2004 Travel Seminar Project

 

Title:

The Daily Life of Children in Southeast Asia

Participant:

B. Berry

School Name, City and State:

Booker Middle School, Sarasota, Florida

 

Project Description:

 

Grade Level: Grade Six

Subject Area: Social Studies

Expected Implementation Period: March 2005

 

Learning Outcomes:

  • Students will understand the relationship of family to society in Southeast Asia;
  • Students will understand life in an agrarian society in Southeast Asia;
  • Students will appreciate racial and ethnic diversity in Southeast Asian society.

 

Proposed Project:

 

This project consists of three one-week units:

 

Unit 1.  What is family in Southeast Asia?

 

Large, extended families that stay geographically close in supportive network.

 

  • Have class draw a picture of a typical American family (genogram). What makes these people family in the USA: parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts & uncles, cousins, descendents, marriage. Topics and Vocabulary: relatives, distant, family ceremonies: holidays, marriages, births, deaths, and reunions.

 

  • Examine Vietnamese family drawings—aunts, uncles, grandparents, many  siblings. Draw this on whiteboard, have students name the people as I draw them. Topics: ancestors in Vietnam, kinship in villages, Confucian ideals of family relationships.  Vocabulary: spirit house, arranged marriages, godparents.

 

·         Family and livelihood in the economy of a developing society: farm-work, family businesses, credit, wages or wages in kind, no wages at all, subsistence economies, traditions about the age of maturity (no adolescence in Vietnamese tradition). Supporting Photographs: (A) Han; (B) Family.

 

  • What is a home like in Vietnam? Draw a home with outbuildings, rice fields; show photos of interiors with mats, platforms, altar, but few tables or chairs, and no sofa. Use a straw mat here. Think about a meal without a table, a house whose walls slide open to the weather. Serve a meal of rice with bits of fish and chicken. Explain rice compared to bread, explain a diet with little meat, no cheese. Supporting Photographs: (C) Homes; (D) Food; (E) Daily Life.

 

 

  • In a society where people dress much as we do, listen to radio and watch television, discuss laundry without machines, clothing bought from storefront merchandisers…show examples of home-made Vietnamese garments, such as an Ao Dai. Supporting Photographs: (F) Working; (G) Livelihood.

 

Unit 2. What is an agrarian society?

 

·         Where does your food come from? Have the class trace how food appears on the family table. Almost all of it will pass through a supermarket; most of it will be processed and labeled. Most of it will be bought for cash.

 

  • Contrast to a Vietnamese meal – rice from the family’s own paddy, meat from the family’s chicken or pig, fish caught by family members…vegetables from the garden supplemented by vegetables from the open-air market, bought fresh and unprocessed from the neighbors who grew it. No refrigerator, no freezer. No supermarkets (Publix, Wal-Mart), no gas stations or “7-11s”. Barter or exchange of very small amounts of cash will be reflected on the family table.  Supporting Photographs: (D) Food; (G) Livelihood.

 

  • jobs in an agrarian, subsistence society; few fulltime jobs, little cash, very affected by weather, requiring lots of varied survival skills from grownups, taught by family.  Supporting Photographs: (H) Different Traditions.

 

  • Discuss Han’s dilemma, wanting his son to go to high school: no money for uniforms or books. Boy takes dangerous construction job. Village committee rules, Han must grow four plots of rice, but will not help send son to high school – too much of the committee’s cash has to go to Hanoi, they say. Supporting Photographs: (A) Han.

 

 

3.  What is racial and cultural diversity like in America?

     What is it like Southeast Asian society?

 

  • Have students list important traditions about marriage, birth, death, family and public commemorations as observed by Protestant European, Catholic European, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Central American people in our own classroom; the same for African American people in our own classroom; Indigenous American people, and others from local Sarasota area: Asian immigrants, Hutterite and Amish communities, Mexican agricultural workers, Jewish Americans and Jews recently arrived from the former Soviet Union—make a chart modeled on the EWC charts.

 

  • Show simplified charts for different traditions, Cambodian, Hmong, Lahu peoples from EWC materials.  Supporting Photographs: (H) Different Traditions.

 

  • use stories to highlight the stress of overcoming prejudice & stereotypes that always face immigrants, especially those who are visibly different:
    • Garland, Sherry. Children of the Dragon: Selected Stories from Vietnam (Harcourt). Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Garland, Sherry. The Lotus Seed.  Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1993.
    • Garland, Sherry. My Father's Boat. Illustrated by Ted Rand. New York: Scholastic, 1998. 
    • Garland, Sherry. Why Ducks Sleep on One Leg.  Illustrated by Jean and Mou-sien Tseng. New York: Scholastic, 1993.
    • Garland, Sherry. Song of the Buffalo Boy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1992. 

 

 

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1.         engage in a barter session

2.         sleep and eat on straw mats (available at WalMart)

3.         eat a Vietnamese meal

4.         weave a hat from palm fronds

5.         burn incense

6.         wrap a statue to make it happy

7.         plant a miniature plot of rice shoots

8.    homework: make a remembrance book of snapshots for departed    uncles,  aunts, grandparents

9.    homework: collect family stories as homework:  of emigration, going off to war, how aunts, uncles, grandparents actually met and married, of hospitalizations, of those who took part in history

8.        collect examples of wedding dresses, christening dresses, baby costumes, funeral relics and customs in extended family

9.       homework: make lists of family members who have mastered subsistence skills: who fishes, who gardens, who sews, who makes music, who is a minister or a deacon, who fixes engines, who keeps animals, etc.

 

 

The citations which appear below are from the Sarasota County Curriculum Guidelines—Grade 6, which in turn are adapted from Florida’s Sunshine State Standards for Social Studies and Language Arts.

 

Social Studies Standard 2: Geography – The student will demonstrate an understanding of the geography of Africa Asia, and Australia/Oceania and its interaction with human activities.

2.3  Examine the physical geography of Asia and its regional influence.

            2.3.1 Identify major landforms and bodies of water of Asia

            2.3.2 Identify climate and vegetation regions of Asia (e.g., monsoons)

            2.3.3 Identify the natural resources of Asia

2.3.4 Describe how various geographic features have influenced the development and interaction of Asian cultures

 

Social Studies Standard 3:  Culture – The student will demonstrate an understanding of the cultural characteristic and influences of Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania.

3.3       Understand characteristics of Asian cultures.

3.3.1 identify political and social divisions of Asia and their role in cultural development (e.g., countries, colonies caste system in India)

3.3.2 recognize the role of language diversity in Asian cultures

3.3.3 recognize the role of religion in Asian cultures

3.3.4 identify political issues that influence cultural development in Asia (e.g., communism, human rights, development of legal codes)

3.3.5 recognize examples of the arts and architecture that reflect the various cultures in Asia (e.g., ink drawings, Chinese opera, temples of South East Asia)

 

Social Studies Standard 4:  History – The student will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development of Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania.

4.3 Recognize how major historical events influenced the development of Asia

4.2.3 identify factors and events that influenced 20th century Asia (e.g., communism, free enterprise, cultural revolution, World War II)

4.2.6 describe current issues that affect political, social and economic systems of Asia (e.g., changing role of Indian women, rebuilding of Vietnam)

 

Social Studies Standard 5:  Economics – The student will apply economic concepts to the study of Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania.

            5.2 understand the basic elements of economic systems of Asia

5.2.1 describe the elements of the basic economic systems found in Asia (e.g., tradition-based, command, market, mixed economies)

5.2.2 describe uses of resources and patterns of distribution in Asia (e.g., goods, services, distribution/marketing).