Child Labour: Questioning and challenging – Citizenship, Year 10

Overview

This year 10 project involved groups of pupils finding out information about child labour in countries from around the world and using this information to create a fictional working child. They then created videos about this child that were used to create a web page providing an opinion or an argument about child labour.

Pupil learning objectives

· To examine issues about work – the legal and moral rights of employers and employees
· To consider how different media can be used, for example to influence public opinion
· To work in collaborative groups to produce a publication
· To extend their understanding of different economic and social conditions around the world and the effect they have on children’s rights

Project description

This project involved a class of Year 10 pupils in their second half term of studying for a GCSE in citizenship. Groups of 4-6 pupils were given a country to investigate. Over six weeks in class they were asked to find information about the laws relating to child labour, social and economic information relating to their country and whether the country was involved in conflict. Based on this information each group was asked to create a fictional child labourer. The countries were:

Country Child Worker

Cote D’Ivoire Child on cocoa plantation
UK Child in fast-food outlet
Thailand Child sex worker
USA Child in entertainment industry
Colombia Child soldier
Indonesia Child working in a factory producing mosquito repellent

The pupils were told that they would be producing a web site featuring a short video about the working child that would get across a point of view or message about that child’s life and working conditions.

Pupils’ were shown examples of videos that tried to get across a message – an extract from Channel 4 News about appalling conditions in an old people’s home and a pupil made video about young asylum seekers in London. They were asked to consider what kinds of techniques and formal features the films used in order to get their messages across such as undercover filming, interviews, close-up, reconstruction etc. In planning their video they were asked to think carefully about the techniques they would use and the message that they wanted to get across about child labour in their country.

The project culminated in two days at Highwire where they filmed and edited their video and created a supporting web site featuring text and images that contained supplementary information as well as their responses to what they had found out about child labour in their example country.

Creative thinking and behaviour: Questioning and challenging

Through the process of making a video in order to communicate information, to analyse information and to formulate an opinion in order to get across a point of view, pupils were questioning and challenging both their own perspectives but also the different kinds of information that they researched. In order to explore issues around labour laws, human rights and the role of children they had to question other perspectives as well as their own. Groups that used interviews as part of their video also had to engage with how to ask questions in order to find out relevant information (e.g. in terms of framing questions, having follow-up questions ready, gaining peoples’ trust).

For example, the group looking at Thailand used interviews and role-play to get across information about why a teenage girl was working in a brothel in Bangkok. In doing so they were questioning, challenging and developing their own views on this subject. Through rehearsing and refining their work their perspectives and opinions developed. The first interview involved a western journalist (essentially one of the pupils’ as themselves) asking in a fairly abrasive manner how the girl could let herself do such a demeaning job. In the first rehearsal, this led to the girl playing the sex worker clamming up and not being able to answer questions. They were then forced to think about how to ask questions so that the child worker might give some information about her life.

Similarly, video filming and editing allowed the Colombia group to use a range of techniques to explore the complex issues around the use of child soldiers in Colombia including hidden filming of a meeting of the Colombian government and military and an anonymous interview with a Colombian guerrilla leader. In doing so they had to engage with difficult and complex information about why people might go to war against their government, the use of force in society, and issues around power and accountability in Colombia

Key features of ICT that enabled and supported pupils’ creativity

Quality: Pupils were able to reproduce professional techniques in their video that contributed to their own motivation and self-esteem. More importantly, because they were publishing for an audience, they had to find ways of making information accessible, relevant and accurate. This process involved them in refining, reworking and representing their ideas.

Provisionality: The provisionality of ICT is crucial in allowing pupils to edit, re-order and reflect on what they have done. The process of editing video in particular helped them develop their ideas and enabled them to change and develop their opinions. In carefully choosing the parts of what they have filmed that best communicate their ideas they had to analyse their footage very carefully. Also, when putting together their final edit one group decided to add a piece to camera expressing the groups’ ambivalence about the issue of child soldiers – admitting that the issue was not as simple as they first thought.

Range: The groups were asked to find out information about countries that are not necessarily well known in this country and not normally part of mainstream news or curriculum content. ICT allowed them to expand the range of information they had access to through using Internet searches and electronic information sources in order to get information and resources on a truly global scale. The fact that they were finding this information to use in publishing their own work also gave them a purpose for their searching. For example one group spent time on the Internet on web sites about international politics frantically searching trying to find an up to date map of Colombia showing the different areas of interest and conflict that they could use as a background to their web-page. They argued that information about the conflict presented graphically, as a map would provide important information as to what the conflict was about and why it was happening in the way it was.