activity. Either in this
activity or, if this activity is not completed, in the next, there should be a review
of and lessons about basic research skills (e.g., how to identity good sources for
information and how to determine whether a source/website is reliable).

Activity 8.5.2
Students are divided into different groups and gather research and firsthand
information about their assigned/chosen neighborhoods (defined by the teacher
for safety reasons, among others). Once they collect the information, they will
make a presentation about their neighborhood using posters, video, pictures, and
other visual aids.

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1) Students should be encouraged to use, practice, and develop
teamwork skills and strategies; to learn about one another as
classmates; and to explore their own strengths and individual
interests during this activity. For example, the students should do the
following:
a. Make a list of roles for the team based on the requirements of
the assignment and take turns in the roles or assign each team
member a role (e.g., logistics coordinator, timekeeper,
recorder, editor, etc.)
b. Make a list of target dates for parts of the assignments before
the delivery of the final product, with assignments for each
member of the team
c. Discuss and agree on how they will resolve conflicts and
differences and how they will run their team meetings
d. Discuss and learn about the experiences, skills, and interests
that each team member brings to the work and discuss how they
can best use those experiences, skills, and interests to produce
the final presentation (these can be discussed as a class before
the teams are constructed, or the teacher can administer a
survey, make the teams based on interest and skills, and have
the students talk about them with one another)
2) Students will be asked to use online searches and other resources in
the library to answer questions about their assigned
neighborhoods/boroughs. The teacher can write these questions, or
the class can do a guided brainstorming session with the teacher
about the questions they have. An example of a rubric is included.

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3) The students or the teacher will also make a list of pictures to be
taken (or menus or other artifacts to be collected) as students travel
the neighborhoods. Students should be encouraged to think about and
plan ahead for the kinds of pictures they will take and the people
they will talk to based on their initial Internet-based research on the
neighborhood. They should be ready to explain and justify their
decisions to the rest of the class after discussion within their groups.
For example, students could take pictures of the following:
a. Five different types of restaurants
b. Five different types of businesses (small, medium, and large in
size)
c. Five different landmarks, including memorials, museums, and
statues
d. Five different street corners
e. Five different apartments or living spaces
f. Five different places of worship representing different faith

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 traditions
g. Five different parks or recreational places.
4) The students or the teacher should make a list of people to
interview/speak with and questions to ask them. They can videotape
these short (no more than five minutes), informal interviews. The
following is a sample list of people to interview:
a. A small-business owner
b. Someone walking on the street
c. People of various ages
i. Someone in his or her twenties
ii. Someone in his or her thirties
iii. Someone in his or her forties
iv. Someone in his or her fifties
v. Someone in his or her fifties
vi. Someone in his or her sixties
The following is a sample list of questions to ask:
a. How long have you lived in New York City?
b. Why did you come to/decide to live in New York City?
c. Where do your/where did your parents live?
d. Where do your/where did you grandparents live?
e. Where did your great-grandparents live?
f. What are your favorite places in the neighborhood and why?
g. What places should be avoided?
h. What places do you go to daily?
i. Can you describe the place where you live?
j. Where do you work?
6) Students should walk together around their neighborhood (defined by
the teacher) under adult supervision (for safety reasons) and gather
artifacts, take pictures and videos, and interview people.
7) The students should identify someone who has lived in their assigned
neighborhood for thirty years (or the teacher could invite a guest
speaker) and interview him/or her more extensively about how he or
she perceives the changes in the neighborhood over the years (e.g.,
the changing demographics, the challenges and benefits of movement
and migration, etc.).
8) Once they have collected the data, they will present it to the rest of
the class. Using posters, videos, pictures, and other visual aids, they
will summarize what they’ve learned.

Activity 8.5.3 (Optional Preactivity)

My Family History
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Note that many students do this type of activity in the younger grades, but not at a
very deep level. This activity should go in depth into the history of families in
order to connect to the topic. Please substitute historical families (for all
students) if there are students present in the classroom for whom examining
family histories would be problematic (due to abuse or trauma, for example).

Each student completes an independent study project on his or her family

history. Throughout the course of the project, students should complete at a
minimum a family tree, a map that shows the movement of the family members
over time, and an analysis of the experiences of moving, cultural sharing, and
identity formation among the family members. This analysis could be presented
in many formats, including, for example, in written family stories, interviews, or
a scrapbook. The students should be allowed to be creative and expected to go
in depth.

This website is a good resource for examples of family stories:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nyc100/html/imm_stories/index.html.

Optional Activity 8.5.4

Students Study the Different Cultural Influences in New
York City Caused by People Moving into the City
(Note that this can be a different way to organize the scavenger hunt—that is, by
ethnicities rather than by neighborhoods.)

Students explore the history of the groups that have migrated to New York City
(e.g., Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, etc.) and explore the reasons for their
migrations and the cultural influences that the groups brought. Students can
conduct this study through an examination of the arts of each culture in the
cultures’ respective neighborhoods and also throughout the city.

Students create “walking tours” of New York City, highlighting major landmarks
and cultural buildings.

They may take field trips to a variety of neighborhoods. Each group can prepare
a presentation that will be given in an appropriate neighborhood. The students
themselves act as tour guides.

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Resources

• Berger, Joseph. (2007). The World in a City: Traveling the Globe

through the Neighborhoods of the New New York. Ballantine Books.
(The book is 264 pages.)
• Interactive New York Times map on immigration patterns since 1880
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-
immigration-explorer.html)
• Maps that show how New York’s racial makeup has changed since
2000
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/14/nyregion/census-
graphic-ny.html)
• “Mapping America: Every City, Every Block,” a map showing the
ethnic distribution of neighborhoods (data is based on 2005–2009)
(http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?hp?hp)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhoods_of_New_York_City

The following list of data about demographics is from this article from the New
York Times: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/immigration-in-new-
york-city-taking-the-long-view/.

1) Sixty percent of New York City residents are immigrants or children

of immigrants. The following is a list of some of their communities
and those communities’ locations:
a. The Chinese and Koreans in Flushing
b. The Dominicans in Washington Heights and the West Bronx
c. The Guyanese in Richmond Hill
d. The Carib in East Flatbush
e. The South Asians in Jackson Heights
f. The growing Chinese population in Bensonhurst
g. The polyglot mix of Arabs, Brazilians, and Bangladeshis in
Astoria
2) New York was a heterogeneous city from its founding; seventeen
languages could be heard in the streets of New Amsterdam in the
1640s.
3) By 1855, New York had become “the most Irish city in America” and
was a hub of nationalist politics and even of the Gaelic revival. Irish
women were maids and household servants to the wealthy and
provided the backbone of the teaching force. The Irish challenged the
Protestant-dominated social elite with a rival network of social and
political institutions centered on the Roman Catholic Church.

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4) Immigration of Italians peaked in the late nineteenth century and the
early twentieth century. Early Italian migration consisted mostly of
males, and some one-third of Italians returned to Italy. Italians
largely came from agricultural backgrounds; they tended to work for
their ethnic kinsmen.
5) The “profound shift” in immigrant population patterns after the 1965
immigration law ended the quota system that had barred most
immigrants since the 1920s. In 1970, 18.2 percent of the city’s
population was foreign born; by 2005, 36.6 percent of it was.
6) In 1970, the leading countries of origin for the city’s foreign born
were Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union, Germany, Ireland, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Jamaica.
By 2000, those leading countries were the Dominican Republic,
China, Jamaica, Mexico, Guyana, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and
Tobago, India, and Colombia.
7) The composition within racial groups has also changed significantly.
In 1970, two-thirds of the city’s Hispanic population was Puerto
Rican; in 2005, Puerto Ricans represented about 35 percent of the
Hispanic population, and Dominicans, about 24 percent.
8) The foreign-born population in New York City is most concentrated
in its two most populous boroughs: 36.2 percent of the city’s foreign
born live in Queens, and 31.4 percent live in Brooklyn, compared
with 14.7 percent in Manhattan, 14.4 percent in the Bronx, and 3.3
percent on Staten Island.
9) In Manhattan, the only concentrations of immigrants are in Lower
Manhattan (Chinatown area) and in Washington Heights, where an
estimated ninety thousand to one hundred thousand Hispanics—
mostly Dominicans—are clustered.
10) Even on Staten Island, where there is hardly a concentration of
immigrations, neighborhoods have been transformed over short
periods of time. In the 1990s, the North Shore of the island lost about
twelve thousand non-Hispanic whites and gained about ten thousand
black and Latino residents.
11) Today, native-born whites with native-born parents represent less
than one in five residents of New York City, but only 30 percent of
voters are immigrants.

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Unit 8.6
Migration and International Development: Reasons for and
Topic
Effects of Migration
ICC: diverse cultural perspectives and empathy; ICC:
intrapersonal; Interpersonal; ethics: religious diversity and
commitment to equality; work and mind habits: innovation
Theme
and creativity and cross-cultural perspective taking;
culture: world history; and politics: globalization and
demography
Region Various
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the role immigration plays in the development of host and

receiving countries as a whole, learn the diversity of reasons that
contribute to the decision to migrate, and learn to view immigration
as one of the most important and complex current trends in the world
today.
2. Inspire a curiosity of understandinghow immigration plays an
important role in the allocation of resources across different
countries and societies.
3. Act by treating immigrants as equals and with respect and by
demonstrating multicultural competencies.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will analyze global patterns of refugee migration and study

maps and other geographic tools to examine migration flows.
2. Students will understand the different push-and-pull factors
associated with migration and that there can be multiple factors
playing out at once that influence one’s decision to immigrate.
3. Students will understand the trade-offs between the costs and benefits
associated with migration for the host country and countries of
origin.
4. Students will articulate the diversity of experiences that immigrants

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 have and reflect on how those experiences can be positive and
enriching ones.
5. Students will explore refugee rights and immigrant rights and be
aware of the pros and cons associated with immigration policy.

Activity 8.6.1
The students are asked to interview an adult in their family as well as one other
person (with adult supervision) who isn’t a family member but is someone the
students know (e.g., the owner of a favorite shop, a salesman in a shop, a family
friend, etc.)14 In class each student will present a profile of those people based
on the interviews. The students present on where these people were originally
from, when they moved to the United States, and why they moved to the United
States.

The teacher draws on the discussion and helps introduce the class to the various
reasons migration occurs and the fact that it’s an ongoing process. The aim is
also to show that migration can occur internationally and domestically.

Activity 8.6.2
The teacher provides students with some daunting figures on migration and
possibly with a map of global migrant flows in the world—that is, a map that
shows where people are moving to. (See
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/world/20070622_CAPEVERDE_GRAPHIC.html#.)
The students are asked to speculate about the reasons for these movements.
Based on this discussion, the teacher lists three themes/reasons. For each theme,
the class is divided into different groups, and the teacher addresses push
(reasons people leave) and pull (reasons people are attracted to other countries)
factors.

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327
Using the case they have been assigned, the groups will also undertake their
own research on each of these factors by reading books and watching clips. The
students will present their research on their specific case in class. Students will
also be presented with newspaper articles about countries with large receiving
and sending migrant populations. Students will be asked to think about which of
the three factors above could be part of the reason for these exoduses.

Activity 8.6.3
In this activity, students are divided into two groups. Each group represents a
host country (e.g., the United States) and a sending country (e.g., Mexico). In

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each of the two groups, the students undertake research on the possible impacts
of immigration on the two countries. The aim is for students to understand that
immigration may impact each of the countries very differently. Students will then
be asked to write an op-ed regarding what they believe the costs and benefits of
migration are for each of the groups they represent. Some possible discussion
points could revolve around the following:

• The concept of Brain Drain (the depletion of the human-resource

pool) in Mexico
• Examining who within a household or family bears the brunt of
immigration? (Consider those who use household resources to
migrate and thus drain the resources of those left behind, and
remember that men are more likely to immigrate than women, and
thus, families have to fend for themselves.)
• The consequence of immigration for the country of origin: An
increase in remittances for Mexico, which contributes to the growth
of the economy and to the availability of and access to increased
disposable income for households (human capital investments).

Activity 8.6.4
Students are introduced to the PBS documentary Taxi Dreams, and they view
clips and interviews with thirteen New York City taxi drivers. The interviews
include their reasons and motivations for moving to New York City and a
summary of the experiences they’ve had (ranging from positive to negative).
(See http://www.amazon.com/Taxi-Dreams/product-reviews/B000K15W7U.)

Using this as a backdrop, students will use online mediums to connect with
young people in different schools. They will examine the ways immigrants are
treated in their societies, the stereotypes and generalizations made about
immigrants, and the degree to which they have assimilated into their societies.

Based on this activity, the students will write a “State of Migrants” blog post
and create an online collage of pictures representing the immigrant experience
in different countries in the world.

Alternatively, students could also work on exploring some famous immigrants in

the United States and examining their unique contributions to the development of
society in the United States over the years.

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Activity 8.6.5
In this unit, the students revisit the UDHR and are introduced to the role of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and to the concept of refugee
rights. In addition, students are split into two groups that will debate the pros
and cons of immigration and the need for an immigration policy in particular.
Students examine each side of the debate and the issues associated with illegal
immigration, resource drains, and so on. They may be presented with an
immigration-related dilemma (e.g., given existing push factors in instances of
forced migration, what might the pull factors be, and what can governments
do?).

The focus is not on going into great depth, as that involves a higher order of
understanding. Instead, the focus is on helping students understand that there are
pros and cons to every policy. The teacher should be sensitive and extremely
careful to ensure that no one particular group is targeted or stigmatized in any
manner.

Resources 8.6

• http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/newamericans/newamericans.html
• http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/09/g68/tgmigration.htm

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Unit 8.7
Along the Silk Road: An In-Depth Look at the Cultural
Topic Exchange and the Effects of Migration on Art, Music,
Trade, and Belief Systems
Arts: literature, visual, music, and dance; economic
development; culture: world history and world religions;
Theme work and mind habits: innovation and creativity; ethics:
religious diversity and ethical frameworks; and ICC:
interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives)
Region China
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how relationships across civilizations translate in artistic

influence.
2. Inspire students to identify art and spirituality as common elements
across diverse cultural groups, as common aspects of the human
experience. humanity
3. Act by further investigate how various artistic creations reflect
cross-cultural influence, and to examine how cultural, economic and
technological exchanges are mutually reinforcing.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about the points of contact across civilizations

that were the result of migration, including those of cultural,
economic, and technological exchanges.
2. Students will learn about the influence of Spain and Muslims through
Spain to Latin America (this can be an independent research project
for students).

Activities
Lesson plans are based on the curriculum unit “Along the Silk Road.” There are
many resources online about this topic, such as the following:

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• http://msh.councilforeconed.org/lessons.php?lid=68366
• http://www.indiana.edu/~iaunrc/content/journeys-along-silk-road-
unit-1-middle-high-school
• “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble” is
a documentary film about the vitality of musical exchange and a
vision of global connection through art and culture, in the spirit of the
Silk Road. A curriculum based on the film at the high school level is
available at silkroadproject.org.

