P4C: Fairness and sharing the burdens

Two days ago, I did an English-language P4C lesson with the six children (Mulan, Miya and the cousins).

Since we have been doing a lot of walking lately, I decided to do an activity that gets them thinking about what is the fairest way to share the carrying burdens.

Unschooler-style, I left six copies of the dialogue (the first page of the above-linked pdf) sitting on the floor of the children’s play area.  As I put it down, I casually said to the children that they could look through it if they want.  On one of the pages, I had written out a suggestion of who could read which lines in the dialogue.

I then left the children to continue their free play.

A little later, I heard the children reading through the dialogue out loud, with each child taking the parts that I had suggested.  Soon after, Mulan came to me and said they were ready to do it with me.  So, we all sat down together on the floor in the playroom.

I had done no other preparation for this lesson, so everything that followed was just off the top of my head.

I started with some general points of clarification, just to make sure they understood the background.  I asked if they knew where Edinburgh was, who the Duke of Edinburgh is, and what is the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

They didn’t know much about this (one thought Edinburgh is in England), so I talked about these three things for a few minutes.  I concluded by saying that the award is an international skills-based learning programme for teenagers.  They can do it in New Zealand.  The teenagers in the dialogue are doing a tramping expedition as part of the requirements of the award.

The children then read through the dialogue together.  Each of them had circled on their own paper the lines they were saying, so it went smoothly (I helped Miya say her line and Cousin Rosa helped the youngest cousin, who is still learning to read).

I asked for a volunteer to be in charge of the blackboard, and Mulan was eager, so I asked her to write out the names of all the characters, which she happily and neatly did.

Once that was done, we discussed each characters’ ideas in turn, and I summarised their main thoughts on the blackboard.  This naturally turned into a general discussion about each of those ideas, and the reasons for and against each idea of fairness.

I think the main point of this activity was to introduce to the children the possibility that different people could have different ideas about fairness.  All too often, a child will shout out, “it’s just not fair!”, and when they do this, they usually assume that it is their idea of how things should be which the fair one and what is actually happening is precisely not fair.  So I wasn’t too worried that we didn’t get into a lot of depth in our conversation.

If they could see that several different views could all potentially be seen as fair, depending on which values we prioritise, then in my eyes the lesson was a success.  Looking at the reasons for and against in more detail can wait until another lesson.

Finally, I selected out four of the views I had written on the blackboard (even though there were plenty more possible ideas):

• Aaron: everyone carries exactly the same weight
• Jeb: base it on money, so that people (the richest?) can buy their way out of contributing
• Charlie: start out the same weight then change when some start to struggle with their load
• Frank: people who can do more, do more from the beginning; those who need more help receive it from the beginning

I allocated each of the four corners of the room one of the four views.  We all then stood up and walked around the room in a circle.  When I said go, the children had to go to the corner that they most agreed with.

Well, this was a nice idea, except that some of us forgot which corner was for which view!  (I should have put a sign at each corner, but I was too lazy!!)  Only one person (Cousin Rosa) remembered, and went to her preferred corner.  So, we had to ask her which view was each corner.  Once she told us, everyone followed her into her chosen corner.

They had all preferred Frank’s idea.  (Or was it that they all preferred Cousin Rosa’s idea?)

I asked them if they had heard of Karl Marx.  No one had.  I pointed out that, similar to Frank, his view of fairness is “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”.  They all thought this was quite sensible.

Hehe, all our children are Marxists!

In the evening, after the other adults came home, the children performed the play for us.  In the middle of their “stage”, they set up a mountain made of cushions and soft toys, and at the end of the play they all piled on top of it.