A New York Times Newspaper in Education Curriculum Guide ...

[Pages:60]A New York Times Newspaper in Education Curriculum Guide

GLOBAL ECONOMICS

With The New York Times

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TEACHING GLOBAL ECONOMICS WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Using The New York Times as a Teaching Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Structure of the Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Time Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 The New York Times Learning Network (learning.blogs.) . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Globalization: An Introduction by Dr. Peter F. Bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Globalization: The Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Globalism: A Brief History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Goals of the Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Standard Materials Needed for Each Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

LESSONS

Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5 Lesson 6 Lesson 7 Lesson 8 Lesson 9 Lesson 10

Lesson 11 Lesson 12 Lesson 13 Lesson 14

Identifying Global Issues: The New York Times Clippings Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 The Global Economy and the Global Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Measuring the Costs and Benefits of Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 What Do We Mean by Development? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Human Development and Gender Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 How to Improve Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Understanding Development in Specific Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 What Determines Economic Growth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Free Trade and Development: The Impact of Nafta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Understanding Major Institutions of Globalization: the World Bank, I.M.F. and W.T.O. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Rich and Poor Countries: Can Foreign Aid and Foreign Investment Help? . . . . . . .32 The Impact of Globalization on Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Globalization and "Sweatshops" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Globalization: What Are the Alternatives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

APPENDIX

Correlation to the Standards of the National Council on Economic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Archive of Related New York Times Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

Written by Dr. Peter Bell, Executive Director, New York State Council on Economic Education; Associate Professor of Economics, State University of New York at Purchase. Contributing Writer, Ellen S. Doukoullos. This educator's guide was developed by The New York Times Newspaper in Education program. It did not involve the reporting or editing staff of The New York Times.

? 2010 The New York Times

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Global Economics With The New York Times

INTRODUCTION

USING THE NEW YORK TIMES AS A TEACHING STRATEGY A Message from the Newspaper in Education Program

The daily Business section provides still more coverage of international economic issues as well as useful tables and analytical charts.

RATIONALE Capturing student interest in global issues is a challenge for many teachers of global economics. The troubles of distant nations and their peoples long seemed irrelevant to many American students who are surrounded by a wealth of resources and unlimited opportunities.

Using The New York Times as a teaching strategy will bring the world to your students in an easy-to-use format. You and your students will find the entire New York Times newspaper is rich with global content.

Times reporters live and work in every hemisphere of the world, bringing a first-hand knowledge of the impact of many factors like war and social change on the economic health of large and small nations. Their reports appear on the front page of The Times as well as on the International pages in section A. The World Briefing and News Summary, also in section A, provide a quick summary of news from all parts of the globe.

The "Journal" feature appears most days of the week, with events and datelines from a different part of the world. These human interest stories often reveal the stunning impact of economic disruption and decay on families.

Analysis pieces that frequently accompany news reports probe behind the raw facts and provoke thinking about the big issues. These pieces are models for writing and instruction in critical thinking.

The Editorial and Op-Ed (opposite the Editorial page) and letters pages frequently discuss global economic issues. These pages are models and prompts for essay-writing.

Ads throughout The New York Times display goods from all around the globe. The Times is a global marketplace for these goods. Students can see the impact of economic decisions made far away on the pages of the newspaper they hold in their hands.

The daily Sports section reports news of international and national sports events and athletes, including analysis of the business of sports.

Wednesday's Times reports on foods and beverages ? often from around the globe -- and the industries associated with them.

The Science Times section, published on Tuesday, includes reports of the economics of health care around the globe.

The Arts section reports daily on issues such as global entertainment and the publishing industry. Articles about the economic impact of copyright conflicts, for example, may appear in this section as well as in the main news and business sections.

Labor issues, restructuring of companies and emerging professions are part of many reports throughout The New York Times.

The New York Times becomes your "living textbook." We encourage you and your students to read, analyze, clip and re-read salient items from its pages each day.

STRUCTURE OF THE LESSONS

The Objectives for each lesson are designed as an assessment

of learning. Students will demonstrate their understanding of

the concepts taught by creating a measurable product -- such

as an essay in the style of the Op-Ed page or news analysis

in The New York Times, a chart or role-playing labor issues.

