FAQ's

How can you deal with sensitive issues such as racism?

Four possible routes:

First, the direct way. For example, in our company we invent a person who wishes to join us from say Pakistan. This might be too direct and could reinforce racist attitudes, especially if the class are used to loose talk about race and difference. Mind you there are times when 'action direct' methods are entirely appropriate and we should never shirk our responsibility for confronting racism in any of its horrid guises, although it might be about 'institutional' racism, the kind that is in built into attitudes without people knowing.

Second, we might try to use a client's perspective to focus on the issues, for example, a client from another country who wants to make contact but has the need for an interpreter. Again, difference is on the agenda here, a little less direct than the first example perhaps.

Third, there is the hidden-'off beat' way. We can imagine a scenario that any enterprise/business/company/agency would face and that is one of its client subsidiary groups being accused of hiring illegal workers. In a mantle on the Yellow Stone Park Wolf we can imagine a circumstance where our highly esteemed zoo client who we have had dealings with (from Leiston Zoo perhaps?) is at the front of the media circus being accused of hiring migrant workers, clearly overworking and underpaying them. Indeed, there are filmed moments that bear witness to the facts. We can imagine that the chief media circus reporter (teacher in role and having a strong point of view) would need to check the background of the matter, meaning that the reporter would harness the powers to report fully and without prejudice on the whole story, down to investigating whether the Park people would in future check the employment backgrounds of their clients.

We can imagine how the Park people would have an urgent need to discuss the publicity they may be involved in, among them their own policy for employing people, especially those from abroad with legitimate and illegitimate work permits.

This mode of working is an attempt to highlight the 'playwright' function of digging deep and in an obtuse sort of way. This allows young people to scratch away the surface with the help of their teacher and get to the heart of things, as the enquiry isn't about race, its about the human condition and all the complexities embedded.

Were the migrant workers for example allowed to work because of compassion shown by the zoo clients?

How true are the accusations?
Could the film evidence be seen is different ways?
Is it possible there is a link between the accusations of abused workers from abroad and their position as newcomers? (Does this connect at all in classes in schools?)

This oblique way gets children empowered as they have the chance of raising the questions, with a little scaffolding of course. Bruner had a lot to say on 'empowering and questioning'............in 'Towards a theory of Instruction' Harvard Press

Fourth, tackling the subject through metaphor.
For example, the Yellow Stone people could get a request to take control of an albino wolf cub?

The materials the class would tackle would be about difference, sameness, responsibility and care. This would be in the MoE circle. In the drama circle the class could experience bringing up the wolf cub and the day when the Yellow Stone Park people had to decide on its final fate.

For example, running an agency with a class of year one students with the job of finding accommodation for aliens from afar. A 'rehousing’ organisation.

Because of the alien's multiple needs and strange shapes-tayloring the environments might become a highly complex job and of course essential to their well being. With all the problems of finding a good home for them, considering their loneliness and what people might think of them.

The organisation might create a hot line for aliens in distress-especially for those who had faced 'alien abuse' (racist abuse in another guise?). In the circle of enquiry, discussions might arise about people and their attitudes to strangeness. Perhaps built on irrational fears.

Another example, a class running an 'import-export' business. One of the challenges faced a report of 'quiet knocking' on the side of a container recently arrived at the port of Ipswich from Europe. After further investigation (using the drama circle mode) people are found in a dreadful condition from other countries, being smuggled in for work and a 'new life'. This causes the class to be on the horns of the dilemma, do they tell the police and immigration authorities, or do they say nothing. in the enquiry circle mode, the class were genuinely (and gently) 'disturbed' by the sequence.