Education Program August 12, 2013

Student’s copy Education Program August 12, 2013

C L A S S R O O M E D I T I O N

READING AND REASONING

Read each article and answer the questions that follow.

Why Germany Must Save the Euro: Rana Foroohar argues that while the Germans may complain about their profligate EU partners and balk at underwriting more bailouts, they need to save the euro.

1. What is Germany’s role in the euro-zone crisis? Refer to p26.

2. What do (a) Germany’s Mittelstand firms and (b) the writer think of Germany’s insistence on austerity and why? Refer to p26.

3. Germany’s insistence on austerity has contributed to the country’s growing unpopularity across Europe. However, the Germans continue to argue that European nations “need to buckle down and reduce wages and benefits, slash budgets and shrink debts.” According to the writer, why is this recommendation flawed? Refer to p27.

4. Even amongst the Mittelstand firms, there are those who believe that Germany should do whatever it takes to bail out the euro. Explain why Jürgen Müller, Daimler’s chief economist, supports this conclusion. Refer to p28.

5. On p30, the writer again expresses her preference for Germany to underwrite whatever debt restructuring and payments necessary to keep the euro zone together and shift its economic model to help economic rebalancing. However, she acknowledges that it will be challenging. Identify the obstacles.

6. The writer points to “a few glimmers of hope” on p31. What gives her “hope” and why does she use “glimmers” to describe them?

The Tashkeel Diaries: Chris Ballard tells the story of how Tom Gouttierre transformed Afghan youth under his charge into basketball players who understood the value of tashkeel. In the process, he came to know and love Afghanistan and its people.

7. “In the end, it’s a story about one man’s enduring influence on a country, and its influence on him. And what basketball can achieve, and what it cannot.” (p34) In addition to these broad observations, what other insights and takeaways can you derive from the article?

RESEARCH

Read each article and complete the tasks that follow.

Why German y Must Save the Euro

1. Countries participating in the global economy are easily affected by downturns in other economies.

Permission is granted to individual teacher to reproduce this Student Worksheet for classroom use only. Reproduction by an entire school system or any other organization is strictly prohibited. Copyright © 2013 Time Asia (Hong Kong) Limited. All rights reserved. 2

C L A S S R O O M E D I T I O N

(a) Has any company or industry in your country been affected by the euro zone crises? How did they respond and were they able to withstand the repercussions? (b) Were your country’s allies or trade partners affected by the euro zone crisis? How did they respond and were they able to withstand the repercussions? (c) In the case of both (a) and (b), did your government offer assistance. Why (not)?

The Tashkeel Diaries

2. Do you know of other individuals or organisations that are inspiring and transforming youth in the course of teaching them a sport, an art form or a skill or by involving them in community service? How big an impact are they making? Share your examples with your classmates.

3. Do you know of someone (yourself maybe?) whose life has become so much more meaningful after he or she reached out to the larger community? Share your observations with your classmates.

Blown Whistle: what the Manning verdict means

4. If you need more information and perspectives on WikiLeaks/Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, you could refer to these resources:

time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037118_2037146,00.html time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040,00.html ideas.time.com/2013/06/05/viewpoint-our-real-secrecy-problem/ ideas.time.com/2013/07/31/the-hollowness-of-bradley-manning/ nation.time.com/2013/06/15/potential-blind-spots-in-clearance-process-that-gave-snowden-top-secret-access/ ideas.time.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-a-modern-day-daniel-ellsberg-except-for-one-key-difference/

5. Whistle-blowers are people who are in a position to realise that illicit activities that are taking place in government agencies and corporations. Their access to classified information or their firsthand experience make it easy for them to spot violations of laws and regulations or threats to public interests. They believe that they are right to reveal such information or operations. While some whistle-blowers make their allegations internally, others take their accusations to regulators, enforcement agencies or the media. Do some research on the following individuals and their allegations and revelations. In your opinion, were they right to have blown the whistle? Were their intentions honourable and justifiable?