The Newspaper Activity takes students into today's New

York Times to demonstrate that the complex economic issues

are a continuing story happening right now. Using the

current day's issue will engage your students in the

immediacy of global economics.

Some lessons include Times articles from the archives

to be used as models for direct teaching of analysis and

critical thinking skills. After students read them, they should

turn to today's Times and apply the skills to current reports

of global economic activity.

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Global Economics With The New York Times

INTRODUCTION

Cooperative/collaborative learning activities are specified when a concept needs to be analyzed from different approaches. The small groups should be composed of three or four students.

Extension/homework activities provide research opportunities for advanced classes, writing assignments and opportunities for problem-solving.

Web sites provide up-to-date tables of data from many sources such as the United Nations and World Bank. These references are included for both teacher and students.

TIME FRAME Each lesson plan focuses on a specific global economics concept. The lessons build on each other toward an understanding of the global economy.

Build the lessons into your teaching schedule. Use the activities in class and as homework. We recommend daily reading of The New York Times as many economics stories evolve daily. Following an issue is crucial for understanding. When time is limited, establish a newspaper learning center in your classroom with the printed newspaper and task cards from the activities in this guide.

THE NEW YORK TIMES LEARNING NETWORK learning.blogs.

The New York Times Learning Network offers interactive classroom activities based on the Monday ? Friday editions of The Times. The wealth of features on the site includes lesson plans linked to specific Times articles, a lesson plan archive and search, an interactive daily news quiz, "Word of the Day," "On This Day in History" feature that links to historical Times articles, "6 Q's About the News" activity linked to a Times article, "Times Fill-Ins" sentence completion feature, Student Crossword and Student Opinion (for students age 13 and older).

GLOBALIZATION: An Introduction by Dr. Peter F. Bell

We live in an increasingly integrated or globalized economy. But what exactly is globalization? Is it a new phenomenon? How should it be taught? How can it be usefully integrated with social studies curricula?

There are sharp disagreements concerning the impact of globalization. Anti-globalization protests have interrupted meetings of the I.M.F., World Bank and W.T.O. in many parts of the world. Why the disagreements? On the one hand are people who believe that increased trade and global integration is the only way to raise the standard of living of the poor countries. On the other hand, globalization is accused of causing income inequality, as well as environmental and health problems. Who is correct? Will trade increase the world's wealth, or is globalization the cause of so many of the problems facing the global economy in the 21st century? Or are these problems caused by internal factors such as corruption or mismanagement?

These lessons focus on issues that both teachers and students need to understand. They are among the most critical issues of our time. Without a framework, it is very difficult to make connections between events that are occurring in distant parts of the world.

This global economics curriculum guide is designed to help you teach students some of the critical political and economic issues in the current world order. The lessons focus on key topics in the news daily:

development and economic growth global institutions such as the World Bank and I.M.F. gender and economic development the impact of trade and globalization on the environment

and culture

GLOBALIZATION: THE PROBLEMS The World Bank has reported that almost one half (2.8 billion) of the 6 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day. 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, and 44 percent of the very poorest group live in South Asia. As many as 50 percent of the children under 5 in poor countries suffer from malnutrition (World Development Report 2000/2001: 3).

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Global Economics With The New York Times

INTRODUCTION

Other problems include:

The income gap between rich and poor countries, which has doubled in the last 40 years: the average income of the 20 richest countries being 37 times as large as that of the 20 poorest countries.

Rapid economic change and rising living standards for the richest groups in a few high-income countries in the world along with stagnation in most countries.

Growing threats to the survival of local cultures under the pressure of Western consumerism.

The growth of a low-wage industrial work force (much of it of young women) producing consumer goods for people living in the industrialized (high-income) countries.

Economic shocks that send vibrations around the world in a matter of seconds.

The persistence of low productivity in rural living areas and growing numbers of unemployed people in the crowded slums of the world's big cities.

to Islamabad. And, the terrorist attacks on America on Sept.11, 2001, were very likely in part a statement against U.S. global policies.

