Political borders, often contingent in their creation and enforcement, are important to understanding the functioning of the world. Borders indeed engender vast implications on cooperation/conflict between countries and the lives of specific groups of people. Designed as an individual assignment for students accompanied with a class discussion, this lesson engages students with some of these processes in the South Asia region.
Assignment
Students are assigned the task of watching two of three Vox Borders videos focused on the South Asia region and writing a review of around 300-350 words.
How this border transformed a subcontinent (India/Pakistan) Building a border at 4600 meters (Nepal/China) India and Sri Lanka's violent fight over fish (India/Sri Lanka)
Guidance is provided to ensure that students master the review genre and are steered away from simply writing up summaries.
Topics that can be included in the review (choose several; it MUST be more than simply summary):
Provide a brief summary of some of the main ideas presented in the videos
Put the different videos into dialogue with one another/allow them to speak to one another (Similarities? Differences?)
React to some of the arguments or claims of the videos with your own opinions/insights
Think through the implication of the findings (e.g. what do they suggest about what needs to be done to address border issues?)
Discuss how the phenomena described are related to other events/situations that you are familiar with (e.g. other border disputes/cooperation)
Engage with the videos by developing your own questions that are raised by the content. These questions should be worthy of further research and exploration, but remain unanswered.
Class Discussion - 20 minutes
Class time can be devoted to collecting student reflections on the three videos. I especially like to guide my students to synthesizing similarities and differences between the different circumstances and implications.
How have the meanings of the borders changed over time in the three cases? Who has defined the borders? What have been the intended and unintended consequences?
What do borders mean for the nomadic way of life? Should these old traditions be protected or is this a necessary casualty of modern politics?
What are potential solutions to the different border quandaries?
Does the British government bear responsibility for the tense situation between India and Pakistan? Should there be consequences to that?