What Is?
| Series
Information |
Curricular
Areas:
Economics, History, and Social Studies |
| Length:
2/30-Minute Programs |
| Grade
Levels: 7-12 |
|
This
series, designed for use in world and U.S. history, economics, social
studies and contemporary issues classes, examines specific academic
subjects in depth, using authentic art objects, photographs and
dramatized vignettes to explain, illustrate and demystify various
concepts and basic terminology. programs use authentic art objects,
photographs and dramatized vignettes to explain, illustrate and
demystify various concepts and basic terminology.
Episode
Descriptions
1
What Is Economics?— Shows how economics is central to all
of our lives, to dispel the idea that the subject of economics is
dull or inaccessible, to provide a glossary of basic terns on which
students may base further study, and to encourage students' critical
and creative thinking about their economic futures.
As aerial images of a large city appear, voices are heard from the
busy economic life going on below. Down in the street, at a farmers'
market, a young bicycle messenger buying strawberries shows what
economics is really all about. The program follows the messenger
on his rounds of the city and, through his imagination, to other
times and places as he tries to make economic sense of the world
around him.
2 What Is History? — This program explores the nature
of history itself, leaving an impression that history is an adventure,
a detective story, a thing of shadows and echoes. It suggests that
history requires all of us to use our sharpest critical thinking
skills to piece together a picture of who we are and how we became
who we are.
In this program, a young student, assigned a study question, "What
is history?" travels through her imagination from the ruins
of Stonehedge, the circle of massive stones from which an ancient
people may have observed their place in the universe, to the space
satellites of today, a technological device for similar observations.
As she imagines different historical events, she discovers that
history is not just a series of such events, but an interpretation
of them colored by the teller's point of view and shaped by cultural
bias. She finds that history is incomplete, derived from bits and
pieces of information that history is transmitted through a variety
of media: oral, pictorial, written and crafted. In the end, she
realizes that history can be distorted and may sometimes be misleading
and even false.
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