The lessons in this guide provide ways of examining and understanding some of these important debates about global trade and development and who should direct it.

GLOBALIZATION: A BRIEF HISTORY While the term globalization has become widespread in the media, it is not new. Integration of the world economy has been going on continuously since the period of Western exploration and expansion that began in the 15th century. What has changed during the last 500 years is the form and the extent of integration.

World history can be divided into three distinct phases: Globalization I, II & III. (Some textbooks refer to these as the Age of Exploration, the Age of Imperialism and the Modern World.)

There are three main responses to these facts:

1The poor countries deserve their fate. Poverty is a result of their own laziness, having too many children, or the corruption of their leaders.

2The best cure for poverty is free trade and free markets: the elimination of barriers to the movement of people, capital, and goods.

3Globalization favors the interests of Western corporations, and threatens the livelihood of billions of people around the world by creating greater inequality of income, and causing labor and environmental problems. This view argues that globalization needs to be curbed, regulated or modified.

It is clear that the political and economic world order in which we live has many new elements. The demand for open markets, free movements of goods and capital and the efforts to curb globalization form part of a debate about how the world economic order of the 21st century should be constructed.

These debates have become sharply drawn over the past few years with protests directed against the World Bank, I.M.F. and W.T.O., which began in Seattle in 1999, and continued in other cities around the world from Barcelona

Globalization I (the Age of Exploration) refers to the period of Western economic expansion that began in the 15th century, and that culminated in the creation of formal political empires by European countries in the late 19th century. It created a single world economy for the first time in human history. European expansion included the search for precious metals in Central and South America, the growth of the slave trade from West Africa into the Americas, and the creation of plantation systems around the world. This vast system of resource extraction, while devastating the populations of the Americas and Africa and transforming the economies and political systems of Asia, provided an important part of the capital necessary to launch industrialization in Europe. Globalization I created a system of uneven economic development.

Globalization II (the Age of Imperialism), from roughly 1870

to 1945, further integrated the world economy. The European

imperialist powers not only divided up the territory of the

world into their own empires but also created an international

division of labor: the industrialized countries sold manufactured

goods to the colonies, which specialized in the production

and export of raw materials to Europe. (A result of this process

is referred to as "path dependence" in Lesson 8.)

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Global Economics With The New York Times

INTRODUCTION

The Europeans invested in infrastructure in their colonies (railroads, colonial administration) to facilitate this process. While increased trade and production led to increased incomes around the world, the benefits were spread unevenly. Coordination of global development was for the first time centralized in London: the center of the British empire and the financial capital of the world.

Globalization II further strengthened the uneven development of the world economy by concentrating the world's capital in Europe: there was "capital deepening" in the European countries rather than "capital widening" across the world. Few countries became industrialized. For most countries the specialization into primary production created the development problems that persist today.

Globalization III (the Modern World), from 1945 to the present, is a new and more developed form of global integration and uneven development. It covers the period of de-colonization, the shift in world power from Europe to the United States, the discovery of the problem of "development" in the former colonies (which became known as the third world), the growth of foreign investment and industrialization in the less developed world, and the emergence of new institutions of global economic management: the I.M.F. and the World Bank.

This time period saw the emergence of integrated trading blocks such as the European Union, Mercosur, Nafta and Asean. Most recently, increased level of global financial flows (through currency and stock markets) have added a new dimension to economic integration that has been linked to the increasing vulnerability of the global financial system.

Globalization III clearly builds on the earlier periods. As indicated by the World Bank data, uneven development (measured by the gap between rich and poor countries and people), rather than diminishing as a result of development programs, has intensified in this period.

These lessons will help your students examine the debates about global trade and development and place them in a clear historical framework.

THE GOALS OF THE LESSONS At the conclusion of these lessons, your students will be able to discuss and write about:

1) Economic and political issues in the global economy through daily reading of The New York Times.

2) The interdependence between the lives of people living in the United States with people in other parts of the world.

3) World geography in terms of the global distribution of resources and differences in patterns of development in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

4) The main issues facing both rich and poor countries in the global economy.

