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Lesson # 3   Modern Chinese Family Values

 

Estimated Teaching Time = Eight 45 minute periods

 

Introduce the post-Mao period and Deng Xiaoping's reforms, including the move to privatization and economic liberalism, but without the accompanying political liberties.  Also the government's continuing control over the family, namely the one-child-per-family campaign.

 

Objectives

 

¤         Students will read ̉The Chinese Family Today" to continue to trace the political, economic, and cultural changes within China in the twentieth century on an illustrated timeline (from 1976 to the present) and describe the preferences for spouses in modern China. (All readings are fully sourced below.)

¤         Students will identify and describe the economic changes in China, including the responsibility system, internal migration, and"socialism with Chinese characteristics" by reading selections from The New York Times and Newsweek and viewing excerpts from China Now.

¤         Students will identify the challenges of China's population pressures on its food supply, natural resources, and state services and assess the merits of the one-child-per-family campaign by reading Chapter 8 (Where Have All the Babies Gone?) in China Wakes.

¤         Students will analyze the events leading up to and following the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square by viewing photographs and reading Chapter 3 (Ghosts) and Chapter 9 (Castrating the Thinkers) in China Wakes.

¤         Students will continue a written reflection journal, taking particular note of change and continuity in ritual behaviors at marriages, births, and deaths within Chinese families.

 

Activities

 

1.        LINGUISTIC/LOGICAL/SPATIAL

 

2.        LINGUISTIC/INTERPERSONAL

Have students in each group generate a list of potential benefits and problems caused by changes in economic policies.  Have each group report while the whole class adds to a master list of benefits and problems.  Discussion should include increased personal wealth for rural migrants, increased industrialization, decreased agricultural output lost to erosion and development, urban overpopulation, crime, and social unrest. 

 

3.        LINGUISTIC/SPATIAL

 

4.        LINGUISTIC/INTRAPERSONAL/LOGICAL/SPATIAL

 

5.        SPATIAL /INTERPERSONAL/LINGUISTIC/INTRAPERSONAL

¤         Have students speculate on the role of family members of dissidents and compare them to the family members in To Live and Wild Swans. (See Lesson #2 for activities for these sources.)

 

6.        LINGUISTIC/SPATIAL

 

** Available in Primary Source library

 

 

Lesson Three Assignments and Worksheets

 


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