English Confronting Modernity: Becoming Citizens of the World: What is democracy?

Sunday, September 16, 2012

What is democracy?

We started the year with a study of trees. Students learned the physical anatomy of a tree, adopted a tree to observed throughout the year, took a picture of themselves and the tree, and then wrote an autobiography using parts of the tree to talk about themselves. For example, the outer bark of the tree represents what people see whereas the inner bark represents their personality and their values.

After the research about trees and writing an informative autobiographyical essay, we did a short unit a unit about gum and the chicleros, Maya who harvest chicle from sapodilla trees and who have formed a coop to produce and make their own 100% biodegradable gum. Because of globalization, chicle came to the U.S. in the mid1800's, and because of capitalism, the sapodilla trees became endangered before synthetic gum became so ubiquitous. Chicleros, and the Maya way of life, also became endagered. Students business wrote letters to Whole Foods persuading them to sell Chicza, which is the gum the Chiclero Consorcio makes but is not available in the United States: Here is a an example of a letter in revision:

To continue our themes of trees and globalization, today we began a closer study of the Maya. Who are the modern Maya, and what can they teach us about democracy? At the heart of this is cooperation.

Here is the procedure for day 1:

On a sticky note, write a definition for any words you associate with "democracy."
Social value orientations are based on the assumption that individuals pursue different goals when making decisions for which the outcomes affect others. The main difference between each category is the extent to which one cares about his or her own payoffs and that of the other in social dilemma situations. Rank these four social values according to which one you this is most important in a true democracy. Then, using "four corners," stand in the corner you ranked #1 and prepare to argue for this ranking.

Altruistic: being generous, charitable, giving to others?
Cooperative: working with others to meet needs or bring about change with shared knowledge and trust
Individualistic: working and living for himself with no concern for the other
Competitive: working and living to beat or be better than the next person, business, etc.

Here are examples of the class brainstorm. The majority of the students chose the cooperation corner, but students who chose the competitive, individualistic, or altruistic corner added many great points that complicated the idea of democracy. Overall, students initially associated government terms to "democracy," but through discussion it became must more nuanced.

Democracy, thick democracy, is about inclusivity, participation, and critical engagement, and the foundation of this is cooperation not individualism. Cooperation is inclusive because it needs people to work, participatory because it needs action, and it is critically engaged because it needs ideas and problem solving.

3. Handout the study guide and read the first chapter of Tree Girl. This chapter introduces you to Gabriela as she is weaving her huipil under an avocado tree just outsider her canton in the Guatemalan highlands. She is "attached" by two drunk boys, but she traps them in a tree until the canton arrives to "save her." We learn her native language of Quiche, a little about her culture, and get a hint of the signs of change coming to her canton in the early 1980s. Gabi is the only person in her canto going to school, and her parents tell her that she has to adapt to change or be destroyed by it.

What can the Maya teach us about democracy as a way of life? Although they do not live in a democracy, their way of life is a model of democracy full of cooperation, but how do they do it? And how did they cultivate their way of life in the face of violence? We will read about the lives of modern Maya and to research about different aspects of their lives -- farming, weaving, cooking, education, history of Spanish conquistadores, music, etc -- to trace how they have responded to change and cultivated their traditions with or in spite of such changes.

Homework: Read the first chapter of Tree Girl and respond to the study guide questions.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Re-imagining the English Classroom

This unit is an example of what English teachers can do to explore global issues of social justice through reading and writing. This is specifically designed using eighth grade Common Core Standards, but the units are appropriate for middle through high school students. The essential question that began this blog is this: How have the Maya responded to signs of change, and what can the Maya teach us about tradition, cooperation, and democracy? However, it expanded to other units that also seek to find the lessons of modernity -- or the belief that knowledge, the economy, technology and even our selves are capable of never-ending improvement. That said, our work is to uncover the darker side of such progress, which is also complex and shows how we are implicated in the lives of people all over the world. The format of these units is mostly inquiry-based, but we hold onto the core of our discipline, which is narrative. History is a narrative just as stories are, so we need to see any story as having gaps that prompt questions and further inquiry.

For the Maya unit, students will learn about cooperation through inquiry by beginning with a central text, developing comprehension and literary analysis skills while reading the central text, and then filling in the narrative gaps with additional inquiry researching a variety of genres. The summative assessment will enact this principle by presenting their research through multiple genres and then sharing their findings in a oral presentation and gallery walk. I try variations of this with each unit.

1. Thus, the first learning goal is to understand that knowledge is constructed by and through multiple sources. For this reason, we will do fishbowl and socratic seminars throughout the 3 weeks . The summative writing and speaking assessment is a multigenre project (see Romano’s Blending Genre, Altering Style or many websites) that synthesizes various sources to answer our essential question using multiple genres. Students are free to select from a variety of topics.

2. The second goal is to consider what different genres do to help us understand Maya experiences; thus, students will be able to examine the structure, authorial language, and authenticity of historical fiction and testimonio and to analyze what impact each has on the reader’s experience.In reading various texts, students will practice comprehension skills, identify and analyze literary devices, and trace the theme of cooperation. The summative reading assessment is a written assessment about figurative language, vocabulary in context, dialogue, and genre.

3.The third goal is to enact inclusivity, participation and critical engagement -- pillars of thick democracy. The texts in this unit captures the resilience of people and the value of cooperation. By focusing on Maya genocide of the early 1980s and exploring their culture, American students can learn the true meaning of cooperation and gain a greater sense of democratic living while also celebrating the resilience of a people. We will see how the Maya maintain their cultural foundation while making modern adaptation.

The novel, Tree Girl, is the central text, so the study guide here follows this book chapter by chapter indicating places for additional inquiry. Students will do inquiry during workshop time and keep notes in their research journals. The testimonio of I, Rigoberta Menchu, and numerous documentary and other media resources capture the social structures that created oppression in Guatemala and the mechanisms people used to resist and maintain traditions such as coops for farming and weaving and integrating Catholicism with indigenous religion. The two books are also a source of comparison as we think about how we learn about history.

As we see in Grandin's book, "Repression severed alliances between reforming elites and popular classes, disaggregated powerful collective movements into individual survival strategies, extracted leaders from their communities, and redefined the relationship between human beings and society" (196). However, individuals, especially activists like Rigoberta Menchu, while extracted did not remain isolated. Out of such manifestations grew a new way of thinking that resisted oppression –granito de arena. This metaphor for cooperation is a powerful message for any democratic society and is particularly relevant for developing classroom ethos. Guatemala advanced democracy not through autonomy or isolated freedom but rather a "collective action laid bare the social foundations of self" (181). This, I think, is what is worth knowing and teaching in our schools; this notion of democracy is worth contemplating, and so this unit attempts to explore these notions by using stories as points of access for these young thinkers.

Ganito de arena – a humble phrase that says “ I alone can’t change things. But I can HELP to change things." It’s a collective concept of change! It signifies a process that change can take many forms. It comes through struggle that unites collective rights and individual rights. What I give is only a tiny contribution (as with all the people we will meet in this unit). There are no heroes, but when the hand of destiny touches you, you have to act – you don’t have a choice.

Pages

Sunday, September 16, 2012

What is democracy?

No comments:

Post a Comment