Global perspectives

How do I connect topics I am teaching to the real world?

One of our recent units was "la comida" - food. Food can either be very mundane and basic, or it can be unique and exciting. In order to make learning about food unique and exciting, one of the activities involved looking at an ordinary activity like grocery shopping from a local and global perspective. 

We compared grocery shopping the USA to grocery shopping in Venezuela.

Why did I choose Venezuela? Aside from it being a Spanish speaking country, Venezuela has a government and an economy that is very different from our own. On paper Venezuela has a republican form of government, but in reality the government has socialist tendencies and an economy that increasingly socialist with pockets of capitalist industries. What does grocery shopping have to do with socialism? In order to make necessities like toilet paper, flour, sugar, meat, and cornmeal affordable, the government subsidizes local farmers and manufacturers who supply government run supermarkets. This means that privately owned supermarkets do not have sufficient food or basic necessities. As a result, people are forced to shop at government run supermarkets. This sounds great except the government supermarkets are also low on supplies like beef, chicken, toilet paper, sugar, and flour. Why? The government subsidized farmers and manufacturers are not making a substantial profit by exclusively supplying government shops, so they only supply select items. 

Food shortages in Venezuela

What does this look like for the average consumer? People stand in line for up to 5 hours to get into the grocery store. Once they are in the grocery store there is no guarantee that they will find what they need. Some people wait weeks to get basics like toilet paper. My students' minds were blown at the thought of cueing up just to go grocery shopping. 

Toilet paper crisis

What was our classroom discussion like? We asked and answered some revealing questions. 

1. What is socialism and how is it different from our government?
2. What is supply and demand? How is this an issue in Venezuela's supermarkets?
3. How do we feel about necessities being available at a reduced price that everyone can afford regardless of occupation? 
4. What would happen to the EBT program if the USA adopted socialist policies?
5. What are some extremes we saw in the Venezuela supermarket crisis? How is this similar to and different from a trip to the supermarket in the United States?

The teaching and learning format for this lesson featured several video segments followed by open forum discussion on the issues presented in each video. At the end of class students answered reflection questions. 

My students will never look at grocery shopping the same way.