Cultural Geography Lesson

Lesson Objective: Total Lesson Time: 50 min. SWBAT evaluate the impact of geography on the development of culture

NCSS Theme:NCSS; Culture; Knowledge; 4; How culture develops and changes in ways that allow human societies to address their needs and concerns.1

Common Core Standards:CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideasLesson Background Information:Assumed Prior Knowledge:This lesson falls at the beginning of the unit. Students only need to understand what culture and cultural traits are. Students should also be familiar with source analysis. If they are not, consider a mini lesson regarding how to make inferences and draw conclusions based on photographs.Materials:

Make copies of interactive handoutClassroom Management and Culture Considerations:This lesson is based on Socratic seminar. You should have set norms for discussion. Students should understand that they are to respond to one another's points and pull from the text in the conversation. If this is a new activity for your class, take time to set up the norms and model conversation.Engage: Starter Time: 5Say, "Hypothesize how geography and environment influence culture."

Give students 90 seconds to answer the question.

Ask two students to share their answers.

Say, "Today we are going to compare and contrast Haiti and the Dominican Republic. You will read an excerpt from the book Collapse by Jared Diamond. In this excerpt you will evaluate multiple factors related to the differences in Haiti and the Dominican Republic."Explore: Annotate Time: 15Say, "Read and annotate the text for reasons that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are different. After you have read, annotate the maps, making connections to the reading."

Give students 15 minutes to read and annotate.

Teacher: As students read and annotate, circulate around the room, checking for students’ annotations.

Explain: Socratic Seminar Time: 15

1 Adler, S. A., & Adler, F. (2010). National curriculum standards for social studies: A framework for teaching, learning and assessment. Silver Spring, Maryland: National Council for the Social Studies.

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[Teacher: You may want to integrate your class norms into the script below.]

Say, “Now that you have read the text, we will engage in a Socratic seminar. The purpose of this discussion is to construct a deeper understanding of the text. Please keep the following in mind:

1. This is a discussion; you don’t need to raise your hands.2. Listen carefully to one another. This is a discussion building off one another’s thoughts.3. Be respectful of one another. You may disagree, but remember to do so in a respectful manner.4. Refer to the text! Your discussion is a synthesis of your notes from our study of electoral systems

and the reading you just annotated.”

[Teacher: Your task is to monitor the conversation. As much as possible, let the students drive the discussion. When necessary, intervene in the following ways:

1. Air Time: Avoid a couple students dominating the conversation.2. Draw out students who aren’t participating.3. Connect the discussion back to the text.]

Socratic Seminar Question:o How did two countries on one island develop with such economic disparity?o Which factor had the greatest impact on the emergence of differing identities?

Teacher: The ideas you are driving for during the Socratic seminar include:o Geography Factor: The DR's environment is more conducive to farming than Haiti’s. This is

due to weather patterns and topography. The DR is more industrialized and the forest has been left untouched. Haiti is still dependent on the forest for fuel, resulting in deforestation.

o Social and Political Factors: Haiti was a thriving French colony. The DR was underutilized by the Spanish. Therefore, they have differing population densities. Haiti had a large slave population that rebelled. Once a sovereign nation, there were fewer connections with other colonies in the "new world." The DR had a large population of European descent. This made connections with other countries for trade easier.

o Influence of Factors: Neither factor is the sole contributor to the differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Geography impacts the development of economic structures. These structures can lead to different government structure choices. However, individual and group choice alters responses to geographic factors.

Elaborate: Reflection Time: 10Say, “Take a moment to reflect on our conversation and answer the questions on your interactive handout."

1. How do geography and environment impact the development of cultural traits? [They comprise an element of cultural development, but not the sole indicator.]

2. To what extent are geography and environment determinants of cultural traits? [There is always individual and group choice.]

3. What are other determinants of cultural traits? [History and the choices that individuals and groups make also impact the development of culture. The fact that differences between Haiti and the DR exist are evidence of this.]

Evaluate: Closure and Exit Ticket Time: 5

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“For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.” -Jared Diamond

Students will answer the following question in their interactive handout:Based on today's lesson, how does a comparison of the Dominican Republic and Haiti debunk environmental determinism?

Cultural Geography: Student PacketStarterHypothesize how geography and environment influence culture.

Text and Maps

Read and annotate the text below.1. As you read, annotate for reasons that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are different.2. As you evaluate the maps, annotate for connections to the reading.

Text:

To anyone interested in understanding the modern world's problems, it's a dramatic challenge to understand the 120-mile-long border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the two nations dividing the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola that lies southeast of Florida […]. From an airplane flying high overhead, the border looks like a sharp line with bends, cut arbitrarily across the island by a knife, and abruptly dividing a darker and greener landscape east of the line (the Dominican side) from a paler and browner landscape west of the line (the Haitian side). On the ground, one can stand on the border at many places, face east, and look into pine forest, then turn around, face west, and see nothing except fields almost devoid of trees.

[…]

The difference in forest cover between the two countries is paralleled by differences in their economies. Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are poor countries; suffering from the usual disadvantages of most of the world's other tropical countries that were former European colonies: corrupt or weak

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governments, serious problems of public health, and lower agricultural productivity than in the temperate zones. On all those counts, though, Haiti's difficulties are much more serious than those of the Dominican Republic. It is the poorest country in the New World, and one of the poorest in the world outside of Africa.

