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| Crispy |
A couple of weeks I hosted a workshop at my school on the subject of parsnips. Parsnip is an acronym standing for the subjects that coursebook writers are allegedly supposed to avoid:
Politics
Alcohol
Religion
Sex
Narcotics
Isms
Pork
We had a really interesting discussion on the subject, looking into the reasons behind why this happens and the result of this decision to omit what many people would consider to be some of the fundamental building blocks of life. For our homework, we took a parsnip each and created an activity which we could share in the following week's workshop. I decided to try and create a pork lesson plan.
Pork is perhaps the parsnip which stands out the most on the list. For many people, at first sight it takes a moment or two to figure why it's even there at all. Then the realisation hits, and you remember that for a large proportion of the world, food from a pig is a serious taboo. But in a culture such as the one I teach in where pork is not so much forbidden as it is a national dish, was it possible to create an interesting and challenging lesson plan that effectively communicated this issue?
Well that's what I tried to do. I haven't had the chance to teach it yet, but I think it would provoke some interesting reactions, some cross cultural awareness and of course, some meaningful learning opportunities. And if you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments below.
1. Ask the students to discuss this questions in small groups:
- Do you have any food taboos? Is there anything that you would never eat? Why?
- In some areas of the world, there are foods that are not allowed. Do you know any of these places and the foods that are banned?
Judaism
Islam
Hinduism
Mormons
frogs / hot drinks / cat / blood / pig / cow / onion / crocodile
Answers (make sure the students know these answers are in some cases generalisations, such as onion and hot drinks):
Judaism - Frogs / Crocodile / cats /
Islam - cats / blood / pig
Hinduism - cow / onion
Mormons - Hot drinks
3. Tell students "You’re going to watch an interview with a man who was raised a Muslim. He’s talking about bacon. What do you think he will say about it?" Students discuss in groups.
4. Give the students a handout with this group of sentence stems repeated on it three times.
“One of the other waiters dared me to eat bacon, and he dared me because he knew I was a Muslim and it was a forbidden thing, and ……………………………………………………………………………………...…………......”
“We have a choice ...……………..…………………………………………………………….”
“Eating pork for me is ……………...…………………………………………………………..”
Ask them to predict how he will finish the sentences.
5. Now tell the students "If I told you that the man now considered himself an atheist, how would you now finish the sentences?". Ask them to try and finish the sentences again with a new version.
6. Students watch the video and then compare their predictions with his answers.
7. Ask them to watch the video again and try to write his actual answers.
8. Discuss in groups your reaction to the video. (Possible discussion questions: Did you realise that a food could be so meaningful to someone? Is there anything like this is your culture, food or otherwise? How do you think his friends and family reacted to his decision. How do you think his co-workers reacted when he ate the bacon?)
9. Follow up written activity - ask students to write his diary entry for that day, describing the incident and how he felt after.
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| Pigs in blankets |
http://esolinshetland.blogspot.com/2012/07/pork-and-final-parsnip.html
Photo credits:
Crispy - Photo taken from http://flickr.com/ by @cookbookman17, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/"
Pigs in Blankets - Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @sandymillin, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
