Physical and political boundaries play an important role in the world. They are conventions that have been created, adapted, and/or devised by nature and humans. So too, are a wide variety of other boundaries. These boundaries can act as national and/or international assets, but they can also act as impediments that restrict or prohibit the flow of resources, commerce, or intellectual property, or barriers that isolate people and divide nations. Finally, they can be the source of international compromise, cooperation, or conflict. Many boundaries play an important role in issues pertaining to environmentalism, epidemiology, and discord that might range from trade wars to military confrontations. In this lesson, students will learn about boundaries as they apply to matters of pollution, disease, and conflict within the continent of Asia, between Asian nations, and between Asian nations and members of the international community.

This lesson is one in a series developed in collaboration with The Asia Society, with support from the Freeman Foundation, highlighting the geography and culture of Asia and its people.

Geography, history, social studies, economics, biology, zoology, math

Standard 1: "How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective"
Standard 3: "How to analyze the spatial organizations of people, places, and environments on Earth's surface"
Standard 14: "How human actions modify the physical environment"
Standard 15: "How physical systems affect human systems"

Two to three hours

• Computer with Internet access

Students will

• ascertain the origins, nature, and current status of contemporary issues that fall within the topics of environment, disease, and conflict in Asia, between Asian nations, and between Asian nations and members of the international community;
• research and analyze the various types of boundaries and the impact that they have on the environment, disease, and conflict;
• express informed opinions about the degree to which boundaries act to create, prolong, and potentially solve or act as impediments to solving issues related to the environment, disease and conflict; and
• write a series of two or three commentaries (suitable for publishing in a local, regional, national, or online forum) that educate the reader and community about an issue (related to Asia and the environment, disease, or conflict), explain how a boundary or boundaries have created, prolonged, solved, or impeded the solution of the issue, and offer a potential solution to the issue if it has not already been resolved.

Divide the class into two groups, arranging them on opposite sides of the classroom. Place a desk or low bookshelf between the two groups to form a physical barrier. Ask students to reflect on two aspects of the barrier between them: the emotional impact of the barrier and the effectiveness of the barrier.

Then, have students speculate about the emotional impact and effectiveness of several other types of barriers:

• a single-file row of chairs
• a glass partition
• jail-like steel bars
• a concrete wall
• a laser beam
• armed military personnel
• land mines
• laws with punitive consequences for destroying, circumventing, or crossing the barrier
• signs in foreign languages

Ask the students to describe real-life situations where barriers prohibited them from doing something (e.g., being able to get into their locked house). Then, ask them to describe situations where barriers assisted them (e.g., a fence separating them from a vicious dog). Finally, ask students to provide examples of current or historical events in which one or more barriers helped to create, prolong, solve, or impede access to something (e.g., the Berlin Wall, Israeli/Palestinian checkpoints, etc.).

Arrange students into three groups. Explain that this activity will explore the impact of physical and political borders on one of three topics: environment, disease, and conflict. Assign one topic to each group. Then, divide each group into subteams of two to three students. Explain that each subteam will be assigned one current issue affecting Asia and related to their assigned topic.

Environmental Issues

• The impact of internal combustion engines on air quality in major Chinese/Japanese/South Korean cities specifically and Asia generally
• Industrial waste being created by South Korea's unprecedented expansion of its industrial capacity
• The impact that the rapidly increasing population growth rate has on the environment

Disease Issues

• The spread, treatment, and consequences of HIV/AIDS in certain regions of Asia
• The pandemic impact of SARS on Asia and the international community
• The pandemic impact of the bird flu on Asia and the international community

Conflict Issues

• North Korea's research and development of nuclear weapons
• Escalations in military posturing and ongoing rhetoric between China and Taiwan
• Tension and confrontation along the 38th Parallel dividing North Korea and South Korea

Explain to students that they will be trying to convince a representative from the United Nations (role-played by the teacher) that their issue is the most pressing boundary-related issue facing Asia, and that the UN should act upon it.

Following the distribution and discussion of the topics, the teacher may want to demonstrate and discuss research and analytic strategies that will be employed in this exercise. Students should have access to the Internet to conduct their research.

Each team will demonstrate and discuss its findings to the "UN representative." Each demonstration should include one or more maps (two-dimensional and/or digital). Each map needs to highlight content findings and those boundaries that play a substantive role in the issue’s origin, evolution, impact, and current status or solution. Charts, data sets, and other effective presentation tools may be used in the demonstrations. Encourage students to use higher-level thinking skills as they analyze information, synthesize new knowledge, and hypothesize about boundaries and their significance in and between specific countries, in Asia generally, and between Asian nations and the international community. Collegiality, teamwork, creativity, and intellectual rigor among and between the teams should be emphasized.

Have students vote on what they feel is the most pressing boundary-related issue facing Asia. Then have students find two recent news articles on the Internet that present two opposing views on the issue. Then, have students debate the issue using standard debating practices.

Assess students in one or more of the following ways:

• how they acted as contributing members of cooperative work groups;
• how they acted as members of a team that is responsible for an informative, insightful, intelligent, creative, and effective demonstration of their research and conclusions about the impact of boundaries on issues pertaining to pollution, disease, and conflict as it relates to Asia and the international community;
• how they acted as participants in class discussions with other students as well as their teacher and potentially a scholar or expert on matters pertaining to boundaries, the environment, disease, and conflict as they relate to Asia and the international community; and
• how they acted as authors summarizing their findings, insights, and conclusions as they pertain to the issues that were studied.

As a means of furthering their understanding of boundaries and their impact on pollution, disease, and conflict, students may want to visit the United Nations home page and the UN Cyberschoolbus Web site to access additional information. Additionally, students may want to consider the impact of boundaries in other regions of the world (e.g., Africa, Europe, South America, Australia, Antarctica, etc.) to compare, contrast, and contemplate their role and impact on culturally and politically diverse peoples. Finally, students may want to utilize their understanding of boundaries and politically significant issues in a model United Nations forum of the type supported by UNAUSA.

Asia Society's Ask Asia
National Geographic Magazine: Dangerous Divide—Korea's DMZ
National Geographic: One-Stop Research
National Geographic: MapMachine Student Edition—Arab-Israeli Conflicts
National Geographic: MapMachine Student Edition—Kashmir
National Geographic: MapMachine—Physical Map of Asia
National Geographic: Xpeditions Atlas—Asia