Teaching Red Scarf Girl

Book Review

Published: 3rd November 2009

Facing History and Ourselves is excited to announce a new study guide. Teaching Red Scarf Girl has been developed to help classrooms explore essential Facing History themes, including conformity, obedience, prejudice and justice. Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang's engaging memoir, provides an insightful window into the first tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution in China. Exploring the choices made by Jiang, her family, and her peers provides an opportunity for students to gain awareness of a significant moment in world history and provides them with an opportunity to reflect on their own role as members of families, schools, neighborhoods, and nations.

Features include:

  • Historical background essay by renown China scholar Professor William Joseph, Wellesley University
  • Journal and discussion questions to accompany each chapter of Red Scarf Girl
  • 19 historical documents, some in full color, including propaganda posters, photographs, government documents, poems, newspaper articles and more
  • Dozens of suggested activities designed for literature and social studies classrooms
  • Timelines of the Cultural Revolution and the history of modern China, plus a map of China
  • Descriptions of teaching strategies used to strengthen students' skills as readers, writers, listeners and critical thinkers

"I am so grateful that Facing History and Ourselves developed the study guide Teaching Red Scarf Girl. Just like me, they believe in the importance between history and ourselves; they believe that Ji-li's struggle with identity, loyalty, and the authority forty years ago will be relevant, familiar and real to the adolescents today..."

-Ji-li Jiang, author of Red Scarf Girl

Visit www.facinghistory.org/redscarfgirl to download the resource in PDF format (146 pp) at no cost.