Tsunami in Asia: video transcript

Moira: The Oxfam Education programme has been involved in education in the formal sector in Britain for over 25 years, developing thinking around global citizenship, promoting and supporting education for global citizenship.

We have Claire with us, an Oxfam Campaigner, who will give us some information on how the money raised by schools is used by Oxfam in response to the emergency.

Moira: On coming back from the holidays, many schools soon got down to raising large sums of money in response to the tsunami disaster in Asia. What is happening to this money?

Claire: There is a lot to be done to provide immediate aid and assistance to the survivors of the Tsunami disaster. A lot of basic things have been destroyed, such as houses, roads, water supplies, electricity, even entire towns and economies have been destroyed.

Immediate work is focusing on providing shelter, clean drinking water, sanitation and toilet facilities, food and sleeping mats. There are a lot of aid agencies working together on this, and each one specialises in providing different aspects of this aid so there are no duplications. For example, Oxfam specialises in providing clean water and sanitation supplies. This is to try and stop diseases such as typhoid and cholera from generating, which are extremely dangerous and spread easily and quickly.

In the longer term, the local communities and aid agencies will rebuild infrastructure such as roads, houses, schools and electricity and water plants, and start to rebuild the economies of the towns and areas that have been affected. The local communities will also need to find permanent homes for hundreds of orphaned children, and ensure they also receive an education.

The challenge will be to maintain our work in the Tsunami affected areas and also our humanitarian work in other parts of the world, such as Uganda and Sudan.

Moira: We are now joined by two curriculum advisers from the team, Lynn – a former Primary teacher and Richard – a former Secondary Geography teacher. They will address questions on what the issues raised by the Asian Tsunami mean for educationalists, giving some ideas of how they can be most effectively addressed in the classroom and at the same time look at the contribution education for global citizenship can make.

Moira: We all feel we need to make an immediate response, and children are no different! Fundraising has been a natural first response. But what else can schools do in the immediate aftermath of a disaster such as this?

Lynn: The classroom gives us an environment in which we can explore a wider set of responses. Teachers will want to help children, even quite young children, make some sense of what has happened. Pupils have been bombarded with images and information through the media, but if they are to develop an understanding of what has happened and its implications for the communities affected they need to be encouraged to think critically about what they have seen and heard.

Moira: Do you have any practical suggestions for how we can do this?

Lynn: First of all it is important that we allow children time and space to think and talk about it – many children will not get structured opportunities to do this elsewhere. Pupils will have many questions as I said earlier even quite young children will have questions –– and they should be encouraged to ask these questions, explore them, and develop more questions – whilst appreciating that there may be no easy answers.

The word ‘disaster’ is one that is much used, often with many different connotations. It may help to perhaps spend some time exploring exactly what we mean by it. Children could begin thinking about what would be a disaster for themselves – and what makes a situation disastrous at a personal level before moving on to think about what constitutes the kind of disaster we have seen with the Tsunami. Older pupils could go further and think about how they would define a disaster and consider what their own attitudes are towards what we might call ‘global disasters’ and their causes. Our Cool Planet website has many free and downloadable activities to aid this kind of exploration.

Moira:Even when we have related the concept of disaster to our own lives, for most of us the tsunami disaster seems very remote from our everyday experience, the communities affected seem far away, and the scale of the human disaster seems incomprehensible. What can teachers do to make it more meaningful for pupils?

Richard: It is worth emphasising that what may seem like a global disaster is in fact a personal disaster multiplied many times over. To help make connections to those more personal situations and build empathy, it is important to use case studies of individual people, families and communities – especially those featuring children. These are available on NGO websites, and widely in the media.

In order for pupils to get a handle on the implications of the tsunami, they also need activities to help them investigate consequences and the short, medium and long-term needs of affected communities. They could, for example, closely examine the consequences of not having a clean water supply, using a consequences diagram as a framework (there is one of these on our Cool Planet website).

The Cool Planet website also has an activity that allows pupils to put themselves in the shoes of someone managing an emergency relief situation and decide upon urgent priorities. This is a good way of developing understanding of the most urgent needs in the affected regions and also challenging misperceptions about disaster responses. For example, it helps pupils understand why relief operations obtain emergency supplies locally rather than ask for people in countries, such as Britain, to send them.

