Teaching freshmen about China's one child policy

Teaching freshmen about China's one child policy

  9:40 PM    Jlu17

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I had the exciting opportunity of teaching Mr. Tyau's World Cultures Pacific Rim classes about China's one child policy and its effects on different aspects of Chinese society. I originally wanted to focus on China's environmental regulations, but for reasons I detailed here, I changed my path to go in this direction.

I taught two classes over the span of two days. For each class, I had a PowerPoint about the background behind the one child policy and readings for the students prepared. My background info included a (very!) brief summary of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, along with their effects on the Chinese population boom in the 1960s and 70s. Once I reached the point in time when the government dropped the one child policy, I started a quick simulation. Each student received a random number from 1-15 and randomly chose a candy from a bag that I brought that would end up being their "child" (half were Snickers, the other half were 4 other different kinds of chocolates. I didn't expect there to be so many Snickers, but it didn't matter in the end). After every student picked one, I labeled the Snickers boys and everything else girls. There were several exceptions that I made for some students to receive more candy:

• For students with an even number, they represented China's rural population. Thus, the students with an even number and a candy that was not a Snicker's was able to pick a second candy.
• A student with the number 13 represented China's ethnic minority population. They could grab as much candy as they wanted.
• A student with the number 3 represented the physically disabled rural population in China, and could receive a second candy.
• A student with the number 5 represented the parents who had their children outside of China. Even though this student received a second candy, in real life, the child born outside of China received no public benefits (public education, healthcare, etc.) and had no Chinese passport. 
• A student with the number 7 represented the Chinese population who worked/studied overseas but returned to China. This population received many benefits, such as skipping the primary school lottery system and choosing the schools in the district for their kids, having multiple kids, etc. The Chinese government heavily encourages overseas Chinese to return to China.

I then went over the exceptions through the PowerPoint and continued my timeline up to the institution of the two child policy. Afterwards, I divided the class into three groups, and every group received readings (full list here) on a certain topic: one examined how the policy affected China's growing elderly population, another examined how the policy affected China's only-child population, and the third examined how the resulting male-female imbalance affected China's overall population. Every student received a different reading--a news article or an excerpt from One Child--so after they finished reading, I had the groups discuss what they read to each other.

After the small group discussions, I had the students write about the themes they read about in Chinese culture that the policy affected on white boards, and once they wrote what they learned, I had them connect these themes to American culture or cultures that they learned about throughout the year in this class. Most of them drew contrasts between Chinese culture and American culture because they knew American culture best.

Courtesy of Ms. Diederich, who came to my second class!

I then had everyone share their results and discuss their thoughts about these issues. I prepared several videos in case we finished our discussions early, but there was no time in either class to watch the videos. The first video documented several people's lives one year after the two child policy was instated. The second and third videos expanded on the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, respectively, in case the students wanted to learn more about them.

I hope the simulation and discussions really helped the students learn what I wanted to teach. They seemed more interested when they were participating in their own learning rather than watching me lecture. I was initially nervous before both classes on how well I could engage the students, but the students' friendly enthusiasm and sharp insight helped create a productive discussing atmosphere.

In conclusion, I had a great time planning out these classes and teaching freshmen about a topic that they were completely unfamiliar with. I would like to thank everyone who helped me out with my project--my classmates, Dr. Kim, Mr. Caragher, Ms. Diederich, and most of all, Mr. Tyau.