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Unit 8.8
Topic Modern Populations: Case Study of China and India
Theme Global risk: society and health and conflict
Region China and India
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to describe the modern population composition (by ethnicity,

race, culture, growth, and migration) in India and China and to
describe some policy issues related to population (e.g., policies
concerning immigration, workforces, environmental sustainability,
population growth, equality, education, and mobility).
2. Question the current distribution of people around the world and
question current policies with respect to equity.
3. Act by creating a project that integrates at least two population
issues.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will describe the modern population composition (by

ethnicity, race, culture, growth, and migration) in India and China
and some policy issues related to population (e.g., policies
concerning immigration, workforces, environmental sustainability,
population growth, equality, education and mobility).
2. Students will evaluate the opportunities and challenges of various
population issues (e.g., immigration, population growth or decline,
population explosion, integration versus assimilation, and cultural
mixing).
3. Students will use information from varied primary and secondary
sources to evaluate population policies.
4. Students will synthesize varying viewpoints on population policies
and their challenges and opportunities.
5. Students will judge population policies and challenges according to
the standards of equity, feasibility, and legitimacy.

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Activity 8.8.1
http://nationalgeographic.org/archive/xpeditions/lessons/09/g68/tgmigration.html

Activity 8.8.2
The Population History of India and China
The teacher splits the class into two groups. One will focus on India, and the
other will focus on China.

Students will work in groups of four to research the historical migration patterns
in India and China. They should produce similar maps and charts as well as
narrative explanations of trends in their assigned country.

Students will get into larger groups to present the information they learned about
their country to the other groups that researched the same country, to exchange
information, and to deepen their understanding of the concepts through
discussion.

Students will regroup into mixed groups (i.e., groups of students who studied
China and students who studied India) and present to one another the
information they learned.

Students will compare the history of population change in China to that of India
using a simple chart.

Some key data are available here: www.un.org/esa/population.

Activity 8.8.3
Population Challenges in India and China
The teacher will guide a discussion regarding the many population challenges
faced by India and China. These challenges should include poverty, education,
urbanization, and health.

Most of the students will choose a challenge of interest to them and work in
groups to

1. identify the cause of the challenge and what part population plays in

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 the challenge
2. identify previous attempts to solve the challenge and judge their
effectiveness
3. propose a few policy solutions to the challenge.

A small group of students will instead research the broad picture in each
country. Rather than focusing on one problem, they will conduct research on the
current state of governance and on the overall challenges in each nation. In the
mock summit, these students will act as a decision-making body for each nation
and choose the most compelling proposal from the groups. This group should
research the resources provided by the governments as well as by NGOs and
social organizations.

Activity 8.8.4
Mock Summit
Each group will represent its country in a mock summit on the challenges that
the countries face. Students will be placed in groups according to the challenge
they researched (whether it is in India or China).

They will need to prepare a presentation about their challenge and possible
policy solutions.

During the summit, each group will give a brief presentation about its challenge
and possible solutions. There will be a question-and-answer session after each
presentation.

The few students who make up the decision-making body (see above) present to
the group their research on the limits of the resources in the nation. Students get
back into small groups to make a case for their policy challenge and solution
and for why their challenge should be a priority. Students should prepare to
advocate strongly for their policy solution.

Back in the larger summit setting, the students make their cases for why their
challenge and policy solution should be prioritized. The decision-making body
should meet to discuss the proposals and then make a decision. They should also
prepare a rationale for their decision. They will present their decision to the
class as a final decision.

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To debrief the summit, ask the students for their reflections on this project. Ask
them the following questions: What were some of the challenges and
opportunities? How did it feel to wait for a decision after making so many
preparations? How did it feel to have the decision rest on the shoulders of the
decision making body? What did you learn from this experience?

Resources 8.8

• A list of links to sources on US and international demographic data

(http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/magert/publicationsab/demdata.cfm

14 The aim of this activity is also for students to understand how to collect data and
undertake research and for them to gain confidence in speaking with people other than those
whom they know within their immediate familial context.
15 The teacher should be careful to avoid creating confusion between being a refugee and
being a climate/environmental refugee.
16 This can be a precursor to economics, and a very light introduction is needed.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
NINTH THROUGH TWELFTH GRADE

T here are two strands to the World Course in grades nine through twelve: a
curricular strand and an individual project. At this level the World Course
expects greater self-direction on the part of student in determining what to study,
why and how. For this reason, the individual project is the anchor of this
activity, with the curricular strand offering the necessary intellectual foundation
to support students in developing that project. Ideally the curricular strand will
offer many opportunities for personalization, with students helping develop the
program of study. For this reason, the semester long courses are presented in
less detail than the previous year long courses have been.

The curricular strand is composed of five semester-long in-depth studies of

major processes driving globalization, their respective challenges, the past
progress made on the challenges, and the current progress being made on the
challenges. Each student will choose at least two of these semester-long courses
but can take more if he or she wishes. The semester courses are described in the
following sections. These courses should be similar to college level courses
and we anticipate that as students and their faculty fully flesh them out that they
will draw on existing college level courses to identify relevant content. Our
hope is that there will be abundant opportunities for personalization at this
level, with students pursuing the same topic conceivably accessing different
resources and content in ways that is most directly relevant to their interests and
to the project students should be working on in high school.

The study of each of the challenges will be rooted in a semester-long course.

The case study includes teaching and learning about the following: the skills and
knowledge needed to address the challenges associated with that process and
various ways to think about the challenge, such as the kinds of questions to ask
or the frameworks in which to look at the issues.

The independent (or group) project strand focuses on a multiyear individual

(or group) capstone project on an issue that the students will identify by the end
of their ninth-grade year, after taking the two semester courses. This project

337
includes independent research, an internship with a mentor and/or an
organization working on the issue, the development and implementation of an
action plan to help address the issue, and a final senior-year presentation to the
rest of the school community on the experience. The students will be placed in
advisory groups with peers who are interested in similar issues and will be
supervised throughout grades ten through twelve by an assigned advisor and
possibly by outside mentors. This project can be executed individually or in
groups. The focus is on helping students use their talents and interests to meet
global challenges.

• Examples of projects/issues include the following:

○ In working on emerging technologies, students will identify (at
the end of the semester course) one emerging technology that
they believe could address a relevant global challenge. (This is
the final activity of the semester course.) They will then
identify firms, universities, or other organizations working on
the issues; find and do an internship; and write a final paper
summarizing their contribution to the issue in their engagement
with the firm or university.
○ In working on the issue of countries in conflict/geopolitical
challenge, students will identify organizations working on the
issue of interfaith understanding in NYC; map what they do;
locate gaps, particularly for high school students; form a
student club at their school with other students to develop
interfaith understanding; and leverage resources from other
organizations to educate other students on the topic.
○ In working on the issue of health challenges, students will find
organizations working on the issue of AIDS in South Africa, do
an internship, and develop an art project/book that they will
then sell to raise money for an organization identified as doing
effective work.

As students work on their independent projects, they will serve as peer coaches
for students in the five semester courses. This will serve the dual purpose of
tapping into the expertise of more advanced students to teach the courses and
keeping the more advanced students engaged in a structured course that will
give them the opportunity to deepen their study of the subject they’re pursuing in
their independent project. Because these projects are likely to be
interdisciplinary, a student working on his or her independent project might
serve as a resource in multiple semester courses rather than just in the specific
semester course in which the project originated. In this way students will
maximize their opportunity to explore the interdisciplinary dimensions of their

338
project. For example, a student might initiate a project to study the drivers of
youth unemployment in the conflict semester course. This project might evolve
into using information technologies to match jobs to candidates or to help
candidates develop skills through open-source education. Thus, this student
could present his or her project to students in the emerging technology course as
well as in the conflict course. The same project might develop some
components that would be of interest in the economic-development course.
Eventually, the problem that the student is working on will drive the study and
integration of the knowledge from various disciplines relevant to the problem.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
HIGH SCHOOL SEMESTER COURSE
THE ENVIRONMENT

I n this semester-long course, students study the world as it is, as it might be,
and as it should be. They use mapping skills to represent the natural and
man-made world as it is today in an effort to understand the challenges that
humans already face and will face as a result of the destruction of the
environment. Students will read one book of fiction (Oryx and Crake, by
Margaret Attwood) and one book of nonfiction (Silent Spring, by Rachel
Carson). They will employ systems thinking to understand and predict scenarios
for the future if environmental degradation continues unchecked. Finally, they
will work together to devise a plan to avoid the disastrous future they predicted.

Overview of the Units

1) The World as It Is
2) The World as It Could Be: Scenario Planning, Part 1
3) The World as it Should Be: Scenario Planning, Part 2

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Unit E.1
Topic The world as It Is
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
commitment to equality and the value human potential;
work and mind habits: innovation and creativity;
knowledge: economics, trade, and demography (economic
development and poverty); culture: geography; politics;
Theme
global risk: environment and globalization; arts: literature;
skills: investigative and analytical skills (evaluate sources of
information, the use of evidence, the local-global link, and
creative communication); and global problem solving:
produce media, critical consuming, and the use of technology
Region Global
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about the natural and man-made world and about what
threatens the natural and man-made world.
2. Inspire students to strive to understand what threatens the natural
environment and how those threats can be minimized.
3. Act as stewards of the environment.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn in detail about the main threats to the natural
world.
2. Students will use math, science, and research skills to generate
information about the natural world.
3. Students will practice mapping and graphing skills.
4. Students will gain in-depth knowledge of six environmental topics.

Overview
The purpose of this unit is to use various methods to represent the world as it is
today.

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Activity E.1.1
Understanding Sustainable Living
Download the lesson plan “Understanding Sustainable Living” and teach the
sixty-minute lesson (https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/).

Study Sustainable Development Goals 11–15

(http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/).

Activity E.1.2
Mapping the World
Students begin this unit by taking a close look at the world today. They complete
a series of mapping activities that challenges them to chart and map the
following:

1. Freshwater versus salt water

2. Deserts and forests
3. Endangered animals and plants
4. Energy resources
5. Climactic zones
6. Population

The students create maps, tables, and charts that together should give a picture
of the world as it is today. They devote one week to each topic, using multiple
sources to gather information and multiples methods to share different aspects of
each topic.

For example, for topic 1, the students may make a map showing the major
bodies of freshwater and the major bodies of salt water, noting which countries
have access to each and which have access to neither. The students may also
create a graph that shows the ratio of freshwater to salt water on the planet.
They may make tables indicating the primary methods that individuals use to
access freshwater around the world. The students may do a brief investigation
of where their freshwater comes from (e.g., a water table or an aquifer) and of
how it gets to them.

Activity E.1.3
Silent Spring
342
Students read Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring outside of class in
preparation for the next two units.

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Unit E.2
Topic The World as It Could Be: Scenario Planning, Part 1
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs and
conflict-resolution skills); ethics: trust in institutions,
breakdown in trust in institutions, common values,
commitment to equality, the value of human potential, the
importance of global compacts, and commitment to
supporting human rights; work and mind habits: innovation
and creativity; knowledge: economics, trade, and
Theme
demography (economic development and poverty); culture:
geography; politics; global risk: environment and
globalization; arts: literature; skills: investigative and
analytical skills (evaluate sources of information, the use of
evidence, local-global link, and creative communication);
and global problem solving: scenario building, future studies,
produce media, critical consuming, and the use of technology
Region Global and China
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how to use systems thinking and scenario planning to envision

our environmental future.
2. Inspire students to use critical-reasoning skills to think through a
scenario to its probable future.
3. Act to avert a potentially disastrous future.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will use math and science to calculate risks and to make
projections about the future.
2. Students will use systems thinking to make connections between
human choices, natural phenomena, and the environment.

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Overview
The purpose of this unit is to help students think through the future and about
where current trends could lead.

Activity E.2.1
Oryx and Crake
Students begin reading (and continue reading throughout this unit) Oryx and
Crake, by Margaret Attwood. This book about a fictional future will help the
students to think creatively about what the future could look like.

Activity E.2.2
What Are the Issues?
Students come to class with articles and ideas about the most pressing and
interesting issues in environmentalism. They evaluate the articles in terms of the
information they learned in their analysis of the world as it is (activity E. 1.1)
and during their reading of Silent Spring (activity E. 1.2). Combining the three
knowledge sources, the students identify environmental risks such as freshwater
scarcity, desertification and erosion, extreme weather, climate change, energy
choices, biodiversity loss, and more. The class discusses these issues and tries
to create linkages between them, perhaps by drawing flowcharts that show, for
example, how drought, erosion, and biodiversity loss are interrelated.

Activity E.2.3
A Framework for Understanding the Issues: Developing
Systems Thinking
The environment is a delicate system, and when one variable is altered, it sets
off a chain of changes to the system. In order to be able to think about tackling an
environmental problem, the students must have an understanding of systems and
must practice systems thinking.

Students will be introduced to the concept of systems thinking through a study of

the food-energy-water nexus: food production requires water and energy, water
extraction and distribution requires energy, and energy production requires
water. They will demonstrate their understanding of the concept by creating
diagrams that show the interconnections between these three processes and by
giving an interactive presentation (maybe of something akin to a Rube Goldberg

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machine) that shows how water, energy, and food interact. The teacher may want
to suggest the human body as a microcosmic representation of this global
dynamic.

Activity E.2.4
Case Study: China’s Three Gorges Dam
The teacher will lead the class through a study of China’s Three Gorges Dam.
Using one or more sources (suggestions are included below), the teacher will
design a case activity that leads the class through the various dilemmas and
scenarios related to the decision to build (and the opposition to building) the
Three Gorges Dam. For example, the teacher may first present the class with the
following scenario: there is regular, deadly flooding in the Chang Jing River
Valley, and China’s energy needs are growing at a rapid pace.

The teacher then could ask the class about possible solutions. The students may
suggest a dam. When they do, the teacher will reveal the Chinese government’s
reasoning for the construction of a dam, which includes the facts that

1. a dam emits a small amount of greenhouse gases

2. a dam would prevent the chronic, deadly flooding that affects the
region
3. a dam would provide electricity to keep pace with China’s growing
energy needs.

In this way, the class will learn about how some seemingly environmentally
friendly solutions generate may environmental problems. They will also
practice thinking about how the dam fits into the larger social, political, and
environmental system.

Resource

• American University’s case studies on Three Gorges Dam

○ http://www1.american.edu/ted/THREEDAM.HTM
○ http://www1.american.edu/ted/3gorges.htm

Activity E.2.5

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Scenario Planning, Part 1
The students look at the list of issues they brought to class during the first
activity and are asked to think about how the current environmental system will
look if the issues continue along the same course (good or bad). The students
will write a creative report describing the scenario, using actual scientific
projections whenever possible. The students will share their scenarios with the
class and discuss the steps that need to be taken to avoid or improve the
scenarios they described.

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Unit E.3
Topic The World as It Should Be: Scenario Planning, Part 2
ICC: interpersonal (work in intercultural teams); ICC:
intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs and conflict-
resolution skills); ethics: trust in institutions, breakdown in
trust in institutions, common values, commitment to equality,
valuing human potential, importance of global compacts, and
commitment to supporting human rights; work and mind
habits: innovation and creativity; knowledge: economics,
Theme
trade, and demography (economic development and
poverty); culture: geography; politics; global risk:
environment and globalization; skills: investigative and
analytical skills (evaluate sources of information, the use of
evidence, local-global link, and creative communication);
and global problem solving: scenario building, future studies,
produce media, critical consuming, and use of technology
Area Global
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how to use systems thinking and scenario planning to create a

future to their liking.
2. Inspire students to use critical-reasoning skills to decide how to
create the future they want.
3. Act by bringing life to the environmental future they desire.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will use creative, visionary thinking to design a healthy

future for our world.
2. Students will develop their planning skills.

