Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

Last week sometime, my class somehow managed to get onto the topic of sweat shop labour. It started with a fairly innocuous non-fiction poster about diamonds, which we were studying for its text features. Then we asked one of the questions we've been asking about everything in our current literacy unit: what information about diamonds is missing from this poster? So I explained about the diamond cartels which were artificially lowering supply and increasing demand, resulting in diamonds being far more expensive than they ought to be. (If I'd been really on top of my game, I would have made them look up that information for themselves, but I'm not quite that progressive yet and the computers are as old as the kids themselves.) Then we got onto the topic of why their clothes could be purchased for so little. We discovered very quickly that only two items of clothing in the whole class (at least of the ones whose tags were easily accessible) were made in North America. There were a few from Mexico, a few from Turkey and Pakistan, and the rest from Southeast Asia. Again, I sidestepped the research piece and just told them that their clothes were mostly made by people being paid less than a dollar a day, barely enough to live on, and probably a lot of them were made by children who consequently weren't going to school. There were appalled, and jumped right over the question most adults would have asked next - what does this have to do with us? - and right to, "What can we do about this?"

Fast forward to last night. I was shopping at a local mall and happened into the Body Shop. Remembering that store's original schtick was about being against animal testing, I looked for pamphlets that would reveal their current social conscience. I had no trouble finding them. So I picked up a bunch of pamphlets and took them into my class today.

We started with a brief context lesson, where we discussed three questions. (That means everyone sat at the carpet and discussed these questions in knee-to-knee form, then I took input from several groups until we had a list of point-form answers.) The questions were:

1) Why do stores advertise? What do they want us to do?
2) What reasons might you have for choosing one store or product over another?
3) What techniques do stores typically use to get you to shop in their store?

Once we had a good list of reasons, I pulled out the flyers, along with some cue cards that had questions on them. We talked a bit about the Body Shop; then I divided them into groups and gave each group a couple of pamphlets and a question card. Then I let them have at it to discuss in small groups. The questions on the cards:

1) Who is the target audience for this pamphlet? How do you know?
2) Finish this sentence the way the producer of the pamphlet would finish it: "We think you should shop in our store because. . ."
3) How is this pamphlet the same or different from a Walmart flyer?
4) How does the message of this pamphlet connect to the discussion we had last week about sweat shops?
5) What does the producer of this pamphlet want you to feel when you shop at the Body Shop?*

Along the way, some of the other questions the kids asked, which we then discussed:

1) How do we know that the pamphlets are telling the truth? (To me, this should be one of the questions asked amongst the Great Five.)
2) How much of an effect does it have if a few people buy these products instead of similar ones at Zellers? Are we just spending more money to feel less guilty?
3) What happens when the demand gets too great for the fair trade co-ops in Namibia to produce all of the ingredient the Body Shop buys from them?
4) The pamphlet makes it sound like the women sending their kids to school is the greatest thing ever. Why is that?

The whole lesson took almost the entire literacy block. I finished up with an open response question, to which they had to write a paragraph answer using the Better Answers formula:

Based on the information in these pamplets, would you shop at the Body Shop instead of buying a similar product at Zellers? Why or why not? Give evidence from the pamphlets and your own ideas to support your answer.

It was a fabulous lesson and I'm so proud of it. I've made copies to put in my portfolio, which after some eight years, I'm finally updating.

* BTW, I didn't come up with these randomly; they're based on the five questions that Deborah Meier says form the basis of all critical study: How do we know what we know? Whose point of view is represented here? How is this related/connected to that? Why is this important? And the last one which I left out this time, How might things have been otherwise from how they are presented here? I recommend Alfie Kohn's book "The Schools Our Children Deserve" for a good overview.)