Rough DRAFT...The River of Wisdom - Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival

This unit is under development, in collaboration with Thomas Panter, a teacher at Durham Middle School near Atlanta GA, & Elaine Dew, Assistant Principal and Art Teacher, at MFBM Chan Lui Chung Tak Memorial College, a Secondary School in Hong Kong.

It now appears that a team at Foshan Experimental School in Foshan, China, will be joining the project.

Units are usually designed to last a week or two. This unit is unusual in that it is planned to contain several 'lessons' which will likely be taught separately, at different times over the entire school year, with each 'lesson' addressing key aspects of related American History and Chinese History appropriate for American, Hong Kong, and Chinese students aged between 10 through 14 (Upper Primary through Middle School to Early High School)

The keys to the unit are:
1- the 'concept' of human MIGRATION or journey,
2- the consistent link to a collection of multiple masterworks which will be visible in the classroom and used all during the school year, (see below) and
3- the continued 'compare & contrast' / similarities and differences between parallel events in Chinese and American history. This last is considered important for both pedagogical reasons (learning the history of both countries seems to provide greater clarity of understanding of each) and for political reasons (the people of each country want and need to understand and appreciate each other).

The unit also features the consistent encouragement for students to fashion their own 'synthesis' or tentative conclusion after studying the 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis' of the different events or issues of the unit, and the development of a personal "Timeline of History" by each student, encouraged for use throughout the student's life to provide a framework for future learning.

The unit, and each lesson will specifically address key History standards and will involve Arts / Integration and Character Development and will also directly address English Language Arts Standards. Links to Math and Science will be made when appropriate and authentic.

River of Wisdom

Riverside Scene at The Qingming Festival

Technology and the 'Scenes Along The River'

Lesson #1 Pre-History - The formation of the Earth and the movement of the first humans over it.

Pre-History - Time & The River

Lesson - 2000 to 400 BCE - Eskimo and Native American Eastern Woodlands, and Southwest 'Tribes' up to Southern Mississippian, and Chinese Xia, Shang, Zhou Dynasties and 'Waring States' period.

Lesson - 400 BCE to 1200 CE - Qin to Song Dynasties and Norse Settlements, Southern Mississippian, Maya and Toltec civilizations.
[Scene Along the River at the Qingming Festival 1200, and the first Cherokee migration into Georgia]

Lesson - East & West....Confucianism, Buddhism, and more......The Enlightenment.....Roots of Chinese and American Culture, History and Idelas????
[ Harmony / Individualism? .......Mobius]

Lesson - From 1400 to 1850 - Triangular
Slave Trade and the Opium Wars
[http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/african-american/europe/slave_trade.htm]
[ they must sign a binding pledge not to bring any more opium to China in the future. Until these requirements were met, the foreigners would not be permitted to purchase any tea, rice, or silk for export. http://opioids.com/opium/opiumwar.html ] [ Porcelain? http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_artqa/2003-09/24/content_37884.htm]

Slave Trade / Amazing Grace

Boston Tea Party / Chests of tea dumped - do the math
Opium War / Chests of Opium burned - do the math

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/opiumwars1.html

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/lin.html

What had begun as a conflict of interests between English desire for profits from the trade in silk, porcelain, and tea and the Confucian ideal of self-sufficiency and exclusion of corrupting influences resulted in the partitioning of China by the Western powers (including the ceding of Hong Kong to Great Britain), humiliating defeats on land and sea by technologically and logistically superior Western forces, and the traditional values of an entire culture undermined by Christian missionaries and rampant trading in Turkish and Indian opium. No wonder the Boxer rebels' chief goal was to purify and reinvigorate their nation by the utter annihilation of all "foreign devils."

Also, need for Chinese Immigrants for building of the railroads!!!!.......The Octopus

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/opiumwars1.html

Opium Wars and the US Civil War?????

Lesson - 1850 - ? Irish / German migration to the US prior to the Civil War, Japanese involvement with The Last Emperor?

Lesson - US The Great Migration.....

Lesson - The Future.....

Space Exploration by the U.S. and China

Blank Frame - Space for each Student's Creation (Painting, Skit, Song, or Dance depicting a past or future human migration or journey.

Unit or Lesson Template

Student Work on the 'River of Wisdom' Unit

Compare & Contrast 'Scenes Along the River' with the Bayeau Tapestry

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