ENGAGEMENT MODULE 4: LOOKING AT THE WORLD

THROUGH CHILDREN’S EYESAndrew Wit

The Impending End of the World

Annotation – This depiction of the world is by a child

from Algeria, the name and age are not known. My interpretation of this map is that this child sees death and destruction all around him and that it will eventually lead to the end of the world.

An Eleven Year Olds view on Globalization.

United StatesAnnotation – This rendition of the world was created in 1995 by

an eleven year old American from Corona Del Mar, CA and is title Amazing Connection. At the time, this map represents the effects of globalization of the time. Evidence of this is the phone lines that was allowing people to communicated easier and dial-up internet connections. It is interesting to note what this American child chose to represent the Middle East with, years before G.W. Bush’s war in the Middle East.

This Child’s Knowledge of or Perspective on Social Studies

This map represents that this child’s knowledge of socials studies is rather limited. We can infer this because of the use of stereotypes to characterize different cultures around the globe. The child uses an oil rig to symbolize the middle east, so even in 1995, what most American children thought of the has largely gone unchanged until today. This child’s knowledge of how connected the world was is fairly accurate of the time.

Each Continent is just one branch of a larger whole.

Annotation – This map, titled Tree of the World, was

done by a ten year old child from the Czech Republic. This child cares about nature and believes that we all come from the earth. The tree represents the earth and like Pangaea it was once a single body, but eventually as the tree and earth grew it had to separate.

Trying to put the world back together, we are the forces that can still tear it apart.

Annotation – The title of this map is Earth Future – In

Our Hands and comes from the Ukraine. A five year old created this map in 2007. My interpretation of this child’s view is that the doves are piecing the world back together after so many conflict and it is now up to us to decide whether or not that the world becomes a whole community or stays fractured.

Capitalism and stereotypes at its finest.

Annotation – Food Around the World was created by a

14 year old Canadian girl in 1999. The idea of globalization is at the forefront of this map because the map is not divided by country lines but by cultural lines. This child does not see the world as different nations but as different cultures.

Garbage is the weight of the world, and it cannot survive.

ArgentinaAnnotation – Lets Take Care of the Planet is a map

drawn by a nine year old Argentinean girl in 1999. The environment is not just a concern of citizens of nations that are considered super powers. A child can see the amount of waste in our world and how the world cannot survive if we have this much garbage.

Like an arrow through the heart symbolizes love, a missile through

the earth symbolizes our affair with weapons.

Annotation – This is an eight year old Chilean girl’s

view of the world. I think that this child is scared of the conflicts around the world. It is these weapons of mass destruction will eventually lead to the end of the world, as it is going directly through the middle of the globe.

Continents are often associated with animals to serve as symbols.

Annotation – The map of the world, or more

specifically Australia, was created by a six year old Hungarian and is titled I wish I could play the games of children living on the other side of the world. The child’s worldview can be realized from the choice to use aborigines to describe the Australians, just to see how much an influence stereotypes have and how similar they are around the world.

No matter where you live, people feel the affect of terrorism.

Annotation – This interpretation of the world, Together

Fighting Terrorism, was created by a fifteen year old Indonesian boy. This boy’s view of the world is quite striking because it is amazing to see that terrorism affects everyone around the world and that it is not a problem that can be solved by one nation.

It is amazing what you can see when you view the world as a statistic.

Annotation – This representation of the world was

created by a fifteen year old Japanese child. The title of this map is The Total CO2 Discharge. This map represents that the child cares about the environment that they the best way to affection change is to show facts that cannot be disputed.

Synthesis of the Ten Maps

There are two common themes that run through most of these maps. The first is that children are concerned about the environment. The second is that children are not oblivious to the dangers in the world around them. The Clark article from the second week of the course applies to this study. People from all over the world learn differently and their perceptions will be shaped by the society in which they live.

Instructional Idea

I may teach world history next year and these pictures will be used in my class to help teach about cultural diffusion and stereotypes. Here is how I would construct my lesson – I would have students get into groups, each group would be given ten maps and the names of the countries form which they came from on separate sheets of paper. Groups would then have to match the country with which map they believe created it. Students would then write a reason for why they believe that a particular map came from the country in which they matched it to. Students would then be given the correct matches and would then have to write a paragraph reflection if they learned anything about the world from perhaps their own biases. After the reflection we would have a discussion as a class by bringing up the maps on the LCD projector and talking about our choices and see what commonalities arose between the groups. At the end of the lesson students would be able to articulate how others students around the perceive the world in which they live and how it may be different from their own views.