For students: We hope this guide will help sharpen your reading skills and deepen your understanding of this issue’s articles.

For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without furthe permission from Saudi Aramco World, by teachers at any level, whether working in a classrorom or through home study.

— THE EDITORS

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Class Activities

In today’s world, we find out a lot about places that are far away from us and people whose lives are very different from our own. We may watch YouTube videos online, or movies made in other countries, or read stories or books written in places we can only imagine. In each type of situation, someone has created something—a video, a film, a story—to try to help us understand something that we might otherwise never understand, or even know about. How do they do it? What techniques do they use to help us understand? Those are the questions that this edition of the Classroom Guide asks. 

Analogies and Metaphors in Writing

Writers write in order to communicate with people, and they have tools in their writers’ toolkits that they often use to help them. Two of these tools are analogies and metaphors. You may have been introduced to analogies and metaphors at some point in your schooling, but revisit the terms to make sure you understand them. You can start with a dictionary; then look deeper. Read at least three sources that define and describe what metaphor and analogy mean. Then put the sources away and write your own definitions of the terms. As part of your definition of metaphor, give an example of a metaphor and explain what makes it a metaphor. Do the same as part of your definition of analogy. Divide the class into groups of three. Have each person in your group share his or her definitions. Note the similarities, and discuss any differences among them, until you have reached a consensus and feel confident that you understand the concepts of metaphor and analogy.

Now that you know what analogies and metaphors are, take a look at how a writer uses them. Read “The Casbah of Algiers: Endangered Ark.” Writer Louis Werner quotes some past writers and pens some of his own expressive language to help readers get a feel for the Casbah. As you read, underline or highlight some of these descriptions. Here’s an example to get you started. Take a look at the first paragraph of the article, in which the Casbah is compared to Noah’s ark and the seeds in a pinecone—two vivid comparisons. You take it from there: Find other ways that Werner and others describe Algiers in general and the Casbah in particular. When you’re done, have class members share some of the analogies and metaphors they found. Discuss how they help you know the Casbah—or if you don’t find that they deepen your understanding, talk about why they didn’t, and what might work better for you as a reader.

Having looked at analogies and metaphors in your role as reader, it’s time to step into the role of writer. Choose a place that you want to describe for your readers. It can be any place—your classroom, your school, your neighborhood, your town. Write a paragraph describing the place. Include in your paragraph at least one analogy or metaphor-—more if you think that would be helpful. Keep in mind that you’re writing for someone who might not know the place, just as you might not have known the Casbah of Algiers before you read the article. Keep in mind, too, that you need to compare your place to something your readers will be familiar with. Otherwise you won’t help them understand. If, for example, you don’t know the story of Noah’s ark, or you’ve never seen a pinecone, then the phrases in the first paragraph of the article will just confuse you. 

Analogies and Metaphors in Film

Like writers, filmmakers create something that they hope will be meaningful for their viewers. Haifaa Al Mansour, for example, has made Wadjda, a film about a 10-year-old Saudi girl who wants to own a bicycle. Al Mansour says that the bicycle in her film “is a metaphor for an unrealized dream.” Based on the article, why do you think she chose a bicycle to represent an unrealized dream? What characteristics does a bicycle have? What do those characteristics suggest about how Al Mansour thinks of the unrealized dream? What if she had chosen, say, a turtle? Or an apple tree? What characteristics do turtles and apple trees have? If you think of them as symbols—as metaphors—what would each of them suggest about an unrealized dream? 

Al Mansour goes on to articulate what she would like viewers to get from watching the film: “I hope that anyone who has ever worked to realize an impossible goal will be able to relate to Wadjda’s journey,” she says. Remember that metaphors aim to help readers and viewers understand something. Another way to say that is that good stories go past the details of a particular situation and affect people whose experiences may be different from those in the story. For example, Wadjda’s experiences may be different from your own, but Al Mansour hopes that you can relate anyway. Think about a film or play you’ve seen, or a book you’ve read, that tells a story that isn’t at all like your own experiences but that you found meaningful anyway. What in the story made it possible for you to relate to it? 

Understanding the Past

Stories and movies help us understand unfamiliar people and places. Museums can do the same. Like you, the curators at the Oriental Institute have been thinking about how people can relate to something extremely different from their own lives and thus find meaning in it. They tried an unusual way of helping museum visitors understand the past—and the past is certainly an unfamiliar place populated with unfamiliar people where we can never actually go. In their exhibit “Our Work: Modern Jobs—Ancient Origins,” the museum curators paired individuals with ancient artifacts, and asked the people to look for and talk about connections between their own work experiences and those depicted in the sculptures. Read the article. Choose one of the people. What does that person say about his or her job and a similar job that someone did in the ancient world? The curators at the Oriental Institute say that by having ordinary people (as opposed to museum professionals) share their connections to the objects, they “hope that our collections may become more accessible to our visitors—that some new ways of viewing and learning about the objects have been created.” Based on what the people have said, do you think they have succeeded? Why or why not? 

