EXAMINING GLOBAL ISSUES IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

8/7/2019 EXAMINING GLOBAL ISSUES IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

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EXAMINING GLOBAL ISSUES IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

You love America--everyone does; or if they don't let them just leave. But if we're going to fight, we have to be

sure we can win.... We should say [to the Russians]: Look, you tell us what you are after, and we'll tell you how

we see things, and then we'll find out if there's some way to avoid a war that'll kill us all!" (Coles 1986, p. 256)

These words of advice come from Gerry, one of the many children interviewed by child psychiatrist Robert Coles

(1986) for his book The Political Life of Children. An eleven-year-old Bostonian, Gerry displays a strong sense of

national loyalty tempered by an awareness of the potential consequences of international conflict. Although h is

language is simple and straightforward, he sets forth one of the basic principles of conflict resolution: Examine

the goals and perspectives of all parties to see if there is room for negotiation.

A growing number of researchers such as Coles are finding that young children know more about social and

political issues than was previously thought (Kurth -Schai 1988; Ross 1984; Stevens 1982). Traditional

assessment techniques, such as adult-type questionnaires, often portray elementary-age students as ignorant

and naive about global issues. Researchers have found that discussions based on students' drawings, open-

ended items on written questionnaires, and focus groups give students more opportunities to express their

thoughts and concerns in their own language. It seems that when we suspend our preconceptions of what young

people should know and how they should demonstrate this knowledge, we find that children can deal with

complex issues in surprisingly sophisticated ways. The key to finding out how young people think and learn

about socio-political issues, according to Katz (1988), is to provide the "right context" in which they can share

their knowledge and concerns about issues.

In this article, we offer a rationale for examining global issues in the elementary classroom and describe wa ys

that teachers can create the "right context" for inquiring about those issues with students. We suggest guidelines

for selecting materials that will facilitate inquiry and help students reorganize their thinking about global issues.

A Rationale for Global Issues in the Elementary Classroom Kniep (1989) identifies four major categories

of global issues: peace and security, human rights, environmental problems, and national/international

development. Why should such issues be an integral part of the elementary school curriculum? We argue that

international conflict, human rights issues, environmetal degradation, and problems related to international

development are already part of young people's lives and that teachers, by making these issues a part of the

formal curriculum, can validate and build upon young people's experiences. Helping students make connections

between immediate experiences in their own communities and global realities enhances the relevance of civic

participation at the local level. Finally, we feel that inquiry into global issues in the elementary grades, when

students are most curious about the world around them, lays the foundation for more sophisticated analyses of

the issues as students mature.

Most elementary teachers are keenly aware that global issues are already a part of young students' daily

experience, both in and outside of school. The equitable distribution of limited resources, consumption and waste

management, discrimination, and conflict are regular issues in elementary classrooms, along with problems more

often reported in secondary schools such as threats of violence, drugs, and early sexual experience. As Massialas

(1989) points out, the school can no longer be regarded as a sanctuary where students are protected from the

social ills of the larger society. Educators recognize that the problems students experience in and out of school

reflect larger global problems of aggression, overpopulation, resource depletion, pollution, poverty and humanrights inequities--issues that students will confront at increasing levels of seriousness and complexity in the

future. Exploring these issues within the classroom is a means of recognizing and validating the social, cultural,

and political experiences students bring with them to schoo l.

The relationships between local problems and global issues are not often apparent to young people, however. In

two recent studies, students tended to associate broad social problems such as pollution and poverty with the

national and global spheres but rarely with their local communities (Gamradt and Avery 1990; Katz 1988). When

social issues are identified solely with arenas beyond their immediate experience, students lack incentives to


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become actively involved in examining problems in their schools, neighborhoods, and cities. Making connections

between local and global problems may help students recognize ways in which citizens in local communities can

play an integral part in effecting positive change across interdependent spheres.

The ability to inquire into global issues and to relate them to local concerns develops gradually, building on prior

knowledge and experiences. The elementary school years, therefore, constitute an important time to lay the

foundation for the development of these explorations and understandings (Schunke 1984; Stevens 1982). Inaddition, elementary students exhibit interest in people different from themselves and a growing capacity to

appreciate other points of view--orientations that may diminish as they approach adolescence if these are not

exercised and encouraged (Torney-Purta 1985). Advocates for global education emphasize the need to expose

young students to multiple perspectives, to give them opportunities to practice taking alternative viewpoints, and

to help them reason from those different points of view (Hanvey 1976; Lamy 1990). Curricula organized around

global issues offer powerful opportunities for realizing these goals.

