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GENDER AND GLOBAL ISSUES IN THE CLASSROOM
Gender and Global Issues in the Classroom was a K-12 Outreach program for teacher training and curriculum enrichment. Our goal was to inject gender into the curriculum, bringing alive global issues such as human rights, the environment, and immigration from a gendered perspective. In January 2004, we hosted a 40 hour continuing education module program and in 2003 we hosted a module with three themes related to state content standards.
Having a conception of Human Rights that includes equality between the sexes provides a starting point for a more encompassing perspective of gender roles. Putting human rights in a global context helps students understand the need for solidarity, but with culturally relative sensitivity. For example, in the twelfth grade, students have the opportunity to look at human rights in an international context through the intersection of Content Standards 12.2 and 12.9. Content Standard 12.2 asks students to "evaluate, and take and defend positions on the scope and limits of rights and obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships among them, and how they are secured." Content Standard 12.9 asks students to "analyze the origins, characteristics, and development of different political systems across time, with emphasis on the quest for political democracy, its advances and obstacles".
An emphasis on the Environment from a gender perspective asks questions about gendered access to natural resources, exploitation, conservation and control in the US and globally. This links to Content Standard 11.11.5 for the 11th grade that "Students analyze the major social problems and domestic policy issues in contemporary American society, in terms of… the impact, need and controversies associated with environmental conservation, expansion of the national park system, and the development of environmental protection laws, with particular attention to the interaction between environmental protection and property rights"
An emphasis on Immigration from a gender perspective brings in issues of labor practices, religious systems, and ethnicity. The 8th Grade: Standard 8.12.7 "Students analyze the transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions in the United States in response to the Industrial Revolution, in terms of… the new sources of large-scale immigration and the contribution of immigrants to the building of cities and the economy; the ways in which new social and economic patterns encouraged assimilation of newcomers into the mainstream amidst growing cultural diversity; and the new wave of nativism".
Examination of these phenomena across time and across national and regional political organization often provide essential insight into worldwide patterns of social, economic, or political behavior, as well as inconsistencies and variations in the patterns. Understanding such patterns and their variations enables students to put into a more balanced perspective those local or regional events or developments that might otherwise be viewed as unique or idiosyncratic. Study of these larger patterns of human and institutional conduct needs to be balanced by adequate attention to the specific cultural and national contexts which give concrete meaning to the general patterns."
Our goal with this program was to strengthen student understanding of gender systems and perspectives through the preparation of exemplary teacher leaders who would influence the professional practice of fellow teachers.
Margaret B. Swain, Director, Gender & Global Issues, Anna Kato and Rebecca R. O'Brien, Teacher Education Supervisors, in partnership with Dianne Bruckner, Director, California International Studies Project (CISP), University of the Pacific