The Clothes on Their Backs

This lesson is about the distribution (!) by continent of the world's wealth.
They will think about where their clothes are made, or where their shoes are made, and by whom.
They will realize that there is peoples' work in all manufactured goods.
They will figure out why all the work is being done elsewhere, and all the money ends up in White America and Europe.

In order to demonstrate the process that Columbus began, divide up 20 of your students to roughly represent the population distribution of the world's people. Then, pass out 20 apples to the 20 students, but in the following way:

12 people stand on the map of Asia. they receive 5 apples.
3 people stand on Africa. They get one apple.
2 people stand in South America. They get one apple.
2 People stand in Europe. They get 7 apples.
1 Person stands in North America. that person gets six apples.

The point here, which the students should understand, is that most of the people, 17 out of the 20, or 85%, live in Asia, South America, and Africa, but 65% of the wealth is owned by the three who live in North America and Europe.

Next, we will find out who is doing the work of making our clothes. It always surprises kids and holds their attention to find out where their clothes were made. So, have them look at the labels on their shirts, sweaters, and keep a tally of the various countries. You will find of course, that most (if not all) of their clothes are made in Asia, Central America, or the Pacific Islands. Now we come to the big point: most of the work to make our clothes is done in Asia, Africa, and South America. How can this be? Why is most of the work done by Africans, South Americans, and Asians, but all the money is in the hands of North American and European companies and rich people.
(The US statistics are even more suggestive.We'll deal with those on another blog.)

Is this fair? you ask the kids. Of course not! If your class is like mine, they will all want to move to North America,where the riches are! Why are things like this? How did they get to be this way? This is the logic of capitalism and its big brother, Globalization. There are a few simple rules in this "upside down world":

1. The things that people make do not belong to them. Neither does the money made by selling the things.

2. The person who "owns" the things gets to make money from them. Consider a Peyton Manning jersey that sells for $80 was made by someone who got 10 cents to make it.

3. Things are made in other countries (even though the unemployment rate among certain US socioeconomic groups is close to 30%) because workers in these countries get paid so very little. This is called "cheap labor." Often, the companies don't have to pay taxes - or pay very low taxes in these countries.

4. In these countries, environmental regulations are nonexistent or ignored by corrupt local authorities. this means that the companies can pollute the earth, dump poison waste into rivers, and destroy the natural world around their factories without having to pay any penalties or being told to stop.

5. Most of the workers in these factories are young women and children, because the bosses can bully and threaten them and force them to work long hours for very little money. These people often don't make enough to live on.

6. One quarter of a billion (250,000,000) children go to work each day instead of going to school. Of these, a large percentage (about 75%) are treated like slaves.

So,Review Questions
Where are our clothes made?
Why are so many things made in Asia, Africa, and Latin America??
There are lots of people in our city who don't have jobs, so why don't the companies give jobs to them?
"Why don't the people who do the work get the money?"
And the best question of all: What are we going to do about it?

As a matter of fact, one of my writing classes really did something about it.My students went around the school and read out facts about Nike and its abuse of workers around the world. We put up signs around the school and organized a "No Nike" day. Success was mixed. Several students told us that Nike shoes and "gear" were the only clothes they had. Now look at this short video which indicts another world-class and worldwide exploiter of labor - the Disney Corporation.