This posting is a continuation of a series of postings in
which a unit of study is being developed, in real time. The topic of the unit is foreign trade and
how that trade has affected job availability in the US. The first lesson of that unit was presented
in the last posting. This posting will
proceed with the second lesson. The
whole unit is being written to “cover” two weeks of instruction and is slated
to be the last unit of a semester long government class for high school
seniors.
A contention
that this writer has not yet mentioned is that this unit is not written for all
seniors around the country. It is
written for students who because of their situation or the situation of their
parents, community, or state would find the content of the unit relevant.
Preferably, such students might live
in areas where manufacturing jobs have disappeared to other countries or
because a company or companies situated in that area has outsourced their
manufacturing needs to other country(ies).
This relevancy factor should be kept in mind as the reader thinks of the
appropriateness of the material for a given school. With that proviso, the reader is invited to
read on.
At the end of
the first lesson, students were asked to determine if a list of statements were
true or false and for each give a reason why they determined it to be true or
false. The statements were to reflect
information students were to attain researching the passage of a law. Here is the direction they were given:
Teacher informs students that he/she wants the students to
investigate the passage of a law. They
are to not only look at what the law aimed to do, but the reasons it was first
suggested and then passed … Their assignment is to find out why the Trade
Expansion Act of 1962 [was] passed by Congress and what was its major
provisions. [In addition, the t]eacher
singles out two or three students to report to the class how workers and/or
unions viewed this law.
The review of this assignment is
where the substantive content of this second lesson begins, but first there is
the on-going assignment by the “news group” (a pre-assigned group of students
who pick up the responsibility to prepare a newsletter with factual, contextual
information – a daily chore).
LESSON ON INSIGHTS II (combination of
original third and seventh insights)
Objectives:
* Given the information presented in
this lesson regarding the results of foreign trade policy of the US in the
years – even decades – after World War II, the student will be able to define
the ensuing detrimental effects as offending the federalist value of equality
in which the student will cite which attributes of the value is offended.
* Given an appropriate written
prompt, students will be able to cite the major effects of post-World War II
foreign policy provisions on Americans.
These will include advancement of technologies, broader markets for US
products, export or outsourcing of US manufacturing jobs, and the introduction
of cheaper and more diverse consumer products in US markets. An appropriate prompt can be: how did “Marshall Plan” thinking affect the
welfare of Americans, particularly the nation’s workers?[1]
Lesson steps:
Pre-lesson. Teacher hands out to news group students the
second batch of factoids. They are:
·
There has been a reduction in average
labor needed to produce a car from .1 in 1999 to .07 in 2014. This reflects the manufacturing processes
have turned to the use of machines and robots to do what workers did in the
past, at least, in the auto industry.
Similar developments can be found in the machine and chemical industries
where job availability have grown slowly and, in some cases, has declined in
recent years.[2]
·
China has an increasing demand for
high-tech civil aviation, machine tools, integrated circuits, and other
high-tech goods and will reach $600bn by 2020.
This is a fraction (1/2) of the current (2015) trade deficit with
China. But meaningfully increasing exports
to China, calls on the US to ease high-tech trade restrictions in relation to trade
with China. The fear is the stealing of
intellectual property by Chinese companies.[3]
1. Teacher
distributes “newsletter” and students review it as the teacher takes roll and
handles other administrative concerns. (seven minutes)
2. Teacher
briefly reviews the content of the newsletter with students to assure there is
general understanding of its content.
The idea of trade restrictions will be addressed during the unit, but
the teacher can introduce the idea by pointing out that governmental policy can
restrict trade. The example of tariffs –
which seniors should have been exposed to in a previous course, American
history – can be offered in broad terms to illustrate the effects of trade
restrictions. (five minutes)
3. The
teacher draws student attention to the last assignment of the previous lesson
in which students determined if each of a list of seven statements were true or
false and why. This will take a
discussion format and, in general, the accepted lessons of these statements are
that US foreign policy after World War II became very liberal (free of
restraints) as the policy attempted to avoid the punitive or restrictive
policies after World War I. Some think
that such policy biases in the earlier times led to the Second World War. Teacher points out that the overall thinking supporting
more liberal policy is referred to by some as Marshall Plan thinking. (twenty
minutes)
4. Teacher
further makes the point that currently there is NAFTA, WTO, and TPP (which was
addressed in the first lesson) carries out this bias in favor of liberal trade to
the current day, but there seems to be some push-back with the election of
Donald Trump to the presidency. Whether
there will be more or less restrained trade in the future is an open
question. (three minutes)
5. The
teacher asks the class: So, what is the
problem with foreign trade? How does it
affect equality? Students by this time
should have been, in an earlier unit, “taught” how federalist thought regards
equality. It is summarily described as
regulated condition,[4]
and the maldistribution associated with liberalized trade policy – a purer
market orientation – offends this definition of equality in that that trade has
left many workers in sub-standard economic conditions if one judges those
conditions by how American workers lived in the 1960s. The factoids of the first lesson further
supports this contention. There will be
further support later in the unit. In
any event, the effects of trade policy on labor has affected their
opportunities to the degree one can argue many no longer have equal
opportunity. (five minutes)
6. The
teacher shifts gear a bit by asking students to see how foreign people and
foreign governments might view this relatively newer – more liberal – trade
perspective of the US. Did they in other
countries see it as a new opportunity to buy American products or as a chance
to strengthen their own production capacity and, in turn, be able to sell to
Americans cheaper products? If the
former, this would benefit the US economy, if the latter, it could potentially
hurt the US economy if not off-set with increased exports to those
countries. How does the lesson’s
newsletter address this? Teacher gives
students the opportunity to respond.
Teacher jots down on the board student ideas in shorten form. (eight minutes)
7. Teacher
asks students to think of this line of questioning overnight and be ready to
speak to it more fully during the next lesson when they will be defining some
key ideas (concepts) associated with foreign trade. Students, in the remaining time, can begin
jotting down their thoughts. (two
minutes)
This
ends the lesson for the second day of the unit.
To this point, the reader might have noticed the lessons are limited to
fifty minutes. In the developer’s
experience, he usually had fifty-five-minute class periods. This allocation of time – the usual fifty-five-minute
class periods – gives students, after the instructional period ends, five
minutes to get to their next class (a total of sixty minutes). With a fifty-minute limit, this allows for
some leeway in these plans.
[1] This lesson will not provide completely all the
instruction needed to meet this objective.
It will partially provide that instruction. For example, subsequent instruction will
define Marshall Plan thinking.
[2] Wang Wen, “A
US-China Trade War Would Cause Huge Damage and Benefit Nobody,” Financial Times, March 27, 2017,
accessed September 22, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/3b49cd2a-10ad-11e7-b030-768954394623 . It is not known what the reference to .1 or
.07 means. One can interpret the
numbers, though, as indicating that a lot less labor is needed to produce cars
per unit of production.
[3] Ibid. Students are going to address the meaning of
the terms “trade deficit” and “intellectual property.” Their product should indicate the meanings of
these terms. They will be addressed in
lesson three of the unit.
[4] Regulated condition relies on market mechanism to set prices,
wages and other benefits, but sees a strong role for government in both
regulating markets – so that the large corporations and other businesses are
prohibited from taking unfair advantage due to their abundance of assets and
resources – or providing other laws such as minimum wage, public health
facilities, subsidized insurance programs (Medicare), or outright individual
subsidies (Medicaid). Proponents argue
that their sense of equality is truer to the aim of equal opportunity. See, for example, previous posting, "Working
Hard and Being Me," 9/16/16.