Overview

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The purpose of this unit is to help students to use planning skills to makes
something happen.

Activity E.3.1
Making a Plan
Using the ideas generated in the class discussion of the student-generated
scenarios, students work in teams (can be international teams if the teacher
chooses) to design a detailed plan for avoiding or improving on a scenario that
they chose from among the group’s work. The teacher continuously prompts each
group with questions like, “How will you get people to change their behavior?”
and, “How will you get governments to adhere to environmental agreements?”
For example, steps may include working with international environmental
protection agencies to advocate for sanctions against corporate and
governmental polluters. The student product from this activity will be a detailed
work plan for how to achieve their desired results that includes action items,
roles and responsibilities, projected budgets, and more.

Activity E.3.2:
Scenario Planning, Part 2
After the students come up with a plan as a group, they write new scenarios
individually based on the new future that they hope to create. The groups then
share their visions and discuss how even with the same plan, their ideas of what
the future could look like differ (or are the same). They will share these reports
with students in other parts of the world.

Resources:

• Brown, L. 1988. “Analyzing the Demographic Trap” in State of the

World, 1987. eds. L. Brown and others. New York: W. W. Norton.
Pages 20–37 of the PDF.
• Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed. New York: Penguin Books. Chapters 1 and 2.
• United Nations Environment Programme (http://www.unep.org/)
• TED Talks:
○ Innovative water solution
(http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_harmon_how_the_market_can_keep_stre
○ Melting icebergs

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 (http://www.ted.com/talks/camille_seaman_haunting_photos_of_ice.htm
○ Being a weekday vegetarian
(http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html
○ Hans Rosling on population growth
(http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.h
○ Plastic pollution
(http://www.ted.com/talks/dianna_cohen_tough_truths_about_plastic_po
○ Saving the ocean
(http://www.ted.com/talks/greg_stone_saving_the_ocean_one_island_at

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 THE WORLD COURSE
HIGH SCHOOL SEMESTER COURSE
SOCIETY AND PUBLIC HEALTH COURSE

I n the society and public health course, students will begin with their
individual needs for personal health. They will then expand to the public
nature of health through an investigation of John Snow’s cholera map. They will
compare public health from 1900 and today. They will consider the advances
that have been made in public health as well as explore careers in public health.
Students will then expand their understanding of public health to include the
linkages between health, education, and economics through multiple
explorations. Students also read Kidder’s Mountains beyond Mountains, a
personal story about the field of public health. Students will use country-level
and special-topic study to develop an understanding of health advances and
challenges on a global scale. Students create, plan, and execute a public-service
campaign around one issue of society and health.

Overview of the Units

1) Personal Health
2) Public Health (What’s Public about Public Health?)
3) Literacy Link: Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains and
Context Studies
4) The Health and Wealth of Nations
5) An Experiential Learning Project17

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Unit SPH.1
Topic Personal Health
ICC: interpersonal (empathy) and ICC: intrapersonal
Themes
(ethics)
Region Not applicable
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about public health through an exploration of personal health,

about what one needs to be generally healthy, and in particular about
a single topic that relates to personal health.
2. Inspire in students a desire to maintain personal health for a high
quality of life and to show compassion for others who face health
challenges.
3. Evaluate one’s own personal health, the extent to which personal
health needs are met, and health resources.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand broadly their own personal health needs

(physical and emotional).
2. Students will compile and organize information on personal health
from a variety of sources.
3. Students will explain and describe key information regarding one
health topic of interest.
4. Students will identify and explore linkages across multiple
components of health.

Overview
In this unit, students will begin their exploration of health by starting with
personal, individual health. They will interview members of their family as
well as their personal physician regarding health issues. They will compile
research on one health topic of interest in a fact sheet to share with peers.
Students will also begin to explore some of the important linkages between

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different aspects of health that will be explored in greater depth in later units.

Activity SPH1.1
What Do You Need to Be Healthy?
Students investigate what they need as individuals to be healthy. Students begin
by writing a reflection in their journals about what they need to be physically
healthy and emotionally healthy. Students then interview their parents or
guardians to determine what those individuals believe they need to be healthy.
Students use their reflections to write a list of questions regarding their personal
health to ask their pediatrician or family physician. They then interview the
physician to gain more clinical knowledge of their personal needs.

Activity SPH1.2
Educating Others about Personal Health
Students should use this list and other information to create a one-page
information sheet that will educate others on one topic of interest that emerged
in their exploration of health. The topics that the students choose should vary
widely and should range from prenatal care to exercise, nutrition, vaccination,
medical screenings, dental health, physical health, emotional health, mental
health, and so on. However, the topics should relate to personal health rather
than to public health, which will be addressed later. Students should use the
library and online resources to find at least five sources of information to use to
develop their information sheet. The information should not be personal to the
student but rather an exploration of a topic in personal health that is of interest to
them (this is important because this information sheet will be shared). Students
should gather in groups of four or five to share their information sheets. They
should read the sheets and provide feedback to one another. Students should use
their drafts and the feedback to refine their sheets and to create a short
presentation for the class.

Activity SHP1.3
Health Mapping: How Healthy Are You?
There are a multitude of self-quizzes on the Internet that evaluate personal
health. Students should explore them, take two or three of them, and make notes
on the questions that are asked. Students then get into groups of four or five to
share the questions that are asked (not their responses) to generate a long list of
components of health. Students should also discuss what components of health

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are left out (usually vaccination and maternal/prenatal care and sometimes
mental health).

(Note that the students don’t report their own personal health. Rather, they report
the types of questions that are asked in the questionnaires and what questions are
left out, and then they move on to the linkages. Students should not report their
own health, particularly if they aren’t healthy and wish to keep that information
private. That said, this unit builds from personal health to public health, and the
students’ levels of health may come up. The teacher should be ready to handle
potentially sensitive situations.)

Students use mental-mapping software to brainstorm on the linkages between

multiple components of health, such as access to prenatal care, economic
resources, natural resources, vitamins, clean water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Students should report on the linkages they mapped, and when the students
present, others should add linkages mentioned by their fellow students to their
own work.

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Unit SPH.2
Topic Public Health (What’s Public about Public Health?)
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture, others’
identities and cultures, and empathy); ethics; work and mind
Themes habits: cultural exchange; geography; world history; global
risk: society and health; and investigative and analytical
skills
Region London
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to understand historical changes in perspectives on public

health as well as on various treatments and health issues, to
understand the impact of advances in public health on populations,
and to explore the cultural aspects of health issues.
2. Inspire in students compassion for public health issues as well as an
interest in the development of knowledge and perspectives on public
health over time.
3. Evaluate the role of information in advances in public health and
demonstrate an understanding of it in classroom presentations.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the changes in perspectives on public health

as well as the changes in understandings of health issues.
2. Students will evaluate the impact of advances in public health
understanding.
3. Students will draw connections concerning the availability of
information on public health advances.
4. Students will compile, evaluate, and present information on a
particular advancement in public health that is of interest to them.
5. Students will examine the cultural norms and expectations around
public health issues.

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Overview
In this unit, students will begin with a historical exploration of public health.
They will examine John Snow’s cholera map in order to make the connection
between information, access to information, and advances in public health. They
will explore historical and modern perspectives on public health issues as well
as the cultural aspects of public health issues.

Activity SPH2.1
What Is Public about Public Health?
Show students an image of John Snow’s Cholera map
(http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowmap1_1854_lge.htm), making sure that
no map keys are visible. Ask the students to guess the purposes of this map.
Students should note that there are bar graphs along the city’s streets. Once the
students realize that the map documents deaths, reveal that it documents cholera
deaths. Ask the students to make observations about the concentration of deaths
and the areas from which cholera deaths are absent. (The deaths are clustered
around a town pump and are absent from the area near the brewery.) Ask
students to guess how the map was used to advance the knowledge of the spread
of disease.

Students should independently review the activities on the following website,

which features interactive maps and images:
http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/learning_modules/geography/05.TU.01/?
section=2.

Potential Linked Science Activity

The following in-depth lesson plan could be used either in the World Course as
an experiential learning unit or in conjunction with the science department:
http://www.cdc.gov/excite/ScienceAmbassador/ambassador_pgm/lessonplans_epi.htm

Activity SPH2.2
Then and Now: Public Health in the 1900s and Today
The following website provides an interesting historical comparison between
public health in the 1900s and today. Advances in tools as well as thinking
become apparent. This is an excellent introduction to the history of public
health: http://www.lessonplanet.com/register/step-1?
keywords=Public+Health&media=lesson&title=Then+and+Now%3A+Public+Health+fr

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Activity SPH2.3
What Are Some of the Advances That Have Improved
Public Health?
Students independently research the following advances in public health and
then present them to the class. Even though they are just one component of public
health, infectious diseases are used here because knowledge about those
diseases has changed over the past one hundred years. Students should present
both the historical and modern understandings of the infectious disease and
explain how the two understandings have affected public health. Subtopics that
may emerge include international preparedness, immunization, sanitation,
hygiene, awareness raising, disease and war, screening, diagnostics, and
treatment.

Activity SPH2.4
What Are Some of the Cultural Components of Public
Health?
After their presentations, students should reflect, either as a whole class or in
small groups, on the elements of health that are or have become a part of the
relevant culture. Some ideas to think about include the cultural nature of
personal hygiene, personal space and distance, and food preparation.

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Unit SPH.3
Topic Mountains beyond Mountains
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture, others’
identities and cultures, and empathy); ethics; geography;
Themes
economic development; poverty; global risk: society and
health; and investigative and analytical skills
Region Haiti, Russia, and Peru
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to understand issues of public health in an in-depth way

through an analysis of literature and through connecting them with a
personal commitment to public health issues and to use the contexts
presented in Mountains beyond Mountains as case studies on the
complexities of health issues and how they vary across contexts.
2. Inspire in students a desire to promote public health issues and to
work to diminish the impact of poverty on health.
3. Evaluate public health policies and their impacts on the lives of
many different people.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will evaluate the personal story of a person committed to

poverty and public health issues.
2. Students will explore the connection between poverty and health.
3. Students will compile, organize, and present information on the
variety of health contexts in Mountains Beyond Mountains.
4. Students will evaluate and explore careers in public health.

Overview
In this unit, students will begin with literature and with an examination of Dr.
Farmer, a character in Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains beyond Mountains who
is committed to health and poverty (http://www.amazon.com/Mountains-
Beyond-Healing-World-Farmer/dp/0375506160#_). (Note that the book is 336

358
pages.) Students will then explore and present information regarding the
contexts presented in this book, which can be viewed as case studies on the
intersection between health, culture, economics, and policy. Students will then
explore careers in public health, primarily by connecting and talking with
individuals who have made their own careers in public health.

Activity SPH3.1
Mountains beyond Mountains
(Note this can be ongoing with the following two activities or read more quickly
as a stand-alone first activity in this unit.)

Students should read Kidder’s Mountains beyond Mountains. For lesson plans,
see the following:

○ http://www.webenglishteacher.com/kidder.html
○ http://www.bookrags.com/Mountains_Beyond_Mountains

The following are some questions for discussion, reflection, or essay writing:

1. What are the meanings of the metaphor of mountains beyond

mountains? What is the relationship between this metaphor and
health?
2. What relationship between poverty and health is presented in this
book? Do you agree or disagree with this position? Why?
3. What did you learn about the character of Dr. Farmer?
4. How did Farmer’s ideas about justice evolve over time?

Activity SPH3.2
Understanding the Contexts Presented in the Book
Students should prepare reports regarding the contexts of public health present
in the book. Students should work in small groups to prepare these reports. Each
group should investigate one of the following contexts for public health: Haiti,
prison populations in Russia, and slums in Lima, Peru. The presentations should
answer the following questions:

1. What were the health challenges present in these contexts around the
time that the book was written? What are some of the modern health

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 challenges?
2. How would you describe the historical background of these health
challenges?
3. What was the historical perspective regarding these challenges?
What is the modern perspective regarding these challenges?
4. What is the relationship between health and poverty in these
contexts?

Activity SPH3.3
Careers in Public Health
Using the following lesson plan as a starting point, students should explore
professions in the field of public health:
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/careers-in-
health.cfm. Next, each student should choose one career to explore more deeply.
The students will then hold a health-professions career day, and on that day, they
will present information on their professions to their classmates. The following
is important: To prepare, students should interview professionals in their field
as well as investigate the education requirements, job opportunities, and other
relevant information of the field. The personal connection to individuals
working in the field of public health is key to this activity.

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Unit SPH.4
Topic The Health and Wealth of Nations
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture, others’
identities and cultures, and empathy); ethics: commitment
Themes to equality and commitment to supporting human rights;
geography; global risk: society and health; and investigative
and analytic skills
Region Uganda and global
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to understand issues of public health, particularly the

connection between the health and wealth of nations, at the national
level; to understand, evaluate, and use indicators of public health; to
evaluate a public health issue through an in-depth case study of an
Ebola outbreak in Uganda; and to collect, evaluate, and present
information on a topic in public health.
2. Inspire in students a commitment to justice as it relates to public
health policies on a national level.
3. Evaluate the complexities of national health policies and their
inextricable ties with wealth through the use of public health
indicators and through presenting information on public health
challenges.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand and articulate the connection between

wealth and health at the national level.
2. Students will evaluate and apply the use of national public health
indicators.
3. Students will evaluate public health challenges on a national level.
4. Students will compile, organize, and present information on a public
health topic.

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Overview
In this unit, students will examine public health on a national level. First, they
will explore the connection between the health and wealth of nations. They will
evaluate and use a variety of health indicators and (time permitting) display
their own research on these indicators using StatPlanet software. Students will
examine public health issues on a national level as well as with a guided case
study of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Students will apply what they learn in
this unit to an exploration of a special topic in public health.

Activity SPH4.1
The Health and Wealth of Nations
Students use Gapminder’s software to describe the connection between the
economy and health of nations
(http://www.gapminder.org/world/#;example=75). Students define the
indicators that are used and evaluate their importance. Students should
investigate the variety of health indicators available in this software.

Activity SPH4.2
Worldwide Health Challenges
Students review the Sustainable Development Goal for good health and
wellbeing and use the World Health Organization’s website to individually
investigate the health challenges of different nations on different continents.
Note that each student should pick one country from a list of countries (four or
five from each of the continents) and that the teacher should making sure that all
of the countries are picked. Students then form groups according to their
continents and discuss the health challenges and the challenges that are shared.
As a whole class, they then compare the challenges around the world.

Examine specific indicators of SDG 3, good health and well-being:

http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/.

As a possible extension of this activity, students can use Stat Planet software to
display their findings using interactive maps
(http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/).

Activity SPH4.3

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Responses to Modern Outbreaks: The Case of Ebola in
Uganda
Students view the following video to learn more about the Center for Disease
Control’s response to disease outbreak:
http://www.cdc.gov/CDCTV/RespondOutbreaks/.

Students use this as a model to simulate the response to an outbreak within the
school.