Inquiring about Global Issues with Elementary StudentsWhen selecting approaches and materials for the study of global issues at the elementary level, two

considerations seem particularly relevant, in addition to more general guidelines for choosing appropriate

strategies and content for young people (for example, an emphasis on concrete, active, and cooperative learning

experiences). First, issues should be presented as genuinely problematic. Materials designed for global educationat the elementary level are often aimed at building an awareness of global realities rather than engaging

students in examining the related causes and consequences of those realities. Although most young children

cannot understand all of the variables related to environmental politics, they can begin to recognize that

conflicting opinions exist about solutions to environmental problems.Second, students should be given opportunities for decision making and social action. As young people explore

the ways in which global issues affect their lives, they need to feel they can contribute to positive, meaningful

change. Within their immediate environment, concern for global hostilities can become an opportunity to

examine alternative means of conflict resolution among peers; discussing the depletion of the earth's natural

resources can become an opportunity to make class decisions about the use of classroom resources, trash

disposal, lunchtime habits, or playground maintenance. Helping students make connections between global

issues and classroom contexts reinforces the significance of these personal decisions and actions.

The teacher will often need to go beyond traditional instructional resources for specific social action projects. For

example, the "Goat Project" at the International Service Association for Health (INSA) provides materials about

development problems in Haiti and invites classes to adopt a goat th at becomes part of an agricultural

development program in Haiti. Upper elementary students can receive case histories of political prisoners

throughout the world and write letters on their behalf through Amnesty International's Children's Edition of the

Urgent Action Network. A recent publication entitled 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth (Earthworks

Group 1990) offers a wide range of environmental awareness and action projects for young people at all grade

levels. Each of these resources serves to extend students' sense of personal efficacy beyond the classroom.

Three instructional strategies or methods seem particularly appropriate for exploring the complexities of global

issues and laying the foundation for decision making and social action: small group discussions, role-play and

simulations, and thematic resource folders. In the following sections, we present descriptions of how these

strategies promote issues-centered teaching, as well as recommended resource materials that support the three

approaches.

Small Group DiscussionsTwo fascinating studies of ch ildren's perceptions of social and political issues suggest that opportunities for

young people to share their thoughts and concerns with one another constitute a powerful means of exploring

global issues (Kurth-Schai 1988; Stevens 1982). Both researchers found that differing peer perspectives are the

sources of new information most accessible to students and most likely to prompt them to reorganize their


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thinking. Stevens suggests that the teacher's role in small group discussions is "not so much a 'drawing-out ' of

what children know, as an end in itself, as one aimed at helping them to develop skills in recognising what is

relevant to an issue or what questions need to be asked, which is to say, at developing a philosophical capacity"

(p. 176).Children's literature provides an excellent vehicle for initiating small group or whole class discussions. Young

students identify with characters in a story and respond with interest and emotion to the experiences andproblems they encounter through story events (Levstik 1983). Through their involvement with literature,

students can develop an understanding of problems people face in times and places distant from their own

reality while, at the same time, they can recognize that they have much in common with those di stant others.

Lists of children's literature about global issues have been compiled around a variety of topics. A curriculum

offering from UNICEF, Children's Literature: Springboard to Understanding the Developing World (Diakiw, Baker,

Ledger, Leppington, and Pearce 1989), includes picture storybooks about Africa, global interdependence, Latin

American city life, and India; junior/intermediate novels relevant to the themes are also suggested. The National

Council for the Social Studies Bulletin International Human Rights, Society and the School (Branson and Torney-

Purta 1982), suggests criteria for selecting books on human rights and provides an extensive annotated

bibliography of children's literature about rights issues, including thirty titles judged appr opriate for younger

children. Riecken and Miller (1990) offer an annotated list of stories that are suitable for exploring problemsolving and decision making with elementary students.

Current events are also recommended as a springboard for small group discussions. Even kindergartners are

aware of events that have high visibility in the media, such as the meltdown at Chernobyl or the Persian Gulf

conflict (Moore, Lare, and Wagner 1985). Earle (1982) suggests that small group discussions about issues that

permeate the public conscience allow the teacher to discover young students' misconceptions and to address

their fears. If discussion is based on students' ideas and thoughts, teachers are unlikely to introduce questions

that are developmentally inappropriate. Students should be invited to participate voluntarily in a small group

discussion; alternative activities should be available for those students who are uninterested or who are not

ready to deal with potentially sensitive and difficult issues.

