Global Issues in Language Education: Issue 27. Jun. 1997. (p. 15 - 16)
In my second-year Oral English and Composition class at Ritsumeikan
University, I normally cover a number of social problems and global issues,
choosing both topics of enduring interest (the environment, women's rights)
as well as current issues in the spotlight (French nuclear testing in the
Pacific, U.S. bases in Okinawa). To give students input on issues, I
collect at least four newspaper articles on each topic, give each student
one article to read at home, and have them discuss these in a class jigsaw
activity.I took up the issue of the Ainu in 1993, the International Year of
the World's Indigenous People, and have continued to cover issues
concerning indigenous people as they have come up in the news. Now that the
Diet (the Japanese Parliament) has its first Ainu member, Kayano Shigeru,
Japan's indigenous people are receiving increasing media coverage, and
students are more aware of their existence, if not the exact nature of
their problems. One challenge in dealing with this issue is trying to avoid
presenting indigenous groups as mere victims. A good way to do this is to
link this topic with the environment, since indigenous peoples can be seen
as groups with environmentally-friendly lifestyles, rather than simply as
victims of "encroaching civilization".I start this double unit with a look at environmental issues, since
Japanese schools and the media have given them a fair amount of attention
in recent years, and students therefore have quite a bit of background
knowledge. We begin with a brainstorming session, in which groups compete
to see who can make the longest list of environmental problems. This allows
students time to activate their knowledge and to learn basic vocabulary in
English. I help groups out with wording when necessary. Their lists usually
include the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, excess waste
and garbage, deforestation, air and water pollution, and endangered
species.I try to have one recent newspaper article dealing with each of
these issues, and allow students to choose which area they will study. Each
student writes down two choices on a slip of paper and we draw these
lottery-style. The first four people who select a topic get to read the
article on that topic. Student interest is diverse enough that I rarely
have a student who doesn't get his or her first or second choice, and all
topics are covered. The students then read their article as homework and
report on it the following week to the other groups. In this way, each
student learns about all of the topics.We finish off this unit by playing a "Jeopardy"-style
quiz game(1).
The students use their newspaper articles to write the questions for the
game. There is always quite a bit of excitement as the competition heats
up. Thus the game serves as a fun way to review vocabulary and principles.The next week, we move on to our study of indigenous peoples. This
is a term far less familiar to most of my students, even when I tell them
its Japanese equivalent, "senjumin". For our opening brainstorming session,
I have them work in groups to fill in a worksheet with four questions:After 15 minutes, we go over the answers as a class. To play up the
competition element of Question #1, I ask the groups to take turns giving
one example each, and write the names on the board. When a group runs out
of examples not already listed, they have to "pass". The group with the
most examples thus stands out and gets a nice sense of achievement.Question #2 is much harder for students, but focuses their
attention on why these groups are different from "the rest of us". I
strongly discourage stereotyping ("They're primitive", "They paint their
faces," etc.) and try to get students to look at how indigenous lifestyles
differ from ours. Although I accept a wide range of answers, what I'm
looking for are two main aspects of indigenous life. First, indigenous
peoples are generally hunter/gatherers who live WITH nature rather than
trying to control it. Second, they do not generally have a system of
private property; instead, they live as communities that share a large
expanse of land, and thus are apt to have their hunting/fishing grounds
encroached on by other groups of people.This leads to Question #3. Because they don't view land as
belonging to individuals, indigenous groups tend to get pushed off their
traditional lands by people who file claims with governments that recognize
private property rights. The law majors I teach find this issue
particularly intriguing.Question #4 is the easiest for students to answer, but it leads
them to re-evaluate their opinion of indigenous groups. To reinforce this,
I have students read Chief Seattle's Message, which emphasizes the need
to live with nature. Each student also gets one recent article on a group
of indigenous people to present in a jigsaw activity the next week. I make
sure at least one article is about the Ainu, so students can see there's a
problem in this country, too.After the jigsaw activity, we move on to study the
song "Colors of the Wind" from the Disney movie "Pocahontas", introduced by playing that
segment of the video. Whatever you may think of the movie, you will find
that the song neatly outlines the contrast between indigenous and advanced
lifestyles. Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the lyrics, said in his acceptance
speech for the Academy Award for Best Song that he had based the words on
Chief Seattle's Message. Because students have already read the Message (I
make sure of that by giving them a quiz on it), they can understand the
song fairly easily. Moreover, the graphics and music create a bigger impact
than plain text.I end the lesson with a group discussion in which I ask students to
think about what they can learn from indigenous people, and, for my more
advanced classes, what system might protect their way of life, since they
don't have private property like "we" do.By linking the study of indigenous peoples with environmental
issues in this way, I feel I can help students gain a more positive view of
their traditional lifestyles and greater respect for their cultures, while
also re-emphasizing the lessons we learned about environmental problems.
NOTES
(1) As explained by Jessica Newby-Kawata in the "Global Issues" Roundtable at JALT95.
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Chief Seattle's Message of 1855 (excerpt) How can you buy or sell the sky? If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. This we know - the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself. |
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