As a possible extension of this activity, the World Course could link with the
science department at the school and use this in-depth lesson plan that simulates
using the scientific method to investigate a fictitious disease outbreak at the
school:
http://www.cdc.gov/excite/ScienceAmbassador/ambassador_pgm/lessonplans/Johns%20

The following PowerPoint supports the above lesson:

http://www.publichealthtools.com/documents-and-resources/doc_download/59-
understanding-epidemiology-steps-to-outbreak-investigation.

Activity SPH4.4
Special Topics in Society and Health
Students expand their understanding of society and health through group
investigations into the following special topics: aging populations, population
increases (developing nations) and declines (developed nations), poverty and
hunger, urbanization, urban planning and sanitation, migration, and equity and
resource scarcity.

Teacher Resources

• Lesson Planet lessons on public health

(http://www.lessonplanet.com/lesson-plans/public-health)

Resources

• Global Health Council (http://www.globalhealth.org/)

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• World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/en/)
• Center for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/)

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Unit SPH.5
Topic Awareness-Raising Campaign Project
ICC: interpersonal (one’s own identity and culture, others’
identities and cultures, and empathy); ethics: commitment
Themes to equality and commitment to supporting human rights;
global risk: society and health; and investigative and
analytical skills
Region Not applicable
Length Three weeks

(Note that three weeks is an estimate of how long the in-class portion of this
assignment should take. However, the teacher should begin this unit earlier in
the semester so that students can work on their own issue in public health while
learning about it in class. Some components of the project can be assigned as
homework as early as the beginning of the semester. However, the semester
should end with the completion of this unit.)

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to understand the components of an awareness-raising

campaign and to apply this understanding to the development of a
campaign project.
2. Inspire in students a desire to advocate for awareness around public
health issues.
3. Evaluate the complexities of public health issues through the
development and execution of an awareness-raising campaign on
public health.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the components of an awareness-raising

campaign and apply that understanding to the development of a
campaign project.
2. Students will evaluate awareness-raising campaigns for effectiveness
and apply that understanding to campaign projects.
3. Students will reflect on personal experiences with raising awareness

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 around a public health issue.

Overview
In this unit, the students will act on their knowledge of a public health issue and
create an awareness-raising campaign on public health. The goals of this project
are for the students to see themselves as actors and advocates for equity and
fairness in public health issues and to engage in a project that allows them to
contribute to public health in a meaningful way. In this project, students should
grapple with the complexities of their chosen issue and reflect on their
challenges and successes both along the way and after the project’s completion.

Activity SPH5.1
An Experiential Learning Project
Students create an experiential learning project in which they tackle a global
health problem. They should focus on projects that move the needle on the way
people behave, on public policy around public health, or on community access
to health care and information. Students should be allowed to choose a topic of
interest and should form groups in the class around that topic. For example, they
could choose increased resistance to medical treatment and antibiotics, food and
water contamination, risk behaviors, sedentary lifestyles, access to vaccination
or prevention, substance abuse, mental health, access to preventative care or
acute care, or access to affordable healthy food. By this point, students are
equipped to explore not only the issue itself but also the linkages between the
issue and economics, culture, history, access to resources, and equity.

For this campaign, students should

1. create an educational/PSA video;

2. create a two-page “fact sheet” with information, resources, and a
references list; and
3. plan, execute, and reflect on a service activity related to the topic.

17 Please see the note in the detailed description of this unit for suggestions regarding the
timing of this project.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
HIGH SCHOOL SEMESTER COURSE
GLOBAL CONFLICTS AND RESOLUTIONS

Overview of the Semester

1. Introduce frameworks for thinking about conflicts, including about
how conflicts build and how they may be resolved, and introduce
students to other global conflicts and their causes.
A. Anatomy of a Conflict
B. Choices in International Conflict, with a Focus on Security
Issues in Asia (optional)
C. Just-War Theory and World War II
D. An Agenda for Peace
E. Individuals, Civil Society, and Responses to Conflict
2. Case Study of Israel and Palestine: Conflicts and Resolutions in the
Middle East
3. Recovering from Conflict: Transitional Justice (optional)

Ongoing Guided Reading Groups

E ither as a whole class or in groups of four or five students, the students
will read books together and meet regularly to discuss (with guiding
questions from the teacher) the sections they have read. One of the objectives of
these reading groups is to supplement the content of the course with human-
interest stories on how conflict impacts people and how people, including
children, react to conflict. The students will be regularly invited to make
connections between what they are learning from these books and the
discussions they are having about the ongoing content of the course.

If the students do form groups, they might change groups every three to six
weeks, which would allow them to interact with as many peers as possible in
small groups and would facilitate the opportunity to confront and resolve the
differences in opinion likely to emerge (and thereby to practice one of the
themes of the semester, conflict resolution).

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The teacher can choose books that match the particular region being studied at
the moment or that will broaden the scope of the students’ knowledge of
different parts of the world, and the books should continue to draw out the
common themes of conflicts and resolutions. The following are a few
recommendations but others, of course, can be added:

1) Leon Uris’s Exodus (Israel/Palestine)

2) Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Vietnam)
3) Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (Vietnam)
4) Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Sierra
Leone)
5) Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (Palestine/Israel)
Starred Review. In this richly detailed, beautiful and resonant
novel examining the Palestinian and Jewish conflicts from the
mid-20th century to 2002, (originally published as The Scar of
David in 2006, and now republished after a new edit),
Abulhawa gives the terrible conflict a human face. The tale
opens with Amal staring down the barrel of a soldier’s gun—
and moves backward to present the history that preceded that
moment. In 1941 Palestine, Amal’s grandparents are living on
an olive farm in the village of Ein Hod. Their oldest son,
Hasan, is best friends with a refugee Jewish boy, Ari Perlstein
as WWII rages elsewhere. But in May 1948, the Jewish state of
Israel is proclaimed, and Ein Hod, founded in 1189 C.E., was
cleared of its Palestinian children…and the residents moved to
Jenin refugee camp, where Amal is born. Through her eyes we
experience the indignities and sufferings of the Palestinian
refugees and also friendship and love. Abulhawa makes a great
effort to empathize with all sides and tells an affecting and
important story that succeeds as both literature and social
commentary. (Feb.)
6) Ibtisam Barakat’s Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood
Starred Review. This moving memoir of a Palestinian woman’s
childhood experiences during the Six-Day War and its
aftermath is presented in beautifully crafted vignettes. Barakat,
now living and working in the United States, frames the story
of her life between 1967 and 1970 with a pair of letters from
herself as a high school student in 1981. Detained by soldiers
during an ordinary bus trip, she was prompted to try to recall
her shattered childhood and share her experiences with others
around the world. She begins with a description of her three-
year-old self, temporarily separated from her family in their

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 first frantic flight from their Ramallah home as the war began.
The author’s love for the countryside and her culture shines
through her bittersweet recollections. Careful choice of
episodes and details brings to life a Palestinian world that may
be unfamiliar to American readers, but which they will come to
know and appreciate. Readers will be charmed by the writer-
to-be as she falls in love with chalk, the Arabic alphabet, and
the first-grade teacher who recognizes her abilities.

Culminating Activity
The culminating project will be a series of briefing notes prepared by groups of
students on various conflicts and will lead to daylong simulations of attempts to
bring resolution to the conflicts. The briefing notes will include

1. The history of the conflict, including major incidences of clashes and

the various attempts to resolve the conflict;
2. A list of stakeholders and their grievances and demands; and
3. The economic, social, cultural, personal, and other consequences of
the conflict and an explanation of whom it affects.

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Unit GCR.1
Topic Anatomy of a Conflict
ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills); ICC:
Theme interpersonal (empathy); work and mind habits: innovation
and creativity; politics; and global risk: conflict
Region Various
Length One week

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn that conflicts are composed of different elements and

components, that conflicts can have positive as well as negative
outcomes, and that these outcomes can determine whether a conflict
is constructive or destructive.
2. Inspire students to understand that people can respond to conflicts in
different ways and that those responses can lead to the resolution or
escalation of some components of the conflict, to the creation of new
conflicts, or to no change in the original conflict
3. Act by translating or applying the framework to current conflicts as
they are described in a newspaper.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will analyze examples of conflicts and recognize the ways in

which they are similar and different.
2. Students will recognize that different people can see the same
situation differently.
3. Students will recognize that conflict is a common characteristic of
human experience.
4. Students will develop definitions of “conflict.”

Overview
Based on material from Stanford’s Program on Intercultural and Cross-Cultural
Education and the International Security and Arms Control Project this unit
introduces international conflict.,

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Activity GCR.1.1

1. Students talk about why they are interested in taking this class as an
elective, and they are asked to write about a conflict that they have
experienced or seen, noting the people involved, the causes and
consequences of the conflict, and how it affected them and others.
This begins a discussion about the nature and the impact of conflict.
2. Students then view clips from films and television shows of different
scenes of conflict illustrating the different types of conflict; the clips
listed below are based in the United States, but a quick search would
yield clips from shows and movies from other countries that follow
the same theme:
i. A clip from the show Glee on how one character faces two
different goals, beliefs, or actions that are in conflict with one
another or a clip from The King’s Speech or Hamlet
(intrapersonal)
ii. A clip from The Office on conflict between individuals
(interpersonal)
iii. A clip from Modern Family on a conflict within a group such
as a family (intragroup)
iv. A clip from Lost on a conflict between two different groups or
a film clip that introduces the idea of ethnic identity separating
two groups as a lead-in to later discussions about the
Palestinian–Israeli conflict and others (intergroup)
v. A clip from any variety of superhero movies to illustrate a
conflict between two or more nations or a clip from Thirteen
Days (international)
vi. A clip from any variety of superhero movies or documentaries
about the environment or other issues (The Cove?) to illustrate
issues, actions, or values that have conflicting parties that do
not belong to discrete nations or groups (global)
3. In discussing the above clips, students talk about how they know that
there is a conflict and about the conflict’s causes; impacts, including
any positive impacts (emphasizing the idea that not all conflicts are
negative and that conflicts should not be avoided but instead viewed
as part of everyday life); and personal connections.
4. The clips could be supplemented by pictures (an idea from SPICE)
of, for example, car accidents, conflicts in sports, wounds of war,
fights between siblings, or protests to visually engage the students.
The students could be asked to make up their own miniscene/skit
with dialogue to explain the causes and the consequences of one of
the conflicts shown in the pictures. The students could choose

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 whether to resolve the conflict in their skits.
5. For homework, students are asked to bring to class more examples of
conflicts that would fit into the above categories.
6. An alternative or supplemental activity would be to conduct the
following simulation produced by the University of Colorado’s
Conflict Management Initiatives and the Conflict Research
Consortium:
http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/civil_rights/simulations/racial_conflict/

Activity GCR.1.2
Conflict Analysis

1. The teacher chooses a conflict based on a current event and brings in

a copy of a newspaper article that gives an account of the conflict
(such as an article about the debt-ceiling crisis, an article about the
conflict in Sudan, an op-ed on a controversial issue, etc.). The
students explore the five elements of conflict defined in the SPICE
curriculum: (1) participants (and their feelings and reactions); (2)
goals; (3) interruption (visible evidence or other signals that there is
a conflict); (4) management/resolution methods; and (5) results. The
students then analyze the event to identify the five elements.
2. The students apply the framework to the other examples of conflicts
discussed in the previous day’s class.
3. Students are then asked to apply this framework to a conflict they’ve
experienced personally and to discuss it. (SPICE’s example involves
a student who is trying to study for an exam as a younger sibling
plays the TV loudly.) The teacher could continually complicate the
situation. Using SPICE’s example, the teacher could introduce the
fact that there is a history of conflict between the siblings involving
the volume of the TV, that one of them had a bad day prior to the
interaction, that the TV watching is actually for a school assignment,
and so on.
4. Throughout the unit, students are encouraged to raise unanswered and
unanswerable questions about the conflict (such as questions about
unpredicted events, whether goals are always clear, whether
participants will even recognize that there is a conflict, the history
behind the conflict, etc.) and are encouraged to avoid simplifying
complex situations.

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Activity GCR1.3
Conflict Resolution, Management, and Results

1. Students begin to learn the difference between the broad categories of

conflict management and resolution by brainstorming a list of
resolution methods that they already know. (The list from SPICE
curriculum includes negotiation; voting; force/violence; compromise;
manipulation; litigation; pressure such as boycotting, protesting, and
striking; denying power; threats and intimidation, competition, and
withdrawal.) The lists should also include who might use those
methods (e.g., governments, individuals, or other groups). Students
should also examine in which situations they are relevant and in
which situations they aren’t relevant. (Use the examples of conflicts
that students brought to class as part of the previous night’s
homework.)
2. Students discuss whether there are conflicts that can neither be
managed nor resolved and why this might be so.
3. Cover the following points from the SPICE curriculum:
a. Reactive versus proactive methods of conflict resolution
b. Unilateral versus bilateral or multilateral ways to manage or
resolve a conflict
c. Violent versus nonviolent methods
d. Methods that can be used simultaneously or in stages
e. Methods that encourage common ground, that encourage social
change, that operate through institutions, and so on
f. Other categories (invite students to think of them)
4. Excerpts from the following books would be good supplements to the
activity and would encourage the students to talk about the
differences between win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose outcomes:
a. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In, by
Fisher and Ury
b. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
by Stone, Patton, and Heen
5. Ask students to use some of the conflicts that they’ve been working on
or acting out or some of the conflicts that they brought in as examples
on previous days to create several skits that show how the conflicts
can be resolved (or not) using the various possible resolution
methods discussed above. In all of the following cases, students
should be encouraged to talk about the feelings involved for the
stakeholders (e.g., the desire for a quick resolution, the fear of
escalation, anxiety about uncertainty, hunger for power, etc.) as well
as about the values (e.g., national pride, nonviolence, the desire to

373
 uphold tradition, etc.) that could influence and determine their
choices and decisions.
a. An additional whole-class activity would be for the class to
read the following scenario from Thucydides’s “The Melian
Dialogue” and then role-play as the Athenians and the Melians
to try to negotiate a different ending to the conflict (idea
borrowed from IAF training):
http://www.wellesley.edu/ClassicalStudies/CLCV102/Thucydides-
-MelianDialogue.html. Half of the students would take part in
the role-play activity, and the other half would watch and
reflect on it. Then the halves would switch roles, with the
second group attempting another resolution and the first group
watching and then discussing their observations. Or the class
could be divided into two Melian groups and two Athenian
groups and then paired up and asked to act out their positions
and negotiations, one after another. The whole class would then
debrief the scene together, discussing the pros and cons (and
similarities and differences) of the two scenes that developed.
b. Or, using SPICE curriculum background notes
(http://spice.stanford.edu/catalog/10027/), students examine
the following conflict between

Russia and Japan, with a specific focus on the “Northern

Territories” dispute. In this lesson, students will be given
the historical background on the “Northern Territories”
and on how the islands that make up the “Northern
Territories” came to be a barrier to Russo-Japanese
relations. Students will be asked to characterize four
major perspectives on the issue: Japanese, Russian, US,
and Ainu (the indigenous people). They then apply their
knowledge of the issue in a simulated international
tribunal.

The students then apply to the conflict the frameworks they’ve

learned thus far (identifying the elements) and generate
possible resolutions or management techniques.

