This week in
International Studies, we examined the nature of capitalism – the good, the bad
and the ugly.
Our lesson
commenced with a game involving candy (that definitely caught the students’
attention)!
The rules were
simple:
1) Each student was given an unequal
amount of candy (their currency).
2) The students had to compete with each
other in games of noughts and crosses.
3) For each game of noughts and crosses
won, the winner would take one piece of candy from their opponent.
Both fun and
frustrating, it reminded the students of some of the core elements of
capitalism: competition and the pursuit of financial gain. We also discussed how it was
unfair that some students started off with more candy than others, introducing the
concept of capitalism and ... inequality.
Afterwards,
we decided to analyse capitalism and the (global) fashion industry. We began
with one question: where do our clothes come from? The results were varied...
We wondered about the extent to which multiple companies’ outsourcing of work in these countries
benefited the latter...
“It gives
people jobs...”
“But these
jobs are often poorly paid...”
“Would they
be better off without them though?”
“Only a few
people benefit from this...”
The students
soon discovered that they were examining highly complex issues. One thing is
for sure though, it definitely made us all think twice about the way that our
own actions (that of purchasing particular clothes) can affect individuals
across the globe.
No comments:
Post a Comment