[…]

With that historical background, let's now return to one of those surprising differences with which this chapter began: why did the political, economic, and ecological histories of these two countries sharing the same island unfold so differently?

Part of the answer involves environmental differences. Hispaniola's rains come mainly from the east. Hence the Dominican (eastern) part of the island receives more rain and thus supports higher rates of plant growth. Hispaniola's highest mountains (over 10,000 feet high) are on the Dominican side, and the rivers from those high mountains mainly flow eastwards into the Dominican side. The Dominican side has broad valleys, plains, and plateaus, and much thicker soils; in particular, the Cibao Valley in the north is one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. In contrast, the Haitian side is drier because of that barrier of high mountains blocking rains from the east. Compared to the Dominican Republic, a higher percentage of Haiti's area is mountainous, the area of flat land good for intensive agricultureis much smaller, there is more limestone terrain, and the soils are thinner and less fertile and have a lower capacity for recovery. Note the paradox: the Haitian side of the island was less well endowed environmentally but developed a rich agricultural economy before the Dominican side. The explanation of this paradox is that Haiti's burst of agricultural wealth came at the expense of its environmental capital of forests and soils. This lesson—in effect, that an impressive-looking bank account may conceal a negative cash flow—is a theme to which we shall return in the last chapter.

While those environmental differences did contribute to the different economic trajectories of the two countries, a larger part of the explanation involved social and political differences, of which there were many that eventually penalized the Haitian economy relative to the Dominican economy. In that sense, the differing developments of the two countries were over determined: numerous separate factors coincided in tipping the result in the same direction.

One of those social and political differences involved the accident that Haiti was a colony of rich France and became the most valuable colony in France's overseas empire, while the Dominican Republic was a colony of Spain, which by the late 1500s was neglecting Hispaniola and was in economic and political decline itself. Hence France could and chose to invest in developing intensive slave-based plantation agriculture in Haiti, which the Spanish could not or chose not to develop in their side of the island. France imported far more slaves into its colony than did Spain. As a result, Haiti had a population seven times higher than its neighbor during colonial times, and it still has a somewhat larger population today, about 10,000,000 versus 8,800,000. But Haiti's area is only slightly more than half of that of the Dominican Republic, so that Haiti with a larger population and smaller area has double the Republic's population density. The combination of that higher population density and lower rainfall was the main factor behind the more rapid deforestation and loss of soil fertility on the Haitian side. In addition, all of those French ships that brought slaves to Haiti returned to Europe with cargos of Haitian timber, so that Haiti's lowlands and mid-mountain slopes had been largely stripped of timber by the mid-19th century.

A second social and political factor is that the Dominican Republic, with its Spanish-speaking population of predominantly European ancestry, was both more receptive and more attractive to European

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immigrants and investors than was Haiti with its Creole-speaking population composed overwhelmingly of black former slaves. Hence European immigration and investment were negligible and restricted by the constitution in Haiti after 1804 but eventually became important in the Dominican Republic. Those Dominican immigrants included many middle-class businesspeople and skilled professionals who contributed to the country's development. The people of the Dominican Republic even chose to resume their status as a Spanish colony from 1812 to 1821, and its president chose to make his country a protectorate of Spain from 1861 to 1865.

Still another social difference contributing to the different economies is that, as a legacy of their country's slave history and slave revolt, most Haitians owned their own land, used it to feed themselves, and received no help from their government in developing cash crops for trade with overseas European countries, while the Dominican Republic eventually did develop an export economy and overseas trade. Haiti's elite identified strongly with France rather than with their own landscape, did not acquire land or develop commercial agriculture, and sought mainly to extract wealth from the peasants.

A recent cause of divergence lies in the differing aspirations of the two dictators: Trujillo sought to develop an industrial economy and modern state (for his own benefit), but Duvalier did not. This might perhaps be viewed just as an idiosyncratic personal difference between the two dictators, but it may also mirror their different societies.

Finally, Haiti's problems of deforestation and poverty compared to those of the Dominican Republic have become compounded within the last 40 years. Because the Dominican Republic retained much forest cover and began to industrialize, the Trujillo regime initially planned, and the regimes of Balaguer and subsequent presidents constructed, dams to generate hydroelectric power. Balaguer launched a crash program to spare forest use for fuel by instead importing propane and liquefied natural gas. But Haiti's poverty forced its people to remain dependent on forest-derived charcoal from fuel, thereby accelerating the destruction of its last remaining forests.

Source: Diamond, J. (2011). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. (pp. 329-330, 339-341) New York: Penguin Books

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Source: (2004). Flooding on Hispaniola [Image]. Retrieved from http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/4000/4566/hispaniola_combined.jpgSocratic Seminar

Use this section to take notes during the Socratic seminar.

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Reflection Questions

Answer the questions below. Cite evidence from the reading, map, and Socratic seminar in your answer.

4. How do geography and environment impact the development of cultural traits?

5. To what extent are geography and environment determinants of cultural traits?

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6. What are other determinants of cultural traits?

Exit TicketName: Class:“For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.” -Jared Diamond

Based on today's lesson, how does a comparison of the Dominican Republic and Haiti debunk environmental determinism?

© 2014 Relay Graduate School of Education. All rights reserved. 8

© 2014 Relay Graduate School of Education. All rights reserved. 9