These notes are for teachers, to encourage thinking about global issues, and to stimulate ideas about how to incorporate these ideas into classwork.

Curriculum hooks

Geography – how our local area is interdependent with other places.

Literacy – drafting persuasive writing with purpose and audience.

Global citizenship – What moral responsibility do we have to people in other countries?

Chokky bikkies, inequality, and interdependence

Chokky bikkies is an enquiry which is designed to enable pupils to understand the concept of interdependence.

In order that pupils and teachers alike can have the pleasure of a chocolate biscuit at morning break, we are dependent on lots of people in near and far places. The enquiry shows that people as far apart as Ghana and the UK are bound together in a web of economic, social and environmental relationships, some for better and some for worse. The key question is, how are people and places connected to each other?

Inequality is another fundamental geographical concept.

It happens between places too, either:

• very locally between houses
• locally between different parts of a town or city
• regionally between different parts of a country
• globally between countries.

The effects of inequality are everywhere in the world. They often result in economic migration such as the ‘brain drain’ where more educated people leave poor parts of the world to go to richer ones. There can be social and political migration such as a refugee crisis where people are unhappy and disenfranchised and they leave one area for another. This all exacerbates inequality between places.

Inequality is inevitable so the real debate is about the level of inequality.

Many people believe that the world today is immorally unequal and that the rich exploited the poorer countries in the past and continue to exploit the countries today. They also believe that development of the rich countries has often been at the expense of the poor countries. In colonial times countries like the UK and France took raw materials from Africa at very low prices and exploited the natural environment without supporting the colonies in development. Since independence, world markets have controlled prices and kept prices very low, exploiting the fact that these countries are poor and are desperate to pay off debts, owed to rich countries.

Interdependence is increasingly important as we begin the 21^st century.

Globalisation

People and places are more connected to one another than they were 100 years ago. Over the 20^th century the increasing possibility of transport and communication has meant more contact between people and places. Economic activity has increased across national boundaries – this process is called globalisation. It is quite easy to see the effects: just walk down any high street and look at the labels on the products for sale. Globalisation is not only economic but cultural: just imagine how many restaurants from other parts of the world were on the same high street in 1930.

Globalisation is a disputed idea because it bypasses the poor.

People argue about globalisation because it is not truly global and that it is largely in the economically wealthy countries that this process is happening, and that in poor countries, things have hardly changed. It is therefore increasing inequality between rich and poor.

Teaching about interdependence and inequality needs examples to make it concrete.

1. A global-local challenge
   Take a walk down your nearest High Street and look for evidence from different countries. The challenge is to find as much as possible. How many different countries can the children spot? They can mark it on a map. Discuss the pattern of countries included. Explain colonial past, influence of the English language, and modern trade mostly with Europe. Look at old photos of the High Street to see how it was different. Explain globalisation if you feel the pupils can understand this abstract idea.
   
   
2. The global-local label hunt
   Have a big map on the wall and as pupils bring product labels into the class and after a couple of weeks look at the pattern. What does it tell you about trade with different countries? Chose two or three different types of goods and ask what does it tell you about what economic activity happens where. Explain inequality or world trade.
   
   
3. Pick any product
   It is easy to recognise interdependence as we approach 2000, the range of products we use. Chokkie Bikkies is an investigation designed to explain the chain of events and how rich and poor countries are bound up together. Don’t feel limited to this. Bananas are an obvious product where the chain is slightly less complex to unpack as the process misses the manufacturing stage. For older and more able pupils, clothing offers an interesting focus as many of the brand names are involved in manufacturing in poorer countries.
   
   
4. Global inequality on the information super-bypass
   Look at the lists of schools on Web 66 -  an international registry of schools on the World Wide Web. Choose all the countries on the line: the UK, France, Spain, Algeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Togo. Count how many schools are registered. The actual number doesn’t matter; it is the difference between them. Discuss with pupils what might influence this data. Consider population of the country, how wealthy the country is and how much technological industry there is. Discuss the fairness of this inequality.

Back to Chokky Central

About Chokky Bikkies