A mother in India, who only completed the 7th grade, said her daughter and son were in school, because she could embroider pillows to make money to send them to elementary school. How different that is, I thought, from most of the mothers in the United States who are well educated and do not have to pay to send their children to school. Yet, their children probably have similar experiences learning to read, to add and subtract, and to join playmates in games at recess.
In the picture book, Mirror, by Jeanne Baker, city boys in Australia and farm boys in Morocco learn their lives are both similar and different. The earlier post, "Getting to Know You," tells how "Arthur," on his PBS show, learned a boy in Turkey did not live in a tent and ride to school on a camel. They both did a lot of the same things.
It would be interesting and fun to ask students of all ages to describe the lives of children in France and China. How do they dress? What do they eat? How do they get to school? What games do they play? Then, it would be a challenge to find out if their ideas were correct. One resource that might help is epals.com.
Once teachers sign up on epals.com, they can select countries, the ages of interested students from 3 to 19, what language to use, and even the size of classes. Their students can connect with classrooms in other countries to work on shared projects and begin pen pal exchanges.
Contacts with foreign students prevent mistakes like a student of mine once made, when she asked a student from South Africa, if she had ever used a computer.
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