Teaching about South Asia

[clay dube]

Many teachers have already contributed ideas and resources for teaching about South Asia. Places to look include the film festival thread (reviews of Earth, Gandhi, and other movies), the web resources thread (my favorite South Asia site is Peter Gottschaulk's Virtual Village http://virtualvillage.wesleyan.edu/), the math/science thread, and the middle school thread.

But given South Asia's importance in the world (more than 1.4 billion people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sikkum, and Bhutan) and in the history of the world (the point of origin for three global faiths), we should also have a corner here dedicated to discussions of how to bring South Asia into the curriculum.

Please continue to put film reviews and website reviews in those threads, but here let's talk about bringing South Asia alive for our students.

[Anonymous]

I surfed the virtual village website and found it very, very informative. The website really lives up to its name of providing a virtual view of India's life in Arampur. I stayed long in the Topics of Life and found a lot of information about India's caste system and its historical background. In my history class, I teach India before China. Having found this virtual village website through Clay Dube's post is really a bonus for me. Now, I can use this website in my future lesson designs because of its richness in information and visual aids that can make the lessons very interesting. I love history as a subject. However, as a Middle School teacher of special needs students, I have always been challenged by how to make my History lessons interesting. I often noticed most of my students bored about the subject. However, when I present pictures that I resourced from Internet, that helped perk up the boring session. I envision this website will help me design a more interactive session with my students now and in the forthcoming school years, God willing I get that far. Thanks Clay.

[Anonymous]

I read with special interest the Talking Points I got from USCI through my LAUSD e-mail. What interested me was the issue on the apparent public dissatisfaction over the reportedly "easy way" by which rich people in China could get exemption from the birth cap. In my home country, the Philippines, the government is also campaigning hard to control the population explosion using gov't-sponsored family planning programs. Because Philippines is largely a Roman Catholic country, the government is encountering opposition from the Catholic Bishops on the use of contraceptives to plan family births. Former President Joseph Estrada, who was popularly elected in 1998 but ousted by a military backed coup in 2001, blames the Catholic Bishops as part of the coup plotters because he pursued vigorously his government family planning programs, which the former president says was more democratic because couples were allowed to choose their own method --the natural rhythmic method or through the use of contraceptives. I also like the other talking points mentioned, especially, on the economy and Chinese investments.

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