If a more structured discussion format seems appropriate, the decision-making tree (La Raus and Remy 1978)

encourages students to identify problems, consider alternative solutions, hypothesize about the short and

longterm consequences of alternatives, and choose actions based on their values. The "tree" helps students to

visualize the decision-making process. The "futures wheel" (Pike and Selby 1988) is another model that invites

students to consider the consequences of an event. The event or problem is written in the middle of a

chalkboard; single lines are drawn to immediate consequences, double lines to second-order consequences, and

so on. Strategies such as the decision tree and the futures wheel help students appreciate the problematic

nature of global issues and understand that human choices can create alternative futures.

Roleplay and SimulationsEnactments such as roleplay and simulations can help elementary students recognize the complex nature of

global issues by inviting them to temporarily adopt alternative realities in which they experience problems from

different perspectives and practice making decisions in a nonthreatening context. Because younger children can

become deeply involved in roles they assume, their enactments might best be organized around immediate

issues of fairness, conflict resolution, and interpers onal relations; intermediate elementary students may enact

situations from literature or case studies that more directly portray broader issues. Shaftel and Shaftel (1982)

offer particularly useful guidelines for organizing meaningful role play activities in the elementary classroom.

Davison (1984) suggests that "freezing the action" intermittently to probe students' interpretations, switching

roles midway through the action, and repeating scenarios from another point of view during roleplay or

simulation activities are strategies that challenge students' thinking about the actions and words being used.


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Simulations can be effective vehicles for a broadened understanding of issues if they are carefully constructed

and monitored. Through simulations, students may experience the temporary reality of being discriminated

against, of being hungry, being a single parent (Davison 1984) or other unfamiliar, controversial, sometimes

stressful situations. Rafa, Rafa, distributed by the Social Studies School Service, is a simulation designed to help

students in grades 4-8 explore the dimensions of ethnocentrism. Students divide into two groups and temporarily

adopt the communication styles, values, and beliefs of fictitious cultures, the Alphas and the Betas.

Participants quickly learn the ways in which stereotypes and misperceptions develop; the debriefing emphasizes

methods for improving cross-cultural communication and understanding. In Pereira's (1987) simulation of

apartheid, students are divided proportionately to represent "white," "colored," and "black" populations in South

Africa, and then informed about the conditions and circumstances of their particular groups. Follow-up discussion

encourages students to express their reactions and to explore issues of rights, justice, and fairness of rules from

their differing perspectives.

The inequitable distribution and consumption of resources among the first, second, and third worlds is

highlighted in a world hunger simulation developed by the American Friends Service Committee, Hunger on

Spaceship Earth--Simulation Game. Another spaceship simulation recommended for grades 4-8, Terra 11--A

Spaceship Earth Simulation (Mastrude 1985), deals with the problem of limited resources within a closed system

and the interdependence of subsystems. Three software programs from Tom Snyder Productions--TheEnvironment, Immigration, and The Other Side--provide excellent simulations directly related to global issues.

Appropriate for grades 5-12, the simulations require students to make critical decisions regarding land use

issues, immigration policies, and international conflict.

Thematic Resource FoldersThe thematic resource folder, suggested by Levstik (1983) for involving elementary students in historical issues,

is anchored by a focal story that introduces a theme or issue and includes other literary and primary sources that

help students investigate the issue. Individual, small group, or class resources folders can be developed as

organizers for data that bring students into contact with a variety of sources and viewpoints on a specific global

issue, such as hunger, literacy, or women in developing countries. Resource folders might include simple data

displays garnered from newspapers or statistical reports from sources such as UNICEF's annual report on The

State of the World's Children, the publications of The Worldwatch Institue, or the monthly offerings of World

Eagle.Data generated, collected, and organized by the students themselves may be particularly meaningful. For

example, an activity from a 4-H curriculum unit entitled And My World . . . suggests that students try to use only

1.5 gallons of water for one day (the amount used by the majority of the people in the world), record how they

use the allocated supply, and share the results with the group. A thematic resource folder might include pictures

(from newspapers or drawn by students), surveys of family members and friends about their opinions and

experiences, or correspondence with students in other schools, towns or countries about the topic. Students'

journal entries could be included to document their changing perceptions of the issues.