Resource

• http://spice.stanford.edu/catalog/10096/

374
• http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/catalog
• http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/4thR-sm94/conflict-sm94.htm

375
Unit GCR.2 (Optional)
Topic Choices in International Conflict: Security Issues in Asia
ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills); ICC:
interpersonal (empathy); work and mind habits: innovation
Theme
and creativity; culture: world history; politics; and global
risk: conflict
Region Asia
Length Two weeks

(Note that www.cfr.org provides academic modules on issues of conflict in

other parts of the world that can be used should the teacher choose to focus on
other regions besides Asia.)

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about various cases of conflict in Asia and the various types
of international conflict resolution and management.
2. Inspire students to ask why and when one method is chosen by a
conflict’s participants over other methods.
3. Act by working effectively in small and large groups and managing
conflicts.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will gain experience in identifying, analyzing, and

understanding conflicts.
2. Students will analyze the positive and negative results of particular
conflict-resolution and conflict-management methods.
3. Students will learn to interpret and use data to reach conclusions
about complex conflicts.
4. Students will recognize that it is necessary to understand the
geographic and historical contexts of a conflict in order to
understand the current situation.
5. Students will learn skills to enhance awareness and communication.

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Overview
Based in part on a SPICE curriculum publication, this unit examines various
case studies of international conflict with a focus on security issues in Asia,
including the following: (1) US military bases in Okinawa (2) the Korean
Peninsula (3) Cambodia, and (4) the effects of long-term conflict

Activity GCR.2.1
“This activity consists of four parts. The focus of parts 1–3 is to provide
students with a conceptual framework for dealing with international security
issues. Students develop a definition of security and conflict and learn several
conflict management and conflict resolution methods. Students also discover
how international conflict affects their personal lives and why the maintenance
of international security is important.”

Activity GCR.2.2
“This activity examines US military bases in Okinawa. Students examine
conflicts over the US military bases in Okinawa from varying perspectives.
Students incorporate these perspectives into role plays for presentations in front
of the class. Following the role plays, the class considers options for resolving
or managing the conflicts surrounding the US military bases in Okinawa.”

Activity GCR.2.3
“This activity introduces students to security issues related to the Korean
Peninsula. Students representing the countries of China, South Korea, North
Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States engage in the development of
newspapers that present perspectives from these countries.”

Activity GCR.2.4
This activity examines Cambodia and the problem of resolving violent conflicts
with long histories. Students learn about multilateral mediation and aid as a
means of influencing domestic security and examine the United Nations’
multidimensional peacekeeping mission to Cambodia in 1992.

Resource

377
• http://spice.stanford.edu/catalog/10027/

378
Unit GCR.3
Topic Just-War Theory and World War II
ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills); ICC:
interpersonal (empathy); work and mind habits: innovation
Theme
and creativity; culture: world history and philosophical
traditions; politics; and global risk: conflict
Region Japan and the United States
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the principles of just-war theory.

2. Inspire students to understand the complexities of making ethical
evaluations and of determining whether an act of war or war itself is
“just.”
3. Act by participating in a mock trial of the United States’ bombing of
Hiroshima to determine whether the act was just.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will understand the basis of international agreements, such

as the Geneva Conventions, that regulate the conduct of nations in
wartime.
2. Students will learn the six principles of a just war (“jus ad bellum”).

Overview
Students focus on World War II and discuss the components of just-war theory
and its application to conflicts.

Activity GCR.3.1
In this lesson students will read Roosevelt’s Joint Address to Congress Leading
to a Declaration of War Against Japan (the “day that will live in infamy”
speech) in order to assess whether Roosevelt spelled out the case for a just war

379
(http://www.pbs.org/thewar/downloads/just_war.pdf).

Optional Activity
Use the following lesson plan on just wars, which includes a role-playing
activity concerning the decision to go into the Korean War and also an
evaluation of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War:
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2002/3/02.03.01.x.html.

Activity GCR.3.2
Students are divided into various roles and take part in a mock trial of the
United States’ bombing of Hiroshima. Applying discussions and concepts
introduced in the unit, they debate whether the bombing of Hiroshima to end
World War II was justified.

Possible roles include attorneys for both the defense and the prosecution, a
judge, a bailiff, and witnesses.

Optional Activity GCR.3.3

Students take a more contemporary speech made by a president on an act of war
(e.g., President Bush’s speech after September 11 or President Obama’s speech
on escalating the troop presence in Afghanistan) and compare it to Roosevelt’s
speech.

They also evaluate a more contemporary war on the basis of just-war theory and
discuss/debate the terms by which such decisions are made.

Resource

• http://www.pbs.org/thewar/downloads/just_war.pdf

380
Unit GCR.4
An Agenda for Peace: The Role of the United Nations and
Topic
the Human Rights Movement
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
trust in institutions, breakdown in trust in institutions,
common values, the importance of global compacts, and
Theme
commitment to supporting human rights; work and mind
habits: innovation and creativity; culture: world history;
politics; and global risk: conflict
Region Various
Length One week

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the role of an international organization such as the United

Nations in resolving and/or managing conflicts.
2. Inspire students to determine whether and how international
organizations can be effective in conflict resolution.
3. Act by participating in a mock summit

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will gain a better understanding of the concepts of conflict

and peace.
2. Students will explore the early history of the United Nations.
3. Students will understand key events and actors in the human rights
movement.

Overview
Students analyze the concepts of peace and conflict through the activities of the
United Nations. They study how the international organization has attempted to
fulfill its goals of maintaining and securing peace.

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Activity GCR.4.1

1. Students are asked to apply the UDHR to some of the conflicts

introduced in previous units. They should answer the following
questions: Which rights are violated in these situations? How could
one ensure that human rights are upheld in these kinds of situations?
Who, if anyone, is responsible for upholding these rights?
2. Students are reminded (if they are students who have completed the
kindergarten through eighth grade curricula) of the conditions in
which the UN was founded to set the historical context for the unit.
3. Students are reminded of the history of the human rights movement.
4. Excerpts from books such as Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights: A
History would be a good supplement to this unit.

Activity GCR.4.2
Students will define “conflict” and “peace” as a way to frame this unit.

Activity GCR.4.3
Students study the three focus areas of the UN—peacekeeping, development and
relief, and the environment—within the framework of peace and conflict.

Activity GCR.4.4
Using primary sources from the SPICE curriculum, students analyze the impact
of UN peacekeeping missions. They can debate the effectiveness of the UN after
reading a variety of articles and op-eds on the UN’s role in situations of
conflict. Consider having them read the following articles and documents:

○ http://www.cfr.org/un/effectiveness-un-security-council/p11520
○ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6138745
○ The US General Accounting Office’s 1997 account of “UN
Peacekeeping: Issues Related to Effectiveness, Cost, and Reform”
(http://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97139.htm)

They can then reenact the UN Charter Conference in San Francisco and, based
on what they discussed during their debate on the effectiveness of the UN,
propose amendments and other changes.

382
Resources

• http://spice.stanford.edu/catalog/10009/
• http://www.amnesty.org/en/armed-conflict
• http://www.hrw.org/category/topic/international-justice
• http://www.un.org/en/rights/

383
Unit GCR.5
Topic Individuals, Civil Society, and Responses to Conflict
ICC: interpersonal (empathy and etiquette); work and mind
habits: innovation and creativity; culture: world history;
Theme
politics; global risk: conflict; and ethics: commitment to
human rights
Region Various
Length Two weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how various individuals and civil societies have responded to

conflicts.
2. Inspire students to find individuals with whom and organizations
with which they feel an affinity in terms of issues and methods of
conflict resolution.
3. Act by writing letters (via e-mail) to some of the various individuals
and/or organizations discussed in this unit.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will review and learn new research skills.

2. Students will review and continue to hone their skills concerning
group work.
3. Students will review and grow their presentation skills.

Overview
Students will study organizations working toward peace and conflict resolution
in groups and will report on them to the rest of the class. They will also
individually study the biography of a peacemaker, contact him or her (or his or
her living relatives), and then report back to the class.

Activity GCR.5.1

384
In groups, students will study the following organizations and report back to the
class, identifying the following: the history of the organization, its goals, its
effectiveness (examples and assessment), the opportunities and challenges that
the organization faces, its budget and source of income, its major donors, its list
of clients, and other information. Students will be encouraged to contact the
organization directly for additional information and possibly to arrange for
interviews (using technology) with representatives from the organizations.

Questions for the representatives of the organizations can include the following:

1. In your opinion, what are the differences between peace building,

peacekeeping, and peacemaking, and how do you see yourself
working in those areas?
2. Do you have a framework for understanding how conflicts build and
are managed and resolved? If so, can you share it with the class?
3. What are concrete ways for high school students to get involved in
this issue?
4. How did you personally come to care about and work on this issue?
5. What are the skills that one needs in order to be effective in this area?
6. Have you also worked in other organizations on this issue? If so,
what were they? How would you compare them (e.g., governmental
versus nongovernmental or international organizations, for
example)?

The following is a list of some possible organizations (there are many):

1. Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

2. (http://www.gppac.net/)
3. Crisis Management Initiative: Every Peace Matters, which was
founded by a Nobel Prize winner (http://www.cmi.fi/)
4. Citizens for Global Action
(http://globalsolutions.org/blog/2011/02/diplomacy-action-us-
unesco-civil-society)
5. “Learning to Give” lesson plan with a list of organizations working
on global issues
(http://learningtogive.org/lessons/unit68/lesson1.html)

Also, speakers who work on these issues in various relevant organizations in

New York can be invited into the classroom.

385
Activity GCR.5.2
Individually, students will research one winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (see
the suggested priority list).

They will give a presentation on the following information about the Nobel
Peace Prize winner:

1. His or her major accomplishments

2. The country and context for his or her work
3. Childhood (where he or she grew up, his or her family and
background, etc.)
4. Major factors that motivate him or her to do what he or she does (role
models, faith, values, experiences, dreams, etc.)
5. Major personal, political, and other challenges and how he or she
overcame them
6. Interesting factoids

Depending on the teacher and students, the presentation can take many forms—it
doesn’t need to just be a short speech. Consider the following examples:

1. Four or five students can form a moderated panel, pose as the

winners, and answer questions.
2. Students can hold interviews in the style of a talk show.
3. Students can hold mock award show where the accomplishments are
read aloud and the “winners” give a short speech.
4. Students can throw a “cocktail party” for peacemaking celebrities
where they come as the people they researched and are tasked with a
list of questions that they then must answer about three or four other
people they interact with at the “party.”
5. Students can be asked to use as many visuals as they can (e.g., a
series of pictures from websites, magazines, or books that illustrate
the main points of their presentation) to “narrate” the life of their
subject.
6. Students can work individually or in groups to produce video
“biopics” of their people.
7. If biographical films of the people they studied are available,
students can be encouraged to weave them into their presentations.

The following is a suggested priority list of Nobel Peace Prize winners:

386
 1. Liu Xiaobo (2010)
2. Muhammad Yunus (2006)
3. Wangari Muta Maathai (2004)
4. Shirin Ebadi (2003)
5. Jimmy Carter (2002)
6. Kim Dae-Jung (2000)
7. Médecins Sans Frontières (1999)
8. International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Jody Williams
(1997)
9. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin (1994)
10. Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk (1993)
11. Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1992)
12. 11)Aung San Suu Kyi (1991)
13. The fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (1989)
14. Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1984)
15. Lech Walesa (1983)
16. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) (1981)
17. Amnesty International (1977)

Study of Nobel Peace Prize winners’ biographies

Resources

• http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/
• http://www.nobelpeacelaureates.org/teach_peace.html
• http://www.amazon.com/Peacemakers-Winners-Nobel-Oxford-
Profiles/dp/0195103165

387
Unit GCR.6
Topic Conflicts and Resolutions in The Middle East
ICC: interpersonal (diverse cultural perspectives and
empathy); ICC: intrapersonal (conflict-resolution skills);
ethics: religious diversity; work and mind habits: innovation
Theme
and creativity and variation within cultural groups; culture:
world history and philosophical traditions; politics; and
global risk: conflict
Region The Middle East
Length Eight weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn a broad overview of the historical factors that led to the

situations of conflict in the Middle East.
2. Learn how conflict affects people, including children.
3. Determine and rank the factors that contribute to the current schism
between the two Muslims groups in Iraq.
4. Learn that there is diversity among groups of people regardless of
whether those groups are defined by geography, religion, or other
categories.

Learn historical, cultural, geographic, and other facts about the Middle East

Inspire students to think of ways to resolve or manage conflicts.

Act by participating in a mock summit on various regional conflicts around the

world.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn diverse perspectives on the same conflict.

2. Students will be able to list concerns that the Sunnis and Shi as will
have to address before they heal their rift.

388
Overview
Students first learn “how the Middle East got that way” by viewing and
discussing a documentary and reading and discussing an article. They learn
about Muslim diversity as well as diversity within the state of Israel and study
the region through geography, demography, and the importance of water as a
resource. They delve into the historical background of the Israel–Palestine
conflict and examine how the conflict affects families and individuals. They
review various responses to the conflict and then participate in a mock summit
for conflicts in various parts of the world.

Activity GCR.6.1
How the Middle East Got That Way

Students watch the film Promises and discuss the questions and issues that are
raised in the film (http://www.pbs.org/pov/promises/).

The film’s trailer can be found on the following page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySJaH7OXzOA.

The following is the website of the film:

http://www.promisesproject.org/film.html.

The following is a summary of the film from its website:

PROMISES follows the journey of one of the filmmakers, Israeli-

American B. Z. Goldberg. B. Z. travels to a Palestinian refugee camp
and to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and to the more
familiar neighborhoods of Jerusalem where he meets seven
Palestinian and Israeli children.

Though the children live only 20 minutes apart, they exist in

completely separate worlds; the physical, historical and emotional
obstacles between them run deep.

PROMISES explores the nature of these boundaries and tells the

story of a few children who dared to cross the lines to meet their
neighbors. Rather than focusing on political events, the seven
children featured in PROMISES offer a refreshing, human and

389
 sometimes humorous portrait of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

PROMISES, a film by Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and co-

director and editor Carlos Bolado, was shot between 1995–2000.

Running time, 106 minutes.

Arabic, Hebrew and English dialogue with English subtitles.

The Children

The 7 children featured in PROMISES were filmed over 4 years

when they were 9-12 years old:

Yarko & Daniel. Secular Israeli twin boys living in Jerusalem.

Faraj. A Palestinian refugee boy living in the Deheishe Refugee

Camp in the West Bank.

Sanabel. A Palestinian refugee girl in the Deheishe Refugee Camp in

the West Bank.

Shlomo. An ultra-orthodox Jewish boy in the Jewish Quarter of the

Old City of Jerusalem.

Mahmoud. A Palestinian boy living in East Jerusalem.

Moishe & sister Raheli live in the Beit El Settlement in the West
Bank.

Students will read a short article as an introduction to an overview of the

history of the Middle East after World War II.

They will then make a time line of the key events and raise questions about what
they read in the article. In groups, they will investigate the answers to these
questions using the Internet and other sources.

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Activity GCR.6.2
Muslim Diversity
Refer to the following lesson plan, which introduces the Sunnis–Shi'as conflict:
http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/sunni-shiite-
conflict.

Using a lesson plan from the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions
program, students will learn about broader Muslim Diversity.

Activity GCR.6.3
Israel: Diversity and Identity
Present the various cultural, religious, and ethnic identities of the population of
Israel, including Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, Israeli Arabs, and Druze. Discuss the
history of Zionism, the creation of Israel, and the ongoing political struggle
between religious and secular Jews.