Now try it yourself. Go to a museum website (or even better, a museum if you can!), and locate an object that interests you. Find a way that you can relate to the object, similar to the way the people in the article related to the sculptures at the Oriental Institute. Working with a partner, articulate the connections by interviewing each other about the objects you have chosen. Make a presentation of the dialogue. You might do what the article did, creating an image of your classmate and the object, accompanied by your classmate’s thoughts. Or you might make an audio-visual recording of the person discussing the object. Display your work for your classmates.

Using Photographs to Enhance Understanding 

Photographers, too, aim to communicate with viewers, and you may find that photos are one of the best tools for helping you understand others. Read either “The Casbah of Algiers” or “Senegal’s Shepherds of Tabaski.” Select one or more (you might even select all) of the photos that accompany the article you chose. Think about how the photo(s) help you understand the Casbah or the Senegalese sheep. What do the photos tell you? What do the photos help you understand that you wouldn’t understand without them? How do they add to the written text of the articles? Make a display of your photo(s) and your explanation of how they add to your understanding. Post the displays around the classroom and look at each others’ work.

The Setting

So far you’ve looked at how written words and visual images convey information. For this exercise, shift your attention to the setting in which readers or viewers see them. For example, you are reading “Our Work” in a magazine that is on paper or on a screen. But the magazine is based on a museum exhibit. How do you imagine your experience of the content would be different if you saw it in a museum, rather than reading it from a page or screen in school or at home? Discuss the question with a small group of your peers. Start with the most basic factors: For example, if you were in a museum, you would probably be standing up while you looked at the photos and read the words, and the images would most likely be larger than they are in the magazine. Other people around you would probably be looking at the images with you, and they might be talking. You take it from here. Identify what the differences would be, and then discuss how those differences might affect how you understand the content of the exhibit. Which type of experience would you prefer? Why?

The last part of “From Saudi Arabia With Love” discusses the fact that there are no public cinemas in Saudi Arabia, so to watch Wadjda there, one would have to watch it digitally, on disc, as a download or online. How do you think the location where you see the movie affects the experience of understanding it? To answer the question, compare your own experience watching a movie in one setting—at a theater on a big screen, for example—with watching a movie on a home screen, computer, tablet or smartphone. As you did comparing the magazine to the museum viewing experience, compare the movie viewing experiences. How does each viewing experience affect you? Does one help you understand—really feel—the movie better than the other? 

 

IF YOU ONLY HAVE 15 MINUTES... With another student, watch a news story about something that happened in a faraway place. Discuss with your partner how the presentation helps you understand what is happening in this place you have probably never seen in person. Pay attention both to the visual images that are shown and to the words that the reporter has chosen to tell the story. What do you find is most effective for helping you understand? What else might help enhance your understanding?

 

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JF 2014 McRel Standards Correlations

Our Work: Modern Jobs—Ancient Origins

Visual Arts

Standard 4: Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures

Historical Understanding

Standard 2: Understands the historical perspective

Catch Me If You Can

Visual Arts

Standard 4: Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures

Geography

Standard 10: Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics 

Part of Flavor: Spice Routes on a Plate

Geography

Standard 4: Understands the physical and human characteristics of place

Standard 10: Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics 

Standard 11: Understands the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface 

Pietro della Valle: il Pellegrino

World History

Standard 28: Understands how large territorial empires dominated much of Eurasia between the 16th and 18th centuries

Standard 31: Understands major global trends from 1450 to 1770

Geography

Standard 10: Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics 

Standard 17: Understands how geography is used to interpret the past 

Senegal’s Parade of Sheep

Geography

Standard 10: Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics 

Economics

Standard 3: Understands the concept of prices and the interaction of supply and demand in a market economy

The Casbah of Algiers: Endangered Ark

World History

Standard 28: Understands how large territorial empires dominated much of Eurasia between the 16th and 18th centuries

Standard 43: Understands how post-World War II reconstruction occurred, new international power relations took shape, and colonial empires broke up

Geography

Standard 10: Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics 

Standard 17: Understands how geography is used to interpret the past

 

Julie Weiss (julie.w1@comcast.net) is an education consultant based in Eliot, Maine. She holds a Ph.D. in American studies. Her company, Unlimited Horizons, develops social studies, media literacy, and English as a Second Language curricula, and produces textbook materials.

 

 

Check the Public Affairs Digital Image Archive for January/February 2014 images.