Consumer Power: Rationale

Rationale

This series of lessons can be used at a variety of stages in dealing with development. Students can begin the task without any prior knowledge of Nike or sweatshops. They will be led to an understanding of bias and how to spot it.

The following concepts are also developed in the series of lessons: interdependence, quality of life, consumer power, global market and evidence.

The newspaper articles used in the activity were written by Year 8 students who had watched the Panorama programme from October 15th 2000 Gap and Nike: No Sweat? Some information about this programme and short clips from it are available on the BBC website at Panaorama site

Nike workers Following these initial inputs, students looked at a label on a Nike shoe box a portion of your purchase supports youth community programs around the world and read selected sections from Nike's employment policy on their website, www.nike.com, (reading age of actual website is high). Students identified key points from the policy in pairs and tried to identify any conflicts with Rosa's story.

Students were then introduced to the newspaper writing frame (see Worksheet) and used a paper copy to plan an article about the issue of sweatshop clothes production in pairs. They were given the choice of showing bias in either direction but were told to put forward a good argument for both sides, clearly justifying any opinions in the article. Students identified rules of newspaper article writing (as shown on writing frame) before starting.

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