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Course, Subject

Global History and Geography, Social Studies, Social Studies

Description

This lesson plan from WIDE ANGLE: WINDOW INTO GLOBAL HISTORY provides several learning activities to use with students to discuss totalitarianism- focusing on North Korea.

This lesson will begin with an introductory activity that draws on students' prior knowledge to discuss, "How does a society create social and political order?" After brainstorming the characteristics of totalitarianism, the class will be divided into groups to locate historical examples and create a Document Based Question to share with their classmates. Students will next examine excerpts from the WIDE ANGLE film "A State of Mind" (2003) to see how the characteristics of totalitarian societies still operate today in North Korea. As a culminating activity, students will analyze editorials on North Korea's nuclear program from newspapers around the world, formulate their own opinions, and write a Letter to the Editor of their local newspaper.

Background Information:
The post-Renaissance world saw the nation-state mature and confront the issue of how to control the lives of its citizens. Two models of political organization, democratic and authoritarian, gradually developed. During the twentieth century, as some nations granted individuals and groups more and more rights, ideology and modern technology enabled authoritarian governments to gain ever more control, until community interest dominated the individual and totalitarianism was born. Although Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have passed into history and there are cracks in the total control of the People's Republic of China, North Korea still retains all of the characteristics of totalitarianism. Still technically at war with the United Nations Forces, it poses a threat to the world at large with its developing nuclear program. At the same time it continues to threaten its perceived enemies. Very few foreigners have been able to visit and record life in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official name of North Korea), and the nation remains largely unknown to outsiders.

Website(s)

WIDE ANGLE: WINDOW INTO GLOBAL HISTORY
WIDE ANGLE: Lesson Plans

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Utilize prior knowledge to compare and contrast various political systems throughout the world in terms of their ideologies, structures, functions, decision-making processes, citizenship roles, and political cultures;
• Locate, categorize, and synthesize examples from multiple sources into an essay;
• Analyze images and print documents to draw conclusions;
• Create an original Document Based Essay Question;
• Analyze important events and developments in world history through the eyes and practices of those who were there;
• Study an international dispute from multiple perspectives;
• Present an informed viewpoint on a controversial issue in a Letter to the Editor.

Web-based Resource

Access this resource at: http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/wideangle/lessonplans/imwatching/index.html

Related Academic Standards

New York State

RH.9-10.9 Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

RH.11-12.9 Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

WH.9-10.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology's capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

SS.C.2.1E Students analyze changing and competing interpretations of issues, events, and developments throughout world history.

SS.C.2.2C Students analyze evidence critically and demonstrate an understanding of how circumstances of time and place influence perspective.

SS.C.5.1C Students compare various political systems with that of the United States in terms of ideology, structure, function, institutions, decision-making processes, citizenship roles, and political culture.