Democracy and Security? (A Think)

This morning I considered writing about two newspaper articles, both appearing in the Washington Post among other places. The first article, titled U.S. Policy on Iran Evolves Towards Diplomacy states, "On the Middle East, Bush pushed his notion that greater democracy will bring stability to the region. But many foreign officials instead argue that stability can be achieved only if there is peace between Israelis and Palestinians."

The second article entitled, Thai Prime Minister Deposed states:
On Wednesday, in his first public appearance since seizing power, Sonthi asked for the public's support and declared the coup was necessary to end serious conflicts within Thai society that Thaksin had created, the Associated Press reported. "We would like to reaffirm that we don't have any intention to rule the country and will return power to the Thai people as soon as possible," he said a brief television address. He was flanked by the three armed forces chiefs and the head of the national police force.

In order to develop sophisticated understandings of the world students should be able to read, synthesize and compare the major points of newspaper articles on different topics.

Lesson Ideas:
1. Divide your class into groups of three or four and ask half the groups to read one of these newspaper articles and the other half to read the other article. Ask each group to briefly summarize the article and note the main points of each. Then ask groups that have considered different articles to pair up with one another. In these larger groups ask students to first report on their article to the other group, then consider ways in which these articles might be compared and finally develop a statement on what these two different articles might point out about the world in general.
2. President Bush argues that democracy will promote security. Ask students if they agree with this concept or not. You might have them write quick-blog-writes in which they state their opinions on this issue. Encourage students to support their opinions by pointing to evidence from the world. You might then reconvene the class and hold a discussion.
3. Newspaper articles merely present surface level ideas. In other words, a specialist would never be satisfied knowing merely what is in the newspaper about his/her topic. Newspapers can, however, spark questions that lead to further investigation and therefore the production of new knowledge. Ask students to select a newspaper article, or select one for them, and write down five questions that they would like to investigate further. You might choose to have them investigate the questions. But the simple process of identifying the questions is educationally productive.
4. Many students will not be able to identify Thailand, Israel, Iran, or Iraq on the map. (In my opinion this is very sad, considering the frequency in which most of these countries are in the news.) Identify these nations on the map for students. Or, even better, ask students to identify the countries for themselves, using available resources.

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