Activity GCR.6.4
Understanding the Middle East through Geography and
Demography
Use the following resources:

○ http://ncmideast.org/outreach/teaching/
○ http://teachmideast.org/teaching_tools/digital-resources-for-
teachers/

Activity GCR.6.5
Water in the Middle East
National Geographic produced this lesson plan on water and oil in the Middle
East:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/01/g68/iraqoil.html.

Resource

391
 • http://www.al-bab.com/arab/env/water.htm

Activity GCR.6.6
Portraits from the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Look at the conflict through the eyes of two families who experienced personal
tragedy and loss: http://www.cfr.org/israel/crisis-guide-israeli-palestinian-
conflict/p13850.

Culminating Activity (One Week for a Series of Four

Simulations)

1. The culminating project will be a series of briefing notes prepared by

groups of students on various conflicts, which will then lead to
daylong simulations of attempts to bring resolution to the conflicts.
Students will be encouraged to think about governmental and
nongovernmental methods to manage and/or resolve the conflicts.
2. The briefing notes will include the following:
a. An analysis of the conflict using the frameworks introduced
earlier in the semester, including a history of the conflict, the
major incidences of clashes, and the various attempts to
resolve the conflict
b. A list of stakeholders and their grievances and demands
c. The economic, social, cultural, personal, and other
consequences of the conflict and whom they affect
3. Consider the following four possible topics for simulations:
a. Libya
b. Israel/Palestine
c. North Korea
d. Sudan
4. The fifth day of the week can be devoted to a discussion about the
opportunities for personal action, such as the following:
http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/units/darfur-now.

Optional
Facing History and Ourselves also has units and a framework on transitional
justice (reconstruction, repair, and reconciliation) and South Africa, Rwanda,
and Northern Ireland that may be relevant to this semester.

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Other Resources

• American Friends Service Committee (http://afsc.org/resource/faces-

hope-learn-about-palestinian-israeli-conflict)
• Joseph Nye’s book
(http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/11896747/used/Understanding%
• More information on international conflicts
(http://www.lessonplanet.com/search?
keywords=international+conflicts&media=lesson)
• Envision’s resources for teachers on globalization
(http://www.globalenvision.org/teachers)
• Optional reading
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle)

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 THE WORLD COURSE
HIGH SCHOOL SEMESTER COURSE
DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS: GROWTH AND
DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA

I n this semester-long course, students learn about global economic

dependencies through international trade, investment, and exchange rates.
Students question their role in growth and development and seek to find new
holistic approaches to development. Students also address conundrums about
whether human development and democracy are precedents to growth or follow
growth later. Using personal stories, core economic concepts, and data sources,
the unit aims to provide students with an opportunity to connect the larger with
the personal. Each unit has a data-based activity and a culminating project-
based activity. This semester-long unit is derived from introduction to
development economics courses at the college level and draws extensively from
the advanced-placement economics curriculum. The unit does not aim to
supplant the AP economics curriculum but rather to serve as a primer that will
pique students’ interest in learning more about some of the more challenging
economic concepts that the AP economics curriculum addresses.

The unit is divided into three parts, each of which lasts six weeks:

1. International Trade
2. Exchange Rates, FDI, and the Argentinian Crisis
3. Going beyond Economic Growth and the Role of Institutions in
Growth

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Unit DE. 1
Topic International Trade
ICC: interpersonal (empathy and working in intercultural
teams); ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs);
Themes ethics: trust in institutions, breakdown of trust in institutions,
and the importance of global compacts; economic development;
and poverty
Region World Latin America
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about international trade and the concepts of free trade and
fair trade.
2. Inspire students to learn about the workings of international trade and
about how it can be a powerful and efficient tool that can build
bridges and create inequalities simultaneously.
3. Act as informed agents who can defend their stance when they hear
misconceptions about trade (e.g., trade results in unemployment).

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will draw a personal connection between poverty at the

global/regional level and that at the individual level.
2. Students will learn about different indexes of poverty and inequality
(e.g., the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve).
3. Students will use statistics and data sets on international trade to
substantiate and confirm their own intuitive hypotheses.
4. Students will examine protectionist trade policies in Latin America
and the use of free trade agreements.
5. Students will analyze the winners and losers in the globalization
debate through statistics, personal stories, and core economics–
based concepts.

Overview

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The unit begins with an introduction to the concepts of sustained, inclusive, and
sustainable growth; poverty; and inequality in Latin America, and students read
various current articles and reports about these topics. The unit focuses on
international trade, why nations trade, the concepts of comparative and absolute
advantage, and whether trade is indeed an important ingredient of growth for
countries in the region.

Activity DE.1.1
Sustainable Growth
Study SDG 8, sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth; full and
productive employment; and decent work for all:
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/.

Activity DE.1.2
Poverty and Inequality
Students begin by watching snippets of the documentary The End of Poverty
(http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/end-of-poverty/).

After viewing the film, the students discuss what they found alarming in the film
and some of the common characteristics of poverty in the different parts of the
world that the film focuses on. Students specifically discuss the differences in
poverty in the different countries in Latin America shown in the documentary.

The teacher then introduces the concept of poverty to the students, and they
discuss the following questions:

1. How is “poverty” defined? How is it measured?

2. What are the one- and two-dollar-a-day benchmarks for poverty?
3. What does “absolute poverty” mean?

Using portions of the following lesson plan from the Council for Economic
Education, students learn about Lorenz curves and about how Gini coefficients
are calculated: http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?
lid=885&type=educator.

Advanced students and the teacher may read the following for background
information:

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http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,co

Students then collect data on poverty rates and inequality in Latin America, and,
based on their analyses, they write an op-ed on the decline of poverty and
inequality in the region. Students may choose to pick a country or a group of
countries within the region. In particular, students should focus on the
differences in the averages of the trends.

Alternatively, time permitting, students may also examine some of the

demographic household surveys (DHS) used in Latin American countries to
examine how poverty is measured using various different indicators.

Resource

• http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLACREGTOPPOVANA/Resources/840
1291127079993/Inequality_Reduction.pdf

Activity DE.1.3
Latin America’s New Promise
As an introduction to the semester and to its focus on economic development
within Latin America, students are asked to read the following articles and
reports regarding the rise of Latin America and the growth prospects for the
region between 2008 and 2011:

○ an article in the Economist about Latin America’s economic

renaissance in the past decade and the potential impediments to
growth (http://www.economist.com/node/16990967)
○ a brief summary of a report by Brookings about how demographics,
China’s slowing growth, and the global-savings level pave the way
for opportunities for growth in Latin America
(http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0711_latin_americas_decade_card

(Note that the teacher should be aware that these pieces may throw up more
questions regarding, for example, the Latin American debt crisis and some
issues around exchange-rate fluctuations. Students should be informed that they
will get answers to some of their questions as they proceed through the
curriculum and answers to others in more advanced economics classes.)

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Students will be asked to review these pieces and to divide into groups. Each
group will then pick a few Latin American countries, collect the following data
on the countries, and analyze the relevant historical trends from 1970 to the
present day in those countries:

1. GDP of the countries

2. Growth rates of the economies
3. Percentage of GDP attributed to the primary sectors (agriculture and
natural resources), to the secondary sector (manufacturing), and to
the tertiary sector (services) over time
4. Level of exports and imports over time
5. Trading partners
6. Unemployment rates and inflation

Based on their analyses, the students will present to the class their observations
on time periods when there were peaks, troughs, and anomalies in the data. They
will also examine whether the nature of trade has changed over time, whether it
has remained the same, and whether there appear to be any trends in the types of
goods that are exported and imported in the region.

Students will also collect similar data on the East Asian “tiger economies”
(Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea) and draw comparisons
between the trends observed in the Latin American countries and those observed
in the East Asian “tigers.”

The following is a list of data sources and other useful sources for information
about the economy of Latin America:

○ Data and statistics on Latin America by the World Bank

(http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/0,
○ The tables on page 73 of this academic paper about the historical
growth rates and predicted growth rates based on several
socioeconomic-political factors
http://www.bcentral.cl/eng/studies/working-papers/pdf/dtbc265.pdf)
○ OECD Latin America desk
(http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_33973_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

Note that the second listed source may be used as background information for
the teacher to draw from.

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Activity DE.1.4
Understanding Free Trade and Comparative Advantage
Using the example of Bob and Ann, who are stranded on an island and working
toward surviving and trading items with each other, students are introduced to
the concepts of absolute advantage and comparative advantage.

The following sample lesson plans introduce the concept of comparative

advantage:

○ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/ComparativeAdvantage.html
○ http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/international-trade-theory-
and/199668#web-199668
○ http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/center/students/hs/think/lesson4.pdf

After they have developed an understanding of comparative advantage, the

students will further extend the concept of comparative advantage to the concept
of free trade among nations and will undertake a detailed analysis of the data
they collected in activity 1.

In this analysis, students will learn about correlations (this learning will be
teacher led) and draw out correlations and associations between growth rates,
increases in GDP, unemployment rates, and the levels of trade in Latin America.
The goal is for them to understand whether standards of living have indeed
increased because of trade in the region as a whole or in particular countries
with higher levels of trade.

Finally, using the case of Latin America, students will write a position paper on
how international trade might result in greater benefits for all. Students can refer
to the following article as an example of what might be expected:
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/docs_lessons/575_international_trade1.pdf.

Teacher Resources

• http://www.crawfordsworld.com/rob/ape/APEBrueNotes/APEBrue18.html
• The “Why Nations Trade” lesson plan
(http://www.globalization101.org/teacher/trade) (See the “Why
Nations Trade” lesson plan)

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Activity DE.1.5
Is Free Trade a Win-Win Situation for All?
Students will revisit some of the numerical problems that they faced when they
were introduced to the concept of free trade and will now look at cases of
restricted trade and protectionism numerically. In particular, students will
closely examine the different ways in which trade between nations may be
restricted through quotas, tariffs, embargoes, and voluntary export restraints.

The following is a list of sample lesson plans and readings around a conceptual
understanding of protectionism:

○ Background reading for teachers

(http://www.councilforeconed.org/resources/lessons/Focus_International_Eco
○ A resource for students that draws from the US embargo on trade
with Cuba and examines why some US farmers are advocating for
the Cuban embargo to be eliminated
(http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?
lid=529&type=educator)
○ http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?
file=issue&pass1=subs&id=14
○ A resource on saving jobs as a rationale for protectionism
(http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeTrade.html)

Students will divide into groups and pick countries in the Latin American region
that have had experience with protectionist policies (e.g., Brazil’s ban on the
export of rice in 2008 to protect its domestic consumers and the 2009 tariff
imposed by Mexico on US imports as a response to protectionist US policy).
They will then present country profiles to the class, answering the following
questions:

1. What is import-substitution industrialization?

2. What is export-oriented industrialization? How does it relate to
trade? What caused the shift to this strategy?
3. What is the history of protectionism in that particular country?
4. Who benefits from protectionism in that country?
5. Who loses from protectionism, and who is harmed?
6. Are there noneconomic reasons (e.g., political reasons like HR
violations or nuclear proliferation) that might be driving a
protectionist policy?
7. Can different interests be balanced, or is it an either-or choice?

400
 8. What are current political opinions about protectionism in that
country?
9. Which side of the argument do you find more convincing? Why?

Students could watch a selection of the following films:

1. The Seattle Syndrome, a documentary film about the protests at the

WTO summit in Seattle and whether protests are the best way to
bring a fair agenda to the table
(http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/lsss.html)
2. Life: The Story So far, a documentary film about how the globalized
economy affects local people
(http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ls1.html)
3. The Economics of Happiness, a documentary about the economics of
localization (http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/helena-on-
tedx)

As a final culminating activity, students undertake background research on

various free trade agreements such as the NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement), the CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement), and the
Mercosur (economic and political agreement between Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay, and Uruguay to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods,
people, and currency).

Use the following link (click on the tab that says “Lesson Plan on Trade
Agreements”) for a lesson plan around the NAFTA and its pros and cons:
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=issue&pass1=subs&id=19.

At a mock policy summit, students will represent different countries, defend

their interests, and balance different perspectives to negotiate a fair trading
arrangement and to debate whether trade is indeed an impetus for growth.

401
Unit DE. 2
Topic Exchange Rates and FDI
ICC: interpersonal (empathy and working in intercultural
Themes teams); ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs);
ethics: trust in institutions; and economic development
Region Latin America, with a focus on Argentina
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn how exchange-rate fluctuations influence economic growth

through FDI.
2. Inspire students examine in depth the international financial market
and its intricacies.
3. Act as aware students who understand that globalization has its pros
and cons and what the breakdown of trust in institutions looks like.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will learn about core economic concepts concerning free

and floating exchange rates, the various kinds of investment and their
determinants, purchasing power parity, and the Big Mac Index.
2. Students will become interested in examining how fluctuations in the
international financial market might influence growth and
development.
3. Students will become aware of and informed about the Washington
Consensus and its role in the Argentinian crisis.
4. Students will learn about the breakdown of trust in institutions in the
case of the Argentinian Crisis through studying personal stories.

Overview
Through this unit, students learn about core economic concepts associated with
the international exchange market and about how fluctuations are dynamic and
affect trade, investment, and overall growth in countries.

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Activity DE.2.1
Exchange Rates
Using auctions and simulations as outlined in lesson plans by the IMF, students
learn about the demand and supply of foreign currency and how exchange rates
are determined. Use the following lesson plans:

○ http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/center/students/hs/think/lesson7.pdf
○ http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/center/students/hs/think/lesson7.pdf

Through these lesson plans, students also get a conceptual understanding of

fixed and flexible exchange rates and the various factors that cause changes in
flexible exchange rates.

(Note that based on the simulations, the teacher can build in circumstances that
force the students to think further about the factors that cause changes in flexible
exchange rates.)

Students visit www.xe.com, which has a record of exchange rates between

various countries since 1995, and examine some of the trends in the exchange
rates of countries in Latin America.

Teacher Resource

• Lesson plan from the Council for Economic Education on exchange

rates (http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?
lid=342&type=educator)

Activity DE.2.2
Trade, Exchange Rates, and Purchasing Power Parity (the
Big Mac Index)
Using the following lesson plan from the Council for Economic Education,
students learn about how exchange rates affect trade levels:
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=342&type=educator.

Students also learn about concepts of appreciation and depreciation using the
lesson plan. Through the following lesson plan from the Council for Economic

403
Education, students learn about the Big Mac Index and the concept of purchasing
power parity: http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?
lid=156&type=student.

Each student picks a country from the region and collects information on the
currency exchange rate within that country as compared to that of the United
States. Using data on the value of the currency, the student estimates whether the
currency has appreciated or depreciated and predicts the effect of those changes
on the imports and exports within the country.

The students subsequently refer back to the initial data they collected and
closely examine how the import and export baskets of their countries might have
changed owing to the fluctuations in currency.

Alternatively, students may examine data from the Economist’s Big Mac Index
and examine whether the currency of the country they picked is overvalued or
undervalued and how close it really is to the purchasing power parity.

Activity DE.2.3
Foreign Investments in Latin America
The lesson plan from Globalization101 on foreign investments in Latin America
is highly recommended.

Students begin by browsing through some of the content on this website. The
following is a list of the questions they should answer and links to the pages
where they can find those answers:

1. What are the different kinds of foreign investment

(http://www.globalization101.org/issue_sub/investment/investmentintroductio
2. What are the differences between FDI and portfolio investments
(http://www.globalization101.org/issue_sub/investment/investmentintroductio
3. How are globalization and the rise of financial investment related?
(http://www.globalization101.org/issue_sub/investment/investmentintroductio

Optional Activity
http://www.globalization101.org/teacher/investment

404
1. This activity shows an American apparel-manufacturing company that
makes different types of clothing. The company is considering
investing in a foreign country specifically in Central America
because it knows that those countries have recently negotiated a free
trade agreement with the United States. The students should analyze
the information related to every Central American country and
recommend a decision about which country should be selected for
the investment venture. The company has just enough capital to invest
in a single country. Finally, some optional ways to analyze the
decision in different circumstances are shown. The scenario is
described in handout 4.
2. Read the scenario in handout 4 to the class or provide a copy of
handout 4 to each student. Act as the manager of the company, and
ask the students firstly about the possible benefits and costs
associated with an investment in a Central American country. Then
ask the students to list the main criteria or the economic, political,
legal, and technological variables related to each country that will
need to be analyzed before a decision about where to invest can be
made. In order to avoid an overly extensive and complex exercise,
you can ask the students to select just the five or six most important
variables. Students may answer orally in class as a group or
individually in a written in-class or homework assignment.
3. You may have the students to do extra research on the Central
American countries that have signed the free trade agreement
(Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica)
using the following links:
○ the IMF’s website
(http://www.imf.org/external/country/index.htm)
○ the IADB’s website (http://www.iadb.org)
○ the links page on Auladeeconomia.com
(http://www.auladeeconomia.com/links2.htm)
○ the links section on Globalization101.org and also other
international organizations’ websites or media websites
4. Once the students have selected the variables that they’re going to
review for each country and compiled information on each one, you
can ask them to make a comparison using the following table:

405
 1. Then ask the students to make a decision. Ask them to study the
possible risks associated with their decision.
2. Ask them how their decision change would change if investing in
China were an option.
3. Also ask the students to consider how their decision would change if
the company wanted to install a client-assistance center in the United
States instead of manufacturing clothes.
4. Finally, make a series of conclusions regarding benefits, costs, and
risks for companies when they invest abroad, and decide which of
those factors determine their decisions regarding investments in
other nations.

Activity 4
The Washington Consensus and the Argentinian Crisis
(1999–2002)
Students form a reading group and are asked to read portions of the following
books and to then discuss and present their views on the texts:

○ The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged

Globalization, by Jagdish Bhagwati
○ Globalization and Its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz
○ The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by
Jeffrey Sachs
○ The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and
Misadventures in the Tropics, by William Easterly

After reading selected chapters in these books, students are asked to present in
class a case study of a country that was impacted by the Washington Consensus
reforms (positively and negatively). Students should answer the following
questions:

406
 1. What was the Washington Consensus?
2. What were the policy recommendations made by the consensus for
the country?
3. Why were some of the recommendations unsuccessful or successful
in that country?
4. How was Latin America as a region specifically affected by the
consensus?

Students are then asked to view archives of different newspapers and journals
that reported on the Argentinian crisis. Use the following sources:

○ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,189393,00.html
○ http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?
lid=776&type=educator
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/dec/20/argentina1

Students subsequently may watch the following documentary film:

○ The Take, a story about how the economic collapse in Argentina

affected the middle class and resulted in high unemployment
(http://thetake.org/index.cfm?page_name=synopsis)

Culminating Activity
Students divide into two groups and use these sources as well as their
understanding of exchange-rate markets and concepts around capital flight to
complete a culminating activity.

One group creates a video report on the Argentinian crisis, the situation in the
country during the nine days when the banks were closed, and the people’s loss
of confidence in the currency of the country.

The second group creates a video report on the Argentinian government’s

response to the crisis.

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Unit DE. 3
Poverty and Inequality in Latin America and the Political
Topic
Economy of Growth
ICC: interpersonal (working in intercultural teams and
empathy); ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global
Themes
affairs); ethics: trust in institutions; economic development;
poverty; and politics: government)
Region Latin America and Asia (Bhutan)
Length Six weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn about various alternate approaches to growth and development

and the role of politics in growth and development.
2. Inspire students to further question and examine their own
interpretations and understandings of growth within cultural contexts.
3. Act as informed agents who understand that growth doesn’t occur in
isolation and that several intertwining factors determine how
countries grow and how disparities converge or diverge.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will examine the importance of human-capital development

in economic growth and development and its role in the Latin
American experience through data.
2. Students will learn about social safety nets and the use of conditional
cash-transfer programs in addressing poverty alleviation.
3. Students will reflect upon new approaches to development and their
practical uses.
4. Students will address the relationship between politics and
economics and the importance of strong governance in promoting
growth.

Overview
In this unit, students go beyond traditional measures of economic growth and

408
seek to address what inclusive and holistic development might look like.
Students also examine the interrelationship between economics and politics and
seek to understand the role of democracy in the Latin American growth
experience.

Activity DE.3.1
Study SDG Goal 10: Reduce Inequality within and among
Countries
Use the following link: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-
development-goals/.

Activity DE.3.2
Investing in Human Capital in the Region
In this activity, students are asked to pick a country and to collect the following
information on it: the country’s progress on the education and health SDGs, the
historic rates of access to education and health care in the country, and how that
access has changed over time with globalization. (Use the data that the students
have collected through the year on growth rates and development.)

Resources

• Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances: The Challenges to Equal

Opportunity in the Americas, by Fernando Reimers
• Chapter 5 “Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievement in
Five Latin American Countries.” Published in a 2008 World Bank
Report: Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the
Caribbean
• Quantity without Quality: A report Card on Education in Latin
America

Based on their analyses, students should aim to address the question of whether
higher growth enables greater human capital or higher rates of human-capital
development enable higher growth rates.

The teacher introduces the students to the concepts of subsidies and conditional
cash transfers. Students undertake background research and present to the class

409
on the use of social safety nets as a poverty-reduction strategy and the use of
CCTs within the countries of their choice. Students should aim to answer some
of the following questions:

1. When were CCTs introduced? Why?

2. What are the strings attached to the CCT? What does it seek to do?
3. What have experiences with the CCT been thus far? Is the program
considered successful?

The students can use the following resources from the World Bank:

○ http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/EX
○ http://www.economist.com/node/4408187

Students read the following article about PROGRESA:

http://www.economist.com/node/181376.

Activity DE.3.3
Is Growth All That Matters for Development?
Students then read the first and concluding chapters of Amartya Sen’s
Development as Freedom as an introduction to the concept of capabilities and
freedom as defining concepts of development.

Students also examine some alternate ways that countries and agencies are
working to go beyond just economic growth. Students may be divided into
different groups and present in groups on the different approaches being used to
examine development. Some topics may include the following:

1. Bhutan and its experience with “Gross National Happiness,”

including whether this idea is extendable and what “subjective
wellbeing” entails as a marker of development
2. A comparison of the World Development Report and the Human
Development Report
3. Stability and peace as indicators of development
4. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson on the role of geography and
institutions in development (2001)

Students may question whether the main thesis of their topic is strong, relevant,

410
and practical in current contexts and whether these new approaches to
development can be further expanded. Do they believe there are gaps? If so,
what might those gaps be, and how can holistic and inclusive development be
defined and measured?

Activity DE.3.4
The Political Economy of Growth and Development in Latin
America
Students begin by reading the following pieces:

○ a piece on the political economy of Latin America and its role in the
growth and development of the region
(http://www.economist.com/node/16964114)
○ a piece on democracy and growth in Latin America
(http://foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Reid_Testimony.pdf)
○ a piece on the need for Panama (Latin America’s fastest-growing
economy) to address issues of governance
(http://www.economist.com/node/18959000)

Students then use those pieces to answer some of the following questions:

1. Is democracy a precedent of growth?

2. What might be the influence of regimes on growth?
3. What have the historical experiences of different countries within the
region been?
4. How do crime rates and government debt influence investor
confidence and FDI flow?
5. What is the role of corruption and informal economies in growth?
6. How have countries with regimes other than democracies
experienced growth and development?

Option 1
Students may use a data set of FDI flows and overlay it with important political
developments in a country of their choice to examine the changes over time and
the associations between politics and economics. Students may also map growth
rates with political-regime characteristics, as done by the Polity IV Project
(http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm).

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Option 2
Students may interview the chief investment officer of a Multi National
Corporation that has operations in Latin America or different parts of the world
about some of the factors that he or she considered while deciding where to
invest. Simultaneously, the chief of economic affairs of a consulate from one of
the BRIC countries could be invited to give a presentation on some of the
reforms and incentives being undertaken by the government to attract investors
and to continue restoring investors’ confidence.

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 THE WORLD COURSE
HIGH SCHOOL SEMESTER COURSE
TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, AND GLOBALIZATION

T his one-semester course examines the relationship between technological

and social developments and how the acceleration of technological
innovation causes social change and can address some of the most critical
global challenges. Students will examine various emerging technologies and
discuss their social implications and possible uses and the consequences of
these developments for globalization.

Unit TIG.1
Topic The Marvel of Innovation and the World of Inventors
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
common values; work and mind habits: innovation and
creativity; knowledge: politics; investigative and analytical
Themes skills; assessing global affairs: evaluate sources, the use of
evidence, and creative communication; and global problem
solving: future studies, scenario building, and the use of
technology
Region Not applicable
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to appreciate invention as an ongoing process that underlies

improvements to quality of life and to analyze invention as the
product of individuals’ work in contexts that support innovation.
2. Inspire students to be curious about emerging technologies and to
anticipate their likely social impact.
3. Evaluate the main technological innovations of the twentieth century
and demonstrate an understanding of how the process of

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 technological innovation improves well-being.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will identify the major emerging technological innovations

in the twenty-first century.
2. Students will explain and describe the likely social consequences of
at least one major emerging technological innovation, what
technologies it replaced, the costs and benefits associated with it,
and how it might be used to address one of the global challenges
identified in the SDGs.

This unit introduces the topic of invention and examines how it addresses social
challenges. Using episodes from Planet Green TV’s Dean of Invention, in
which inventor Dean Kamen discusses emerging technologies, students examine
some of the current technological innovations and discuss their applications.
They then examine the contributions of Kamen himself as an inventor.

Activity TIG.1.1.
In small groups students select one of the episodes featured in “Dean of
Invention” (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/dean-of-invention/dean-of-
invention-episode-guides.html) and study one invention of their choosing.
Students might focus on microbots, bionic bodies, wired brains, robots, energy,
motion, or flight, for example.

For each innovation, students will prepare a report that answers the following
questions:

1. What are the benefits of this technological innovation?

2. What previous technologies does it replace, improve, or build upon?
3. What are the costs of this innovation?
4. How do these costs compare to the benefits?
5. In what way can this innovation address some of the global
challenges identified in the Millennium Development Goals?
6. What roles did the government and the private sector play in
supporting this innovation?
7. What obstacles is this innovation likely to face as it goes to scale?

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Activity TIG.1.2.
Students will then present and discuss their reports in class. In this discussion,
they will examine the similarities and differences in the ways in which each
invention disrupts an existing approach to addressing a problem. They will
examine how emerging technologies have supported the invention and the
institutions that have supported it.

Activity TIG.1.3.
The World of Inventors and the Life of Dean Kamen
Students will read the book Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius,
Innovation, and Grand Ambition (http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Wheel-
Genius-Innovation-Ambition/dp/0060761385).

They will then write a reflections paper summarizing the main argument of the
book and analyzing the contributions of Dean Kamen to society. They will
examine in what ways Kamen benefited from social factors (e.g., regulations,
access to capital, or other innovations) that supported his work.

The teacher might supplement this activity with the following videos of
interviews and speeches by Kamen:

○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHwCPHcKAqY
○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgqQNovWTc
○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjV11FZXq7E
○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoY1cItRiHA

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

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Unit TIG.2
Topic Technological Developments and Society
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
common values; work and mind habits: innovation and
creativity; knowledge: politics (global risks); investigative
Themes and analytical skills; assessing global affairs: evaluate
sources, the use of evidence, and creative communication;
and global problem solving: future studies, scenario building,
and the use of technology
Region Not applicable
Length Three weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to recognize invention as a force that shapes life and human

history, to understand the relationship between scientific and
technological development and innovation, and to understand
innovation as a global process that often builds on previous
inventions and flawed attempts at invention.
2. Inspire student to contribute to the evolution of existing technologies
and to the application of those technologies to social problems that
are meaningful to them.
3. Act: by demonstrating understanding of the historical evolution of
one of the major technologies of the twentieth century.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will recognize the major technological developments of the

twentieth century.
2. Students will identify the ways in which those developments built on
previous innovations.
3. Students will explain the major social contributions advanced by at
least one of those innovations.

Overview
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In this unit, students examine the historical development of several technologies,
beginning with a teacher-led lesson on the history of computing. They then
complete an independent research project on the history of some of the major
technologies of the twentieth century.

Activity TIG.2.1
The History of the Computer
In this activity the teacher will lead the class in a discussion of the history of the
computer, starting with the first design in 1884 by English mathematician
Charles Babbage of the mechanical “analytical engine.” The teacher will
present a time line showing the history of computers, and the discussion will
examine how the development of electronics, the miniaturization of processors,
reductions in costs, and increases in processing power and memory have shaped
the development of new applications. The class will then discuss the many uses
of computers in modern life and how various activities changed as a result of
the introduction of computers. This examination of changes might focus on the
effect of computers on hospitals, banks, schools, town administrations,
animation, and music compositions and performances.

Activity TIG.2.2.
The Evolution of Computers
In small groups of two or three, students will discuss how computers have
evolved over the last thirty years and consider the way these changes have
affected their uses. Students will research predictions made about computers
thirty years ago and compare them with actual developments. They might, for
example, look at newspapers that discussed computers in past years. They will
also speculate on likely changes that computers might undergo in the future.
Each team will then present a report to the class.

Resources:

• The History of Computers, by Les Freed

• A chronology of personal computers (http://pctimeline.info/)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware

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Activity TIG.2.3.
How Does Technology Evolve?
Students will discuss the following talk about how technology evolves:
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.html.

Activity TIG.2.4.
History of the Major Inventions of the Twentieth Century
(Independent Research Project)
Individually or in pairs, students will study the history of the most important
technological developments of the twentieth century, as established by the US
National Academy of Engineering:

1. Electrification
2. Automobiles
3. Airplanes
4. Water supply and distribution
5. Electronics
6. Radios and televisions
7. Mechanized agriculture
8. Computers
9. Telephones
10. Air Conditioning and refrigeration
11. Highways
12. Spacecraft
13. The Internet
14. Imaging
15. Household appliances
16. Health technologies
17. Petroleum and petrochemical technologies
18. Lasers and fiber optics
19. Nuclear technologies
20. Materials science

For their project they will identify the contributions of the development, the
economic and social applications of the development, the factors that
contributed to the development, the roles played by the government and by the
private sector in creating the development, how the development built on
previous inventions, how the development has continued to evolve, and the
possible ways in which this development might evolve in the future.

