As part of my  lesson plan to teach American culture and history, this week I started teaching the Declaration of Independence to my high school kids. Apparently I couldn’t have timed things worse–after some prompting, my students informed me that this weekend one of the papers ran an entire ad-free issue entitled something like “American Atrocities” that gave a rundown of all the bad things America is doing in the world. This left my students pretty unreceptive to discussing the lofty ideals of the Declaration, but the newspaper did help spark some spirited debate (“It [The Declaration] is a lie.” “America is very bad. But you are very nice.”) and gave me a nice chance to teach them the word hypocrisy.
On the other hand, my classes all really liked that any American can run for President. They also all agreed that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights. Some also listed freedom of expression (specifically criticism of the government), universal health care, and education as other fundamental rights. There was disagreement over whether availability of work is a fundamental right, but only because some of the students felt very strongly that people should be allowed to stay at home and do nothing if they so wish. If I had to work as hard as they do, I’d probably feel the same way.
My friend Charles rightly pointed out that if I want to talk about American culture I probably should have started with something fun and easy like baseball rather than jumping into the Declaration. Good point, Charles.
Hey bud! Sounds like your kids speak English waaaay better than mine do! –The Declaration of Independence!
By the way, I`m heading your way (well, as much as Mongolia is “your way”) in the last week of July and will probably hop on the trans-siberian sometime during the first week of August. Want to come play in the Gobi Desert with me?