The introduction of the theme and story early in the school year gives focus to a resource folder, and the folder

can become a valuable data bank for exploring the complexities of an issue as it emerges in the news or in other

classroom studies. Engle (1989) recommends that a class or grade level conduct an in depth study of one broad

social problem over the course of a school year; he suggests that "such study will continually serve to reinforce

the importance and relevance of other work in progress in social studies" (p. 190).

By sharing their interpretations of literature, first-hand accounts of others' experiences, and statistical data about

world conditions, students discover different viewpoints on the protection of the environment, health care,

homelessness, or international conflict. This discovery not only increases students' knowledge and broadens their

perspectives, but it also helps them understand that, unlike textbook questions that are typically answered

somewhere in the chapter, global issues represent unanswered questions.


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Kniep, W. M. 1989. Social studies within a global education. Social Education 53(6): 399-403; 385.

Kurth-Schai, R. 1988. Collecting the thoughts of children: A delphic approach. Journal of Research and

Development in Education 21(3): 53-59.

Lamy, S. L. 1990. Global education: A conflict of images. In Global education: From thought to action, edited by

K. A.

LaRaus, R., and R. C. Remy. 1978. Citizenship decision-making: Skills activities and materials. Reading, Mass.:

Addison-Wesley.

Tye, 49-63. A lexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Levstik, L. 1983. A child's approach to history. The Social Studies, 74(5): 232-236.

Massialas, B. G. 1989. The inevitability of issue-centered discourse in the classroom. The Social Studies, 80(5):

173-175.

Mastrude, P. 1985. Terra II--A spaceship earth simulation. In Simulations for a Global Perspective, Intercom

#107, (pp. 14-17). New York: Global Perspectives in Education.

Moore, S. W., J. Lare, and K. A. Wagner. 1985. The child's political world. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Pereira, C. 1987. Elementary teaching strategies. Social Education, 51(2): 128-131.

Pike, G., and D. Selby. 1988. Global teacher, global learner. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Riecken, T. J., and M. R. Miller. 1990. Introduce children to problem solving and decision making by using

children's literature. The Social Studies, 81(2): 59 -64.

Ross, A. 1984. Developing political concepts and skills in the primary school. Educational Review 36(2): 131 -139.

Schuncke, G. M. 1984. Global awareness and younger children: Beginning the process. The Social Studies, 75(6),

248-251.

Shaftel, F. R., and G. Shaftel. 1982. Role playing in the curriculum (second edition). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

PrenticeHall.

Stevens, O. 1982. Children talking politics. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

Torney-Purta, J. 1985. American's knowledge and attitudes about the world: Do we know what we need to

know? In A world of strangers: International education in the United States, Russia, Britain, and India, edited by

E. B. Gumbert, 13-31. Atlanta, Ga.: Center for Cross-cultural Education.

Organizations Offering Resources for Teaching Global Issues

American Friends Service Committee (developers of Hunger on Spaceship Earth --S imulation Came). 15

Rutherford Place, New York, N.Y. 10003. (212) 598 0905.Amnesty International. Urgent Action Network, Children's Edition. Post Office Box 1270, Nederland, CO 80466-

1270. (303) 440 0913,

International Service Association for Health (INSA). Post Office Box 15086, Atlant a, GA 30333. (404) 634-5748.


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National 4-H Council. (And My World . . . is distributed by state councils). 7100 Connecticut Avenue, Chevy

Chase, MD 20815. (301) 961-2846.

Social Studies School Service (distributor of Rafa, Rafa). 10200 Jefferson Boulevard, Post Office Box 802, Culver

City, CA 90232-9983. (800) 421-4246.

Tom Snyder Productions (developers of The Environment, Immigration and The Other Side). 90 Sherman Street,Cambridge, MA 02140. (800) 342-0236.

UNICEF (publishes an annual book, The State of the World's Children). 866 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY

10017. (212) 326-7000.

World Eagle, Inc. (publishes a monthly social studies resource). 64 Washburn Avenue, Wellesley, MA 02181.

(617) 235-1415.

Worldwatch Institute (publishes an annual book, The State of the World). 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW,

Washington, DC 20036. (202) 452-1999.

ILLUSTRATION: Three children

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By ANN V. ANGELL and PATRICIA G. AVERY

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EXAMINING GLOBAL ISSUES IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM