Professor Steve Lamy teaches Los Angeles area teachers how to teach international relations.
Photo credit: Mason Poole
|
|
Case for Critical Thinking
Teachers put a human face on politics and get high school students fired up about world affairs
By Pamela J. Johnson
May 2006
Raise your hand if you studied the United States government in high school social studies.
OK. How about globalization? No show of hands?
Then
it’s probably safe to say you learned nothing about Mama Doudou
(pronounced dodo). She’s a businesswoman who supplies miners with
“temporary wives” deep in the rain forest of Africa in exchange for a
kilo of coltan, a mineral found in most electronic toys, cell phones
and computers.
Professor Steve Lamy wants to change all that. In
a new civic-engagement program, the director of the School of
International Relations at USC College is helping to get high school
students pumped up about current global issues.
Called Case
Teaching Initiative in Civics Education, the program brings 25 teachers
from the Los Angeles area to USC for monthly workshops. During the
sessions, teachers learn how to use cases — or real historical events —
when instructing students on complicated world affairs.
“You
guys to me are the most powerful people in the world,” Lamy told a
group of high school teachers during a Saturday workshop in late
February. “Kids will be socialized about how the world actually works
because of your teaching.”
Lamy emphasized the importance of
getting students involved in international relations at a young age.
Teachers can use case teaching to reach this goal, he said.
A
method often used in law and medical schools, case teaching encourages
students to use critical-thinking and analytical skills. Each case
helps to illustrate wide-ranging topics, from foreign policy belief
systems to globalization — a term referring to the hotly debated
worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and culture
exchanges.
Take the case of entrepreneur Mama Doudou, which
teaches students the devastating results when political, economic,
social and cultural worlds collide.
The case describes the
life of Doudou Wangonda, dubbed Mama as a title of respect. She
arranged for prostitutes to live with hundreds of temporary miners
working in illegal camps in eastern Congo.
The Congo forest
preserve is home to endangered species of monkeys, gorillas and okapi.
The miners paid Mama Doudou in coltan — a gritty, super-thick mud three
times heavier than iron and slightly lighter than gold. Once refined in
American and European factories, it becomes tantalum, found inside
nearly every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant and cell phone.
The
consumer demand for electronics in wealthy nations has fueled a mad
rush for coltan across the globe. When the price of coltan peaked, Mama
Doudou made a killing.
But the trade of minerals such as
coltan has also sparked unprecedented violence in the region, as people
fiercely compete for a share. The illegal mining and fighting has
devastated the environment. Miners and soldiers routinely kill the
endangered species for food.
Mama Doudou’s business venture
represents a catastrophic encounter between the global high-tech
economy and one of the world’s most devastated countries, Lamy told the
teachers.
Ed LeVine, a U.S. government teacher at Chatsworth
High School, was ahead of the class. Prior to that Saturday session, he
had discussed the Mama Doudou case with his students.
“My
students really responded to the Mama Doudou case because it was short
and interesting,” LeVine said. “They were fascinated by it.”
The
case, LeVine said, helped to put a human face on political terms such
as embargo, as well as prompted his students to ponder more
philosophical questions such as the role of the U.S. in the Congo.
His
student Andrew Chung, for example, said a U.S.-led embargo against
Africa wouldn’t help lessen the problems in the ravaged country.
“The
people of the Congo are dirt poor,” Andrew explained. “They’ll turn to
any means necessary to make enough money to get by. As long as the
Congo remains an overwhelmingly Third World country, illegal activities
such as coltan mining will continue.”
Andrew said that the U.S. should be part of the solution, but he expressed concerns.
“I
highly doubt that other than a small segment of the population, anyone
will give up cheap electronics for the sake of some far-off Third-World
country,” he said.
This is exactly the kind of discussion LeVine had hoped the case would spark.
“For
some of my students who aren’t going on to college, this is going to be
it,” LeVine said. “This is all they’ll learn in school about
international relations. For others, it might plant a seed to pursue a
career in international relations.”
The Case program is
sponsored by CALIS (Center for Active Learning in International
Studies), operated under the auspices of the East Asian Studies Center
and School of International Relations.
The center’s goal is to build strong civic engagement programs aimed at teaching youths about world issues.
Since
the state cut its funding to CALIS in July 2005, the center began
charging fees for some services. The Case program was possible because
the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to compensate its
participating teachers. Of the 25 participants, 21 are from LAUSD.
“Since
I met Steve Lamy in the early 1980s, teaching current global issues in
high schools has always been the goal,” CALIS director Teresa Hudock
said.
Hudock was a high school social studies teacher working
in Studio City when she attended one of Lamy’s outreach programs. Since
Lamy recruited her in 1984, the pair has worked to get international
relations taught in high schools. It’s a challenge because the state
does not require such lessons.
“This is a major coup for CALIS,” Hudock said of the Case program.
Teachers
such as LeVine hope the case lessons are just the beginning. He wants
to work with Lamy to develop a new international relations course at
his school.
“I just want my students to be able to pick up a
newspaper and understand the issues,” LeVine said. “I want them to be
able to analyze what’s going on in the world and have their own
opinions. I want them to develop an interest, a passion.”
|
|
|
