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AnonymousCori: I feel you are basing your argument on cultural relativism. All parts of a culture are not pretty ,and yes judgement comes into play hopefully through reason and discussion. When you bring in judgement and pose it as a fault then the accusatory party preempts any discussion on the subject. This results in tolerance without engagement. It is a very safe position and non-threatening but little else. I am sorry foot binding is a crippling practice and we should be as engaging and critique other cultures as we are with our own. JC [Edit by="jcsmyth on Jun 21, 7:45:16 PM"][/Edit]
Anonymous"Take everything in moderation", I do agree with you there.
One wonders if ever there will be time, when women do not feel her physical features
are not the assets a men will judge her worthy of being his partner...
As a high school teacher, it is heart breaking to see how these young girls are compromising so much of their self-worth to be attractive and popular.
Unfortunately, through out history and nations we see this so prevelant, in varying degrees.
Yes, one does wonder if the Muslims have a better understanding of the need for women to be inconspicuous, instead of in public display...The question is the underlining factor of the motive of a man who choses being with a woman who is fully covered or one who is dressed attractively?
AnonymousA website which I found very interesting is called"The Silent Problem" Poevrty in China. It has all kinds of statistics on poverty in China that can be used in various ways. It has a section comparing the resource and wealth difference between rural and urban centers. One can use these statistics to have a conversation or debate about the "progress" of China under a capitalist system. The website is
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~koyam20m/index.html [Edit by="esanchez on Jul 25, 9:59:43 AM"][/Edit]
AnonymousI just read and interesting article about China passing the U.S. on carbon-dioxide emissions. The article states that China now passes the U.S. by 7.5%.. It the same article it mentioned that the Chinese felt that they were unfairly being criticized..they state:
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called China the "world's factory" and said criticism of its increased emissions was unfair.
"The developed countries move a lot of manufacturing industry into China. A lot of the things you wear, you use, you eat are produced in China," he said at a regular news briefing. "On the one hand, you shall increase the production in China, on the other hand you criticize China on the emission-reduction issue."
The article also states that on a per capita basis the U.S. is still way ahead. The average Chinese person emites 10,500 pounds of carbon-dioxide while the U.S. is at 42,500 per person.
AnonymousRecently the enviornmental and human effects of spraying 18 million gallons of agent orange by the U.S. on the Vietnamese people is back in the news again. A group of victims of agent orange traveled to New York and some testified in federal court as part of a lawsuit against over 30 U.S. companies including Monsato and Dow Chemical. As people know the U.S. committed many atrocities during the war. The article I read said over 3 million people have been affected by agent orange and the U.S. still has not given a dime to help out with the problem, actually they refuse to acknowledge that they are responisble for people getting sick. Many kids are still born with birth defects and we will see what happens...it is now affecting the fourth generation of Vietnamese.
Concerning U.S. soldiers the article mentions that soem are affected by it also. I believe they have won some resources but alos have not been fully compesated or helped.
also the article said that one cannot sue the military thats why it is not being sued.
The group is part of a group called
Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign
AnonymousI am developing my lesson on China and Japan and their experiences with the West. I will have to divide it into several segments, but somehow manage to keep them connected when the study ends with the contemporary era and issues facing us.
In the course of this research, I found several web pages that will be useful.
One is the Asia for Educators at Columbia University.
In particular, their page on the Meiji Constitution is easy to read and students should find it helps them answer questions I might pose to them.....
1. How is this Constitution a response to Western pressure?
2. How is this Constitution still Japanese?
The page has its own questions as well.
I was thinking of making each section of the historic overview a web quest. Students would use the assembled URL links to answer a prompt posed about the particular era of contact. There would be an analytical element asking about change/continuity over time and/or comparison of the two's interactions with the West (ala AP World History).
I always bite off more than I can chew. I have a month or unfettered thinking (I am free of school thought for July, yay!) to "git 'er done".
ja ne
AnonymousOne school text I used years ago had an easy breakdown of the Canton System. As part of my development of the China/Japan and the West comparison project, the Qing Chinese effort to keep a lid on Western traders is crucial to future events.
This page from the page of Professor Joseph O'Brien of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at Columbia University, provides a similar breakdown of the Canton System.
This link will help students in their web quest challenge on the evolutionary events leading to China's 19th century experience (nightmare?) with the West.
Professor O'Brien has over a dozen other sources that I will most likely incorporate as well.
[Edit by="vortiz on Jul 1, 11:01:59 AM"][/Edit]
[Edit by="vortiz on Jul 1, 11:03:51 AM"][/Edit]
AnonymousProfessor Richard Smith of Asian Studies Program of Rice University has a page comparing Meiji Japan and Qing China in the late 19th century.
Most likely, I would use this page as an alternate to actual research and analysis for students who are having trouble with the process. It is clear and they can use the text and material I prepare to fill in gaps and produce a treatment showing their understanding of the developments experienced by the two powers with the West.
AnonymousDigital China is a cyber offering of Harvard University.
I found a copy of a letter from Qing Minister Lin Zexu to Queen Victoria, beseeching her to control the riff-raff doing business in East Asia on the eve of what would turn out to be the Opium War. It lends insight into the Chinese efforts to appeal to British justice and morality while maintaining the superiority of China in the Sino-Anglo relationship.
I am a big fan of primary sources and want to use as many as possible. Students need to see the words of the actual people. They need to breakdown what background led to the use of certain expression. They also need the realization the "speakers" are people like them who have power because of their position and accomplishment. Primary sources offer a chance to gain this awareness.
A further question I like to ask students who have been paying attention is this: "Why would a letter to the Queen of England in 1839 not do much to change British foreign policy?" I have been rewarded by at least one observant individual in each class who remembers the Glorius Revolution, or the shift in power to the Parliament at least, and points it out.
Connections are marvelous. One development almost two hundred years prior leads to a seemingly unrelated development later. I try to get students to see these moments.[Edit by="vortiz on Jul 1, 11:58:18 AM"][/Edit]
AnonymousVisualizing Cultures is a lesson series by Professors John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa through an on-line service of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This series uses art to explore Japanese transitions from the Perry Expedition to the early 19th century.
It also has commentary/explanations to guide a student in analyzing the motivations of artists in presenting the world and feelings around them to the public.
On a higher academic level, the MIT discussion of the controversy posed by the material's historic messages and subsequent analysis value is of great service to educators concerned about possible controversy in their own communities.
Though this and other sites I have found are currently available, experience tells me they are, at best, transitory. I hope all these sites stay up, but institutional sites come and go with personal transfers and loss of funding/interest. One solution is to download the files and keep them for the future. Be sure to give credit to your resources. Students have to and so must we.
AnonymousRecently I was listening to KPFK Free Speech radio when thye had a story about healthcare in China. They talked about how the rural population is still not benefiting from China's economic boom. 70% of the Chinese population is rural. Before China was capitalist under socialist ideas the rural communes earnings subsidised healthcare for rural Chinese but today one visit to the doctor can cost a full years pay.
The report talked about how the Chinese government is attempting to address this problem. By 2008 China hopes that 80% of rural communities will have access to this program where the government will pay from 80 tp 90% of some of the healthcare cost which has already begun to benefit some people. One issue that still remains is that they are not funding the building of more hospitals in order to accomadate this group of people that are finally having some access to healthcare, as of yet.
I thought is was intereting in general but also in light of the recent debate on healthcare in the U.S. with the movie SICKO.
AnonymousIn reference to my comment on foot binding, was for western culture to NOT pass judgement on other cultural practices to create this "image" to make women more marketable: as "western" culture is bombarded with adverstisements promoting augmentations,ETC...of their "belief of what makes a women attractive".
Once I met a woman from one of the African countries who practice female genital circumscision. I remember in my Anthro class watching video clippings of young girls being taken into huts to have this procedure done and the screams....soo haunting... thinking how cruel. When I met this woman, she of course views this as a positive practice; making me realize who am I to pass this judgement. We as human beings, unfortunately, have to some degree have an ethnocentric view towards certain values and practices....
AnonymousAn interesting note is that during the 1800s in the United States, it was thought that a womans ankles were very attractive. Therfore, for modesty reasons, it was considered that women should keep their ankles covered. Although they weren't beaten otherwise as they would have been in other parts of the world.
AnonymousThis new capability of China to shoot down a satelite is desturbing to the United States for two reasons. First, currently the United States relies extensively on satelite communication not only for civilian , but for military purposes as well, and the U.S. military under its planned reoganization is to become lighter, more technological, and much more dependant on satelite communication. Second, the United States has already declared its need and willingness to protect and maintain its superiority in space.
AnonymousNo we don't! We as human beings need to step up and speak out when something is wrong. We need to stop being so concerned about being sensitive and avoiding offending people and their culture. People offend me and my culture all the time. If some people in the United States in the 1850s and 1860s were so concerned about being sensitive and avoiding offending other people and their culture, there would still be slavery in the Southern United States. Instead those that spoke out were concerned with the culture that was portrayed in the Declaration of Independence and many of them eventually fought for it.