5) The reasons for the gap between rich and poor countries, and the arguments for and against globalization.

6) Moral and ethical positions about the world order, their own and others.

Students will acquire these skills:

7) Determining the difference between fact and opinion.

8) Analyzing basic data related to global economics.

9) Critical thinking about globalization.

10) Generating priorities and moral opinions about the world in which we live.

11) Integrating current events into all other disciplines, including global history, geography, government and economics.

STANDARD MATERIALS NEEDED FOR EACH CLASS:

World atlas or wall map (one per class) Scissors (several for the class) Folders or binders in which to keep clippings

(one per student) Copies of The New York Times (one per student) Notebook (one per student) Pen (one per student) (optional) Overhead projector (helpful) Computer with Internet connection

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Global Economics With The New York Times

LESSON PLAN 1

IDENTIFYING GLOBAL ISSUES The New York Times Clippings Project

OBJECTIVES: At the conclusion of this lesson, students will be able to: Identify and clip articles

relating to the global economy from various sections of The New York Times. Identify countries that are in Asia, Africa or Latin America. List and categorize political and economics topics from the articles clipped.

TOOLS AND PREPARATION Today's New York Times,

one per student. Copies of worksheets A

and B for Lesson One, one each per student. Article Summary Format Sheet, one per student. Standard materials as listed in the Introduction. Write "Asia," "Africa" and "Latin America" on the board. Scan today's New York Times and mark articles in various sections that you will refer to and use in direct teaching.

WARM UP ASK YOUR CLASS: Who in this classroom has ever been to a country in Asia, Africa or Latin America?

Ask those who raise their hands: How rich or poor were the countries you visited? How do you know?

NEWSPAPER ACTIVITY Hold up a copy of today's New York Times. Distribute a copy to each student. Point to the names on the board: Asia, Africa and Latin America. Direct students to find and mark article in all sections of today's Times about

countries in these three areas of the world. Tell students to write Asia, Africa or Latin America at the top of each article that they locate. Tell students they may use the atlas or wall map to locate different countries in the articles. Allow time for students to survey the newspaper and locate articles. Check for understanding by reviewing student selections and coding by location. Distribute copies of Worksheet A for Lesson 1. Direct students to a pre-selected article and review it using the Worksheet: identify

country, main issue and key concepts. Allow time for students to find other articles and enter the information on their Worksheets.

DISCUSSION Tell students to refer to their worksheets and to rank the main issues in order

of importance. Have students read these main issues to the class and have someone write them on

the board. Ask students to raise their hands to vote on which are the most important concepts. ASK: Why do some topics apply to more than one country?

EXTENSION/HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT Distribute Worksheet B for Lesson 1. Review with students. Establish due date. (Students will need to take their copies of The New York Times home to complete, if a homework assignment.)

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LESSON

1

IDENTIFYING GLOBAL ISSUES

Global Economics With The New York Times

WORKSHEET A

NAME OF STUDENT_______________________________________

DIRECTIONS: write the name of the country (and continent where it is located) in one column (e.g. Kenya /Africa), the main issue that the article is about in another column (e.g., HIV/AIDS.) In the third column, write words or concepts in the article that need defining or discussing.

ARTICLE 1 Headline of article ____________________________________________________________________ Date/section/page ____________________________________________________________________ Country/Continent ___________________________________________________________________ Main topic __________________________________________________________________________ Concepts ___________________________________________________________________________

ARTICLE 2 Headline of article ____________________________________________________________________ Date/section/page ____________________________________________________________________ Country/Continent ___________________________________________________________________ Main topic __________________________________________________________________________ Concepts ___________________________________________________________________________

ARTICLE 3 Headline of article ____________________________________________________________________ Date/section/page ____________________________________________________________________ Country/Continent ___________________________________________________________________ Main topic __________________________________________________________________________ Concepts ___________________________________________________________________________

ARTICLE 4 Headline of article ____________________________________________________________________ Date/section/page ____________________________________________________________________ Country/Continent ___________________________________________________________________ Main topic __________________________________________________________________________ Concepts ___________________________________________________________________________

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