Moira: Some teachers may be concerned that in spending time on these issues with their pupils they will not be adhering to the National Curriculum. How would you respond to those worries?

Lynn: The values and purposes statement at the very beginning of the National Curriculum says very clearly that, “Education should prepare pupils to respond to the opportunities and challenges of the rapidly changing world we live in.”It also says, “That education should contribute to pupils’ sense of identity through a knowledge and understanding of the global dimension of their lives”. The skills that are being developed through this work, for example critical thinking and building empathy are key National Curriculum skills. Furthermore the newly released DfES International Strategy says that, “The priority within schools must be to instil a strong global dimension into the learning experience of all children and young people.” So teachers need not worry.

Moira: You mentioned earlier how children – and teachers – will have gleaned most of their knowledge and impressions of the effects of the tsunami through the media. How can teachers make most effective use of the media in their work with pupils?

Richard: The media is of course a useful source of information but it is also important for us all to recognise how the media shapes our consciousness of the tsunami and the people affected by it – and also of distant places in general. There is a real need to encourage pupils to look critically at media reports. What has the media focused on and why? You could ask pupils to explore how different reports make them feel about the situation and why. There’s material on Cool Planet for structuring such work, but teachers will also have their own ideas. For pupils of all ages, there is much work to be done on exploring the use of language and images – and in particular how they represent people affected by the disaster. Are they representing the people as helpless victims, dependent on western aid, or do they give the more accurate impression of local people doing much of the emergency work and rebuilding? There is also the question of whose viewpoints we are getting – and perhaps even more importantly, whose viewpoints we are not getting. Not to mention exploring the ethical questions and dilemmas confronting journalists!

Moira: The media is renowned for moving on quite quickly from disaster situations in other parts of the world. However, the early signs are that many links are being made to wider global issues concerning poverty, trade and debt and that these may remain firmly on the agenda throughout 2005. How can teachers make meaningful links to these wider issues?

Richard: It would be unfortunate if once we have raised money we largely forget about the long-term situation in the countries affected by the tsunami and the issues that it raises for the global community, of which we are all a part. Pupils of all ages can keep in touch with the situation in the places affected and can be encouraged to think about the continuing needs of people there, and how we might most appropriately respond. They can also consider the role of citizens, NGOs, governments and businesses in addressing those needs.

Many teachers will want to encourage older pupils to investigate some of those wider global issues raised by the tsunami. The latest World Disasters Report tells us that 98 per cent of the people killed or affected by natural disasters are in the world’s poorest countries. We can explore with pupils the questions that statistics such as these raise. For example, which groups of people are most affected by natural disasters? Why are the poor most vulnerable? What are the global causes of poverty? What do they have to do with issues such as trade and debt? What issues was Tony Blair trying to raise when he said that t here is the equivalent of a man-made preventable tsunami every week in Africa? What can be done? And by whom? These might seem complex and controversial issues, but there is no shortage of good materials to support teachers in exploring them in the classroom – just have a browse through the Oxfam catalogue for schools, which is accessible on Cool Planet.

Moira: Oxfam is well known for advocating education for global citizenship. It would seem from everything that you are saying, that it isn’t essentially about fundraising! Can you sum up what it is about, and how it relates to everyday school life?

Richard: Fundraising can make a very real difference to disaster situations in the short-term, and enables people to express solidarity with those affected. However, educationalists will want to go much further. At Oxfam, we believe that education has the potential to transform ourselves and the world in which we live. And an education for global citizenship is about preparing pupils with the understanding, skills and values to participate fully in a globalised society. At its heart lies the belief that it no longer makes sense to think of the local and global as entirely separate entities – for we live in an interdependent world where the global is to be found on our kitchen table, in our neighbourhood and in the schools in which we spend so much of our time. It seeks to develop critical thinking, a commitment to social justice and the belief that we can make a difference – locally as well as globally.

Moira: So its not just for Geography or Citizenship then?

Lynn: Exactly. Because education for global citizenship is essentially about developing skills, values and understanding for relating to the world around us – locally and globally - it is difficult to think of an area of the curriculum that does not have a role to play. In fact, we see it as something that cuts right across the whole of school life, and is ideally at the heart of the whole-school ethos.

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