Globalization: An Indonesian Perspective

September, November 2008. Scarsdale High School, 10th grade; collaborating teachers: Maria Valentin & Ann Marie Nee. Scarsdale Middle School's CHOICE program; collaborating teachers: Cindy Seidel, Marci Rothman, & Kristen Martin. 

Joseph Stiglitz argues that globalization  has been sold as bringing unprecedented prosperity to the billions of people who have remained mired in poverty for centuries. Yet, many countries have suffered rising poverty, a degraded environment, and destroyed indigenous culture. Through this lesson, Scarsdale's 10th graders and CHOICE students were shown how the world is getting integrated and interconnected in many ways. Then they explored how globalization means differently to different people, and in many cases, the playing field is not equal between the developed countries and the developing countries. Throughout the lesson, students learned some impacts of globalization to developing countries using Indonesia as the case study. They even had the chance to reflect on what it was like to live under $2/day, like almost half of the population of Indonesia. We watched an award-winning documentary "The New Rulers of the World," directed by John Pilger. Here is one of the clips we watched: