Researching What Comes “In-between”
I recently read Ying Chang Compestine’s Revolution is Not a Dinner Party, a gripping semi-autobiographical YA novel about the daughter of a Western-trained doctor and an Eastern-trained doctor. They live an upper middle-class life but become victims of China’s 1970s Cultural Revolution. Anything representing artistic or academic endeavor was sublimated for a glorified peasant life. Those in the protagonist’s world are repeatedly, often brutally humiliated by those in the Communist partywho are promoting an anti-intellectual, anti-Western perspective. I don’t want to say more because this really is one of those books that you will read in a single sitting.
Perhaps it was subliminal thinking that I picked up this book just as the Beijing Olympics were wrapping up. Wow - what a feat of art the Opening Ceremony was! ART. From a celebration of ancient brush painting to modern choreography, it was about ART.How does a nation that tried to annihilate artistic and intellectual growth rebuild into a powerhouse in a span of less than 40 years? This is a question that I never heard discussed during Olympic commentary. (OK, I was on deadline for a book manuscript, so I could be at fault here.)
Bring this into library reserach and the ubiquitous “country reports,” in which students are often asked to identify a country’s major historical points: in this case, China’s Cultural Revolution and its 2008 Olympic showcase. How often do we ask students to examine the years in between? The path that took a nation from one stage to another? But isn’t that where the real learning is? Isn’t that the kind of research that gives students the intellectual rigor to face challenges in the future?
Related standards:
1.1.7 Make sense of information gathered from diverse sources by identifying misconceptions, main and supporting ideas, conflicting information, and point of view or bias.
1.2.1 Display initiative and engagement by posing questions and investigating the answers beyond the collection of superficial facts. 1.3.2 Seek divergent perspectives during information gathering and assessment.
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