I am teaching Geography as an elective teacher for all grades in middle school. Two of the five themes of geography are movement and human-environment interaction. This deals with one of the six essential elements Environment and Society and this includes the geography standard 16. The distribution and meaning of resources. Students can learn about Water on Earth and this includes Water Problems. This is about the water problems and the lack of fresh-water. Students can compare and contrast water shortage problems from Asia and the United States. An example that comes to mind is Flint, Michigan water crisis. Newsela has different articles that students can read that talk about Flint, Michigan. They can read about “Stories from around the world showcase the problem of water inequality” by National Geographic Society, adapted by Newsela staff. This article is about poor water quality.

            Aging Population: Ask students what is going to happen to society who has an aging society. Who is going to take care of the older population? Challenges will deal with the government and financially. Example can be used are Japan and South Korea. For example, the article that we had to read for the Two Koreas seminar had examples of the aging population was suffering with Covid-19. (https://china.usc.edu/sites/default/files/Gibson%2C%20South%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20Elderly%20Face%20Unique%20Challenges%20From%20COVID-19.pdf). Have students come up with solutions that can help society’s with aging population. The article of Asia’s demographic Crisis talks about Asia’s low fertility rate. It goes on to compare how in the 20^th century Europe had low fertility rate too and it gives solutions that can help Asia with low fertility rate. The document goes on to say that Asian men will have to be more supportive husband and father if they want to get married because women are dissatisfied with their options. They cannot be too big on keeping their gender roles. Yoshiaki Nohara’s article gives a solution that can be used in society to combat a problem with aging population, which is labor shortage. The article states how Japan is using robots in factories so that they can do the hard lifting. This article can also be used for students to read and for us to have a class discussion.

            Household expenditure: Students can compare and contrast what each country spends their money on compared in the pie chart. We can have a discussion about why the United States housing % is so high compared to the Asian countries. Students can compare the housing prices between different states, for example, California and Texas or so.

An aging society, like that of which we see in Japan, is when a society is made up of more older people than younger. At an elementary level, they may not initially see the negative impact this can have on a society. Providing this awareess in an academic discussion can lead to a dynamic realization. As an art teacher, it would use this an opportunity to expose them to artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami. Bringing up their age difference, and then examining the motivations for some of their pieces can lead to a discussion about how history and culture is recorded through art. For example, Kusama's Walking Piece, suggests the traditional roles of a women in the Japanese culture. Discussions around the idea that older and younger artists are visual historians could lead to a deeper understanding of the impacts an aging society can have on a culture. 

The statistics shared about the Industrial Revolution suggest to me that where there is significantly high population in one area, there comes a significant need for an increase in education and development. High population inevitably results in problems that need solutions (transportation, supply and demand, shelter, etc). Research needs to occur to solve these problems; therefore, I would assume that a rise in those getting a higher education would be needed. Inventions/solutions would then take place, revlutionizing the way a society functions. 

Post 2:

            The Qing dynasty’s attitude toward the British is firm. The emperor told the British King that it didn’t make sense for an envoy to be placed in the his courts to control trade with China and the king’s request was denied. I found it very interesting that the Chinese emperor refers to Europeans nations as barbarians. This is similar to what Europeans call people from the lands they colonized. He does explain why the request of King George III (Britain) was denied. Chinese Emperor Quianlong does state that there is no benefit to allowing a British envoy to remain in his courts because their civilization is different to the British. The emperor was very firm with his response to the King and he does tell him to make good decisions.

            Both Japan and China limited access foreigners had in their country. Advantages Japan and China had with limiting access was that they could limit what came into their country. If they would have allowed the Europeans free reign they could have influenced the Asian population. Disadvantages could be that both Asian countries went through the Industrial Revolution much later than Europeans and Americans. Class discussion as to why Japan and China didn’t want to give more access to Europe. Predict what they think is going to happen between China and Europe or Japan and Europe. Then we can read Ebrey’s “Anti-Opium Placards in Guangzhu.pdf” that allows the reader to know about the Opium War between China and Great Britain. Students can see the reaction of the citizens of Guangzhou and how they planned to react against the barbarians. The barbarians was anyone that would go to the city. Students can compare this article to another topic they have learned about. For example, students can answer “What restrictions was the government placing on the citizens? What actions were the citizens planning on taking or took? Why do you believe citizens reacted like this? How would you react if you were living in Guangzhou during this time period? “  Aizawa Seishisai article, “Dealing with barbarians” can be used and given to students to read and answer the questions (DBQ) about Japan’s view on the barbarians. 

One of the first grade Social Studies standards is "understand basic economic concepts and the role of individual choice in a free-market economy." These charts demonstrate perfectly how those choices can vary from country to country. Related to the money scarcity discussion we had previously, we can review how people and governments need to choose how best to spend their money when there are more choices than they can afford. Students might be surprised to learn that in countries like China, people spend a much bigger part of their income on food. We can talk about why that might be (e.g. living in California, we have easy access to a lot of different produce items, while in other parts of the world, those items need to be shipped in). We can talk about how different countries have different economic strengths - for example, some students know that many tech items and video game franchises come from Japan. We can also look at the amount of farm land available in different countries, which connects to the standard in which students describe how the physical environment affects the way people live.

     In our Science lesson last week we were planting albino corn seeds when one of my students asked, "How do I know if it needs more water?" Such an innocent question, but it led to a powerful conversation about water management and the recurring drought in Los Angeles. We discussed how if people are wasteful with water faucets, long showers, etc. it isn't good for the enivornment. This was followed by if we don't have enough clean water, we wouldn't be able to hydrate our bodies, hydrate plants and other organisms, or be able to live for very long because we all need water to survive. When we brought the conversation back to our Science lesson we decided to water one of the corn seeds once every 2 days vs. every other day to see if we notice a difference. My students are really into this experiment and I think this information could be a great tie in to the lesson.

     When the chart popped up and Clay stated, "China and India had over half of Global GDP' I wasn't surprised. In the 1800's the United States was still a fairly young country trying to gain its bearings. With these statistics being from the middle of the Industrial Revolution, it doesn't shock me at all that China began creating factories to build and execute anything and everything they could. When you have populations that massive, you need to create jobs and forms of income for people to be able to support themselves. It's a double whammy that they were able to not only use their population for the greater good, but also expand their mark on the world with the amount of goods being created/delivered.