(a) Daniel Ellsberg & Anthony Russo (Pentagon Papers) (b) Peter Buxtun (Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment) (c) Ryszard Kukliński (Warsaw Pact papers) (d) W. Mark Felt (Watergate’s “Deep Throat”) (e) Gregory Minor, Richard Hubbard, and Dale Bridenbaugh (General Electric) (f) Frederic Whitehurst (FBI Crime Lab) (g) Jeffrey Wigand (Brown & Williamson tobacco company) (h) Linda Tripp (Clinton administration/Lewinsky scandal) (i) Marsha Coleman-Adebay (Environmental Protection Agency) (j) Kathryn Bolkovac (UN International Police Force/DynCorp Aerospace) (k) Cynthia Cooper (Worldcom), Sherron Watkins (Enron) and Bradley Birkenfeld (UBS) (l) Katharine Gun (Government Communications Headquarters/2003 invasion of Iraq) (m) Robert McLean (Transportation Security Administration) (n) Joe Darby (Abu Ghraib Prison) and Samuel Provance (Abu Ghraib Prison) (o) Shawn Carpenter (Sandia National Laboratories) (p) Justin Hopson (New Jersey State Police)

C L A S S R O O M E D I T I O N

(q) David Graham (FDA/Voixx), David Franklin (Parke-Davis/Neurotin), John Kopchinski (Pfizer/Bextra) and Robert Rudolph, Joseph Faltaous, Steven Woodward & Jaydeen Vincente (Eli-Lilly/ Zyprexa) (r) Anat Kamm (Israeli Defence Force) (s) Rick Plitz (NASA) (t) Russ Tice (NSA/DIA), Samy Kamkar (GPS phone tracking)

CONTEXTUAL VOCABULARY

Explain the contextual meanings of the underlined words and phrases. Try using the words in your essays!

The Tashkeel Dairies 1. When, as a sophomore in 1960, he heard presidential candidate John F Kennedy speak about creating the Peace Corps, Gouttierre was transfixed.

2. … Afghanistan in 1965 was on the verge of a democratic renaissance but fractured by tribal and ethnic conflicts.

3. In Afghanistan, they were intractable obstacles.

4. A year earlier, he had impetuously written to John Wooden, head basketball coach at UCLA, …

5. There were others Gouttierre was less fond of: the brooding man he taught named Najibullah, who would one day hold all of Afghanistan in his iron grip, and the young politician Babrak Karmal, who accosted him at parties and said, “Why are you Americans in Vietnam? You’re being imperialists!”

6. Neumann explained that Bradley was enamoured of The Man Who Would Be King, a short story by Kipling that was set in the Hindu Kush.

7. … the secondary motive was to give China a political and diplomatic foothold in Afghanistan.

8. Gouttierre laments the vision foreigners have of Afghanistan.

The Pope’s Baby Step on Gays 9. Pope Francis is already showing himself to be a winsome, endearing and inspiring successor to St. Peter.

10. It is telling that this rhetorical question got so much attention, since Jesus, who Christians believe was the perfect revelation of God, warned, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

11. Before we declare a new day for Catholics regarding homosexuality, however, a closer look at the Pope’s statement reveals little change in the church’s stance on being gay.

12. … a wholly unfair linking of homosexuality with paedophilia that has been thoroughly debunked by science.

13. But what about gay parishioners sitting in the pews of Catholic churches, trying to reconcile their faith with the condemnation of their love as disordered, evil and sinful?

14. Conservative evangelicals, especially younger ones, are looking for a way to affirm gay Christians and the love they come to know with other people.

15. If God is love, as Scripture attests, then surely God is gay love too.

C L A S S R O O M E D I T I O N

Egypt’s Liberal Guilt 16. But there is something particularly dispiriting about the way Egypt’s so-called liberals, who played a key part in the thrilling 2011 uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubark, have so enthusiastically reneged on the fundamental tenets of political pluralism and democracy.

17. The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s ouster argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it.

18. In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a catchall for people who don’t like Islamists.

19. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist.

20. Yet, Tunisa’s liberals – animated by hard-line French-style secularism – routinely accuse Ennadha of being stealth radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

21. This liberal assumption of wrongdoing creates an impasse: liberals fear Islamists not only for what they have done, but also for what they might do in the future.

22. Many Egyptians have given way to these fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control.

War of the Dons 23. The long-running chicken-and-egg debate was revived after the Economist reviewed An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, Sen’s recent book with Jean Drèze.

24. The opposing philosophies of Bhagwati and Seb gave also been shoehorned into the evolving narrative of national elections set for the next year.

25. Sen and Drèze are in favour of social-welfare programmes, a calling card of the Congress Party, which leads the ruling coalition; Sen has also openly criticised Narendra Modi, the standard bearer of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.