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Students will prepare a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the results of their
research, present it in an exhibition to their class, and post it in an online
platform.

Resources

• The Franklin Institute’s “History of Science and Technology”

(http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/)
• Time lines showing the history of inventions
(http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/Timelines_of_Invention_and_Techno

Unit TIG.3
Topic Emerging Technologies and Globalization
ICC: intrapersonal (curiosity about global affairs); ethics:
common values; work and mind habits: innovation and
creativity; knowledge: politics (global risks); investigative
Themes and analytical skills; assessing global affairs: evaluate
sources, the use of evidence, and creative communication;
and global problem solving: future studies, scenario building,
and using technology)
Region Not applicable
Length Twelve weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn the roles that emerging technologies play as drivers of

globalization and how they can be used to address some of the most
significant global challenges.
2. Inspire students to address global challenges through the creation of
social institutions—for example, businesses, social enterprises, and
others—that capitalize on emerging technologies.
3. Evaluate the major emerging technologies, their benefits, and their
likely uses in addressing significant global challenges.

Skills and Knowledge

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 1. Students will recognize the major contributions to human health and
well being advanced by biotechnology, bioinformatics, brain-
computer interfaces and neurotechnology, energy and environmental
systems, computing and networks, nanotechnology, and robotics and
artificial intelligence.
2. Students will identify the current uses of these emerging technologies.
3. Students will explain and describe the core benefits and potential
uses of emerging technologies in addressing global challenges and
the barriers to universalizing access to them.

Overview
In this unit, students examine the role of information technology, biotechnology,
bioinformatics, brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology, energy and
environmental systems, nanotechnology and robotics, and artificial intelligence
in supporting the process of globalization and in addressing current global
challenges. For each of these emerging technologies, students will examine the
core ideas and concepts, the contributions to human well being enabled by the
technology, the likely economic applications of the technology, and the
challenges to extending these benefits universally.

Activity TIG.3.1.
The Internet, Computing, Networks, and Communications
Students will discuss the uses of the Internet for communications, businesses,
and governments.

Students will read the following page about networked computing and the cloud:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing.htm.

Students will then watch the video “United Breaks Guitars”

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo) and discuss the
implications of the endless information on the Internet for leadership.

Activity TIG.3.2
Open Sources and Copyrights
The teacher will discuss how the Internet has enabled worldwide collaboration
and how that collaboration is typified by open-source software. They will learn

420
about Linus Benedict Torvalds, who initiated the creation of Linux, an open-
source operating system that is being developed by a global collaborative of
volunteers.

Students will learn about “copyleft,” or releasing certain rights, public domain,
Creative Commons licenses, and open-source licenses, and about copyright,
also known as “closed-source software.” They will watch a PowerPoint
presentation by Larry Lessig that is based on his book Free Culture
(http://w2.eff.org/IP/freeculture/free.html).

(See the following reference: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Culture-Nature-

Future-Creativity/dp/0143034650/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1311818067&sr=8-1.)

The students will critically examine the case for open sources and the case for
intellectual property and copyrights as engines of innovation and creativity in
business
(http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/intproperty/909/wipo_pub_909.pdf).

Activity TIG.3.3
Information Technology and Globalization: Economic and
Social Implications
In this class session, the teacher’s lecture examines the impact of information
technology on industrial structures, jobs, the workforce, and financial markets.

Discussing how technology can address humanity’s biggest problems

Students will discuss the following TED Talk about humanity’s biggest
problems and consider how technology can help address them:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_on_our_biggest_problems.html.

Resources

• http://www.globalization101.org/issue_main/technology
• Castells, Manuel. 1999. “Information, Technology, and Social
Development.” United Nations.

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Activity TIG.3.4
Introduction to Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, and Health
Care
The teacher will provide an introductory overview to biotechnology, offering a
definition of the field and covering molecular biology, DNA, the recombination
of DNA, genetic engineering and stem cells, cloning, and gene therapy.

Students then watch Daniel Reda’s “An Introduction to Biotechnology” from

Singularity University (http://www.evolution-radar.tv/daniel-reda/an-
introduction-to-biotechnology-and-bioinformatics-video_81fbc90a0.html).

The teacher then shows clips from a video that illustrates some contemporary
applications of biotechnology. The teacher could show clips on genetically
modified food (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/5-of-the-newest-
and-craziest-genetically-modified-foods-3-are-animals.html), regenerating our
bodies through medical technology
(http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_russell_on_regenerating_our_bodies.html, or
folding DNA (https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_rothemund_details_dna_folding?
language=en).

Students discuss the video and review likely future applications of these
technologies.

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Resource

• A curriculum guide for a one-semester introductory course on

biotechnology at the high school level
(http://www.amazon.com/Biotechnology-Comprehensive-
Curriculum-Semester-Community/dp/1419683004)

Activity TIG.3.5
Advancing Global Health through Biotechnology
In this student-led activity, students will select one health application emerging
from biotechnology and discuss the present ways in which this application
contributes to global health and the likely future ways in which it will contribute
to global health. Students will examine the barriers that need to be addressed in
order to make the benefits of this development available to all. The following
resources provide a range of examples of biotechnology’s applications to global
health.

Resources

• http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=689
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/deanofinvention/
• https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science?
language=en
• https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_on_genomics_and_our_future?
language=en
• Evolving Ourselves, by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans

423
Activity TIG.3.6
Introduction to Brain-Computer Interfaces,
Neurotechnology, and Medicine
The teacher will explain how brain-computer interfaces work
(http://computer.howstuffworks.com/brain-computer-interface.htm). Then he or
she will show and discuss with students the following video from CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/31/60minutes/main4560940.shtml.

From the basic science, the teacher will move on to the contemporary
applications of brain-computer interfaces. The students can watch a video on
DEKA research and robotic arms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=R0_mLumx-6Y).

Resources

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIG47YgndP8&search=brain
• http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=689

To conclude this activity, each student will individually write a short essay
summarizing brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology. Students will write
a short essay summarizing the history and the current state of brain-computer
interfaces and discussing their current applications. They will identify
contemporary population groups in the world that would benefit from the
applications of this technology and discuss current barriers to extending the
benefits of this technology universally.

Activity TIG.3.7.
Discussing Energy and Environmental Systems
Students will watch and discuss Al Gore’s TED Talk
(https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_warns_on_latest_climate_trends?
language=en).

This video provides background knowledge on the energy crisis and global
warming. Students will then analyze the merits and drawbacks of the various

424
technological solutions that have been developed to address these challenges,
such as wind power, MIT’s initiative to harvest power from walking
(http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/power.html), nuclear energy (study the Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents), geothermal energy, hydroelectric energy,
and fossil fuels.

Activity TIG.3.8.
Turning Waste into Energy
Students will watch the video “Gonzo for Guano” and individually write a short
essay that discusses the benefits and drawbacks of this technology and the likely
economic and social consequences of adopting technologies of this sort on a
large scale.

Resources

• “Gonzo for Guano” (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/dean-of-

invention/dean-of-invention-episodes/gonzo-for-guano.html)
• http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=689

Activity TIG.3.9.
Introduction to Nanotechnology
The teacher introduces the field of nanotechnology and some contemporary
applications of it.

Resources

• http://www.understandingnano.com/nanotech-applications.html
• http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=689

Activity TIG.3.10
Introduction to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
Students will examine the evolution of Kismet, Artificial Intelligence, Machine
Learning and Robots.

425
In small groups students will spend time researching the work of MITs
artificial-intelligence group on Kismet, which is documented in numerous
videos here: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/sociable/videos.html.

The teacher will then lead a discussion on robotics and artificial intelligence.

Students can also watch the following videos, which can serve as introductions
to the field of robotics:

○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqf5hHdphX4
○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyDrUonp98

Watson. IBM’s supercomputer.

Students will watch the following short video from CBS on Watson and on the
ongoing efforts to use it in health care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=950fbQfdoj8&feature=fvst.

The teacher will then lead a discussion on the likely positive and negative
outcomes of using computers to reduce errors in diagnosis, and students will
speculate on the likelihood that machine-based diagnosis can extend these
services universally.

Resource

• http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=689

426
Unit TIG.4
Topic The Acceleration of Technological Change and the Future
Work and mind habits: innovation and creativity;
knowledge: politics (global risks); investigative and
analytical skills; assessing global affairs: evaluate sources,
Themes
the use of evidence, and creative communication; and global
problem solving: future studies, scenario building, and the
use of technology
Region Not applicable
Length Four weeks

Goals and Objectives

1. Learn to understand the exponential rate of technological

development, the implications of this acceleration for our ability to
address social challenges, and the concept of singularity proposed
by Ray Kurzweil.
2. Inspire students to engage in the utilization of technology to address
social purposes that are meaningful to them.
3. Evaluate a development that addresses a global challenge and is
based on an emerging technology.

Skills and Knowledge

1. Students will recognize the exponential nature of technological

development and the ability of smaller groups of people to design
innovative solutions to global challenges through approaches such as
the XPRIZE.
2. Students will identify the concept of singularity.
3. Students will explain and describe the ways in which a current global
challenge can be ameliorated or solved through the use of an
emerging technology.

Overview
In this unit, students examine the changes in the rate of technological

427
development, discuss the concept of singularity, examine alternative approaches
to stimulating technological innovation, and develop an idea for a way to
address a global challenge using an emerging technology.

Activity TIG.4.1
Film Discussion: Transcendent Man
This film introduces the ideas and contributions of Ray Kurzeil and is based on
his book The Singularity is Near (http://transcendentman.com/).

Students will watch and discuss the film, focusing in particular on the concept of
exponential growth in information technology and on the notion that it will lead
to the merging of humans with machines. The film examines advances in
genetics and the possibility that genetics will allow us to reprogram biology,
eliminate diseases, and extend life. Students will also engage in a discussion on
the concerns raised by critics of the film.

Teacher Resource

• Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity is Near: When Humans

Transcend Biology. New York: Viking.

Activity TIG.4.2
Global Challenges and Technological Innovation
This is an in-class research activity. First students watch a TED talk on the
biggest challenges facing humanity:
(http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_on_our_biggest_problems.html).

The teacher presents the world economic framework for the assessment of
global risks (https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2016/)
and introduces each of the risks:

ECONOMIC RISKS

1. Food-price volatility
2. Oil price spikes

428
 3. Major fall in the US dollar
4. Slowing Chinese economy (by more than 6 percent)
5. Fiscal crises
6. Asset price collapse
7. Retrenchment from globalization (developed)
8. Retrenchment from globalization (emerging)
9. Burden of regulation
10. Underinvestment in Infrastructure

GEOPOLITICAL RISKS

11. International terrorism

12. Nuclear proliferation
13. Iran
14. North Korea
15. Instability in Afghanistan
16. Transnational crime and corruption
17. Israel and Palestine
18. Iraq
19. Global governance gaps

ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS

20. Extreme weather

21. Drought and desertification
22. Water scarcity
23. National catastrophes (cyclone)
24. National catastrophes (earthquakes)
25. National catastrophes (island flooding)
26. National catastrophes (coastal flooding)
27. Air pollution
28. Biodiversity loss

SOCIETAL RISKS

29. Pandemics
30. Infectious diseases
31. Chronic diseases
32. Liability Regimes
33. Migration

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TECHNOLOGICAL RISKS

34. Critical information–infrastructure breakdown

35. Nanoparticle toxicity
36. Data fraud/loss

Students examine in a whole-group discussion how each of these global risks

relates to an emerging technology and the extent to which the risk can be
managed and how.

Students review Design for Change

(https://www.tes.com/worldslargestlesson/taking-action/) and Design Thinking
and discuss the following TED Talk by Tim Brow:
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big?
language=en.

Then, individually or in small groups, students select one of the Sustainable

Development Goals and analyze how the problem area that the goal addresses
(e.g., poverty, hunger, health, education, etc.) has been addressed in the past by
technological developments. The students then discuss how emerging
technologies might help address the challenge. Students make an oral
presentation to the rest of the class.

Activity TIG.4.3
Technology and Innovation for All: The XPRIZE
The teacher will lead the class in a discussion of the XPRIZE, a process to
stimulate innovation that capitalizes on the ability of relatively small groups of
individuals to address significant social challenges using knowledge and
technology. The teacher will present the XPRIZE Foundation and the
XCHALLENGE, its origins, and its applications to finding innovative solutions
to space travel and oil cleanup.

Students will answer the following questions:

1. What is the value of competition as a process to stimulate innovation?

2. Why can small groups of people produce new designs that until
recently could only feasibly be produced by large corporations and
governments?

430
3. What are the downsides of providing economic rewards only to the
winners of the competitions?
4. What challenges are more likely to be solved using approaches such
as the XCHALLENGE, and what challenges are less likely to be
solved by similar approaches? Why?
5. What XPRIZE Foundation competitions are currently open? Could the
students imagine participating in one of those competitions? What
would they need to do in order to produce a competitive design?

431
Activity TIG.4.4.
Thinking through a Process to Address One Global
Challenge through Emerging Technologies
In small groups students will select one global challenge (e.g., one of the
challenges identified in the Sustainable Development Goals). Students will then
design a concept to support the development of solutions to the challenge using
some of the emerging technologies. The concept could involve a business, a
social enterprise, a nonprofit organization, or another social institution that
would develop and implement an intervention to affect this social challenge
using some of the emerging technologies covered in the course.

These designs will then be presented in an “innovation fest,” a celebration of

innovation open to parents and members of the community. This will be an
opportunity to invite inventors from the local community to connect with the
students.

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 Conclusion and Beginnings

G lobal Citizenship is an ongoing process of development of our capacity to

make sense of ourselves and those around us in a deeply and increasingly
interdependent world. Global citizenship education is therefore a journey more
than a destination as we are always in the process of becoming global citizens.
We hope the World Course we have offered in this book will offer a beginning
in at least two ways.

To students, the World Course provides a foundation to get started in the journey
of becoming caring and engaged global citizens, people to whom ‘Nothing
human will be alien’, to use Terentius’ words. The world course offers
foundational knowledge, skills and dispositions to be curious about the world in
which we live and about our own place in it. We hope it provides also the
confidence that each of us has a choice, many choices in fact, as to how to face
the change and complexity of the growing global interdependence which will
affect our lives. We have designed this course with enthusiasm that the global
citizenship it will engender will be one of embracing possibilities to work with
others in improving the world.

To teachers, the World Course is an invitation to join others in a process of

reinventing education to make it more relevant and meaningful to address the
serious global challenges we share, to create learning and developmental
opportunities for our students to be able to invent the future, a future that is
better than the present we are passing on to them. Such process of reimagining
education is one that needs serious and concerted efforts of many. It needs to
involve students, parents and community members, and many teachers and those
who support their work. The framework we have offered in this book is
intended to support such process of reimagining and collaboration. We have
used a Creative Commons license to disseminate this work to facilitate the
deepest possible forms of collaboration among teachers as professionals in
building upon our work. In order to succeed globally in educating all students to
be empowered global citizens, we will need to see unprecedented collaboration
leading to collective intelligence about how to do this. This book is only a small
step in that ambitious and necessary global effort to align education with the
aspirations reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the

433
Sustainable Development Goals.

We conclude this book with deep hope that from those beginnings will emerge a
world in which we can all live in Peace, with one another, and with all forms of
life on this earth.

434