Planting seeds of solidarity - 1

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2001 by Bob Peterson

My fifth-grade students love stories. Almost every day after lunch I light a candle, turn off the lights, and read or tell a story. If something interferes with story time, I receive a chorus of complaints.

One of the stories I use to start my students' study of globalization issues is from my own teenage experience when I lived in Cairo, Egypt in the mid 1960s. I tell them that I lived in Cairo among pyramids and sphinxes, close to the world's longest river, the Nile. I attended a middle school with kids from all over the world, in an old palace of former King Farouk of Egypt. Because my family was from the United States and my father had a good job as a soil scientist, we lived comfortably in a suburban home south of Cairo.

I had many adventures--riding horses and camels by the Great Pyramids of Cheops, visiting Tutan-khamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, swimming in the Red Sea--but one incident stands out in my memory.

One sunny afternoon my family got into our blue 1965 Ford station wagon and drove 20 kilometers south of Cairo to climb a lesser known pyramid called the Red Pyramid. My mother had packed a lunch in our cooler, including some cans of imported diet soda for my diabetic brother, Don.

We picnicked in an isolated spot in the desert a ways from the Red Pyramid. By the time we finished, a small group of children had gathered around our car and they called out in Arabic, "baksheesh! baksheesh!" They wanted a tip--money. Their little hands poked through the open car windows, begging. We did not give money to the kids (U.S. tourists were not encouraged" to do so)--but we did "give" them some-thing. As we were leaving we threw out the window my brother's two empty aluminum cans. "They want them for a toy," my father said as we drove away. The children screamed with joy. I looked out the back window as we slowly drove toward the pyramid. The children were piled on top of the cans, fighting to be owner, of their newly found play things.

We hiked to the top of the pyramid's peak, but my thoughts remained focused on the children Lighting over what I had thrown away. Why was I destined to be the one in the car tossing junk to poor kids, instead of the one who was begging for a penny or an empty can?

WHY?

Using simple stories to raise profound questions is among the oldest and best of teaching techniques. It is also an essential strategy in my teaching about globalization issues.

I view teaching about globalization and world justice issues much as I view issues of multicultural education. They need to be both woven throughout the curriculum and highlighted in specific lessons. This approach is necessary in part to find the time to teach about the issues, given all that elementary teachers are expected to cover. But also I find that an integrated approach helps motivate students and teaches them that these are central issues that cannot be dealt with in one or two activities. As a result, my lessons in math, science, social studies, writing, reading, current events--even discipline discussions--all have a world justice and multicultural theme woven throughout.

Teaching about global issues is not the norm in U.S. classrooms and I have struggled with how best to approach the topic. One of the dilemmas I have encountered is that I don't want to negate my students' instinctive feelings of empathy and caring, yet I want them to move beyond what in this country is often an "us versus them" dichotomy. I have found that discussions of globalization can feed into the inherently condescending attitude that people in the United States have all the answers, that people in "developing" countries are somehow inferior or less than human, and that assumes that the role of those in the United States is to "help the less fortunate."

This article focuses on activities that attempt to move beyond the "us versus them" dichotomy and instead engender feelings of solidarity with others around the world. This by no means encompasses my teaching about globalization and there are other important issues, such as how I approach colonialism, world economics, environmental issues, social activism, and building solidarity and community within my own classroom. For a fuller discussion of these issues see Bill Bigelow's and my forthcoming book, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World.

The story of my year in Egypt provokes thoughtful comments and questions among students. They express surprise that some children have so little and they wonder what life is like for children around the world. "I can't believe kids actually wanted just an old can," I recall a student saying. A response from another student stressed our commonalty: "I believe it. Every kid wants to play!"

PROBLEM-POSING APPROACH

Throughout my classroom discussions on globalization, I pose more questions, not so much in search of a specific answer, but for all of us to think about: How are our lives different from theirs? How are they similar? What do people in this country have to learn from people in other countries? Why does chance allow for some to live a life of relative luxury while others don't know where their next meal is coming from? And what might we do about such things?