Crossroads: Middle School Unit XII Crossroads Middle School Curriculum

Unit XII: A Nation in Quandary: 1975 -

Question/Problem 3: How is the United States interconnected to the rest of the world?

Contents

Objectives

Description of lesson/activity

Resources


Objectives: The students will be able to:

  1. describe in what ways the United States is interconnected with the world.

  2. identify and explain examples of the involvement of the United States in the world since 1980.

  3. gather and record information from a variety of resources.

  4. locate places of United States involvement on a world map.


Description of lesson/activity:

  1. In order to show students that we are connected to the world in economic ways, the teacher should first direct students to observe everything that is around them in their classroom and to determine the origin of each item. For example, a tag in their shirts might show that it was made in Taiwan, their watch might be stamped on the back "made in Japan." Have students brainstorm, observe, and share their findings with the class. You might want to list on the board all the places they have found in this activity. Discussion should lead students to the realization that we trade substantially with foreign markets.

  2. For homework, the teacher could ask students to make a list of ten imported goods found in their bedroom. The list should be two columns: the product and the country of origin. Discussion can resume the next day.

  3. The teacher should then ask students what happens when we are not able to get the goods that we need from foreign markets? Some sample answers might be: "We need to make the product ourselves." "We change markets." "We do without the product." If it has not come out thusfar, the teacher should remind students of the Persian Gulf War. America responded so swiftly to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in large part because of our dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf states.

  4. The teacher should then brainstorm with the class other reasons why we are interconnected with the world. Students should understand that these interconnections are a result of foreign policy, and that this is a form of public policy. Some answers might be: natural disasters, strategic reasons, humanitarian reasons. You might even want to have students come up with examples such as our involvement in Somalia because of famine (humanitarian reason) and the fact that Somalia was one of our allies in the days we sought to contain Soviet influence in that part of Africa (strategic reason). Students should understand that there are often two or more reasons (e.g., a strategic reason and a humanitarian reason) for involvement.

  5. Divide students into small groups and direct them to research specific examples of U.S. involvement in world affairs during the administrations of Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Using textbooks, periodicals, and reference works, group members should complete the chart (Student Resource #1) giving at least two examples for each Administration. There are more foreign policies for some administrations than others.

    Some appropriate examples that might be found are:

    Carter: Iran Hostage Affair, Salt II, Camp David Accords, boycott of 1980 Olympics due to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan: release of Iran hostages, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, START talks Bush: Panama, Persian Gulf War, end of Cold War, Somalia, Bosnia Clinton: Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Middle East

  6. Class will reassemble to share and discuss information found and to fill in any gaps on their charts.

  7. Give students a world map (Student Resource #2) and using the information from their charts, they should locate the places where the U.S. was involved and indicate on the map during which presidential administration it occurred. Students are to make symbols to use on their map that would be representative of each of the administrations. Symbols should be indicated in the map legend.

 Resources :

Resource 1: World Involvement Chart

Resource 2: World Map

  1. Textbooks

  2. Periodicals (such as Time and Newsweek)

  3. World atlas and almanacs


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