Wanted: Educated Global Citizens

By Alan Shapiro

To the Teacher

Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, frequently travels to the world's poorest countries and writes about what he learns. Hunger, disease, extreme poverty, incompetent and corrupt governments, war, homelessness are what he frequently finds. After one of his recent trips, he wrote: "A majority of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day, but the vast majority of American students graduate without ever gaining any insight into how that global majority lives." (3/11/07)

The readings here do not pretend to deal adequately with that subject. They aim only to open a window onto it through brief readings on a child in southern Ethiopia, teenage girls in Guatemala and Pakistan, and refugees in Darfur. The readings sketch some of the problems these people face and what is being done about them by the U.S. and other wealthy nations. A concluding commentary attempts to explain why students should learn and care about the lives of others. Discussion questions and suggestions for further inquiry and global citizenship activities follow.

See also "Genocide in Darfur: Inaction in the Security Council" for further information about the situation in Darfur and, in connection with the commentary about illegal immigration to the U.S., "Illegal Immigrants" and "Should Undocumented Immigrants 'have a shot at the American dream'?" All are available on this website.

An introductory quiz

1. About how many people die every day from hunger and poverty?

2. What is the main cause for food shortages in poor countries?

3. About what percentage of the world's people are poor, living on $2 a day or less?

4. About what percentage of Americans are judged poor by federal standards?

5. About how many school age children around the world don't go to school?

6. What are two reasons why 10.5 million children under 5 died last year?

7. About what percentage of the world's wealth do Americans have?

Answers:

1. 25,000-30,000
2. Drought
3. About 50 percent
4. About 12.5 percent
5. 100 million
6. Such preventable diseases as pneumonia, malaria and diarrhea; from malnutrition, which is life-threatening when combined with poverty; from war; from poor sanitation; from inadequate health care
7. 32.6 percent

Sources: United Nations World Food Program, CARE, World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, Net Aid Global Citizen Corps, U.S. Census Bureau

For discussion:

1. What questions do students have about any item on the quiz? How might they be answered?

2. What answers surprised them? Why?

3. What do students understand to be reasons why almost half the world's people are poor?

Introduction:
Killing Hidaya Abatemam with Indifference

"Cast your eyes to the right and meet Hidaya Abatemam, whom I met last month in a remote area of southern Ethiopia," Nicholas Kristof wrote in a New York Times op-ed column that included a photograph of her. "She is 6 years old and weighs 17 pounds.

"Hidaya was starved nearly to death and may well have suffered permanent mental impairment, helping to trap her-and her own children, if she lives that long-in another generation of poverty. Yet maybe the more interesting question is not why Hidaya is starving but why the world continues to allow 30,000 children like her to die each day of poverty.

"Ultimately what is killing girls like her isn't precisely malnutrition or malaria, but indifference. And that, in turn, arises from our insularity, our inexperience in traveling and living in poor countries, so that we have difficulty empathizing with people like Hidaya….

"That lack of firsthand experience abroad also helps explain why we are so awful at foreign policy: we just don't 'get' how our actions will be perceived abroad, so time and again-in Vietnam, in China, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Latin America-we end up clumsily empowering our enemies.

"Part of the problem is that American universities do an execrable job preparing students for global citizenship. A majority of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day, but the vast majority of American students graduate without ever gaining any insight into how that global majority lives." (New York Times, 3/11/07)

According to the World Food Program, daily undernourishment affects many people, "from the shanty towns of Jakarta in Indonesia and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to the mountain villages of Bolivia and Nepal." People who are undernourished live on "significantly less than the recommended 2,100 calories that the average person needs to lead a healthy life. The body compensates for the lack of energy by slowing down its physical and mental activities. A hungry mind cannot concentrate, a hungry body does not take initiative, a hungry child loses all desire to play and study." (www.wfp.org/English)

For discussion

1. What questions do students have about the reading? How might they be answered?

2. What is Kristof's explanation for why Hidaya and children like her are starving? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Student Reading 1:
Chimaltenango, Guatemala

In the countryside here, children as young as five or six "shine shoes and make bricks. They cut cane and mop floors. At some factories exporting to the United States, they sew and sort and chop" often in conditions so bad they break even Guatemala's "very loose laws," writes New York Times reporter Marc Lacey (3/12/07).

Alma de los Angeles Zambrano, 15, worked for 18 months at a food processing plant, but quit. She said, "They like us young people because we don't say anything when they yell at us." Now she works for an organization trying to improve conditions for young workers.

When President Bush visited Guatemala in March, he praised the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and said it will raise pay and improve working conditions. "My message to those trabajodores y campesinos (Spanish words for workers and peasants) is, you have a friend in the United States of America. We care about your plight."

But according to reporter Marc Lacey, most of Guatemala's young workers, who come from the countryside, "say they often feel that nobody cares about them: not their parents, who send them off to the work force; not their stern bosses, who treat them like adults; not the dysfunctional government off in Guatemala City."

CAFTA requires local companies to obey labor laws and commits the United States to helping improve inspections. But a U.S. State Department human rights report about Guatemala declares that according to the International Labor Organization, almost a quarter of Guatemalan children had to work to survive in 2006. "Although the law bars employment of minors under the age of 14 without written permission from parents or the Ministry of Labor, child labor was a widespread problem….The legal work day for persons under 14 is six hours and for person 14 to 17 years of age, seven hours. Despite these protections, child laborers worked an average in excess of 45 hours." For most families doing farm or informal work who have children under 14, "economic necessity makes their labor essential." (www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78893.htm/)

The National Labor Committee, a U.S. group that investigates labor violations worldwide, interviewed child workers in the Chimaltenango area. In one factory, Legumex, they found 13-year-olds working for longer hours than permitted--among other violations,. The factory exports melons, broccoli and other fruits and vegetables to the United States. Charles Kernaghan, director of the labor group, said, "It is very possible that children in the U.S. may be eating broccoli harvested and processed by other children in Guatemala."

But following a 3/18/07 meeting with a Guatemalan human rights group, Legumex management agreed to provide money for the 13-year-olds to return to school. The management also agreed that in the future it would adhere to a UN Convention of a legal working age of 15, increase worker pay and improve factory health and safety conditions.

Eighty percent of Guatemalans live in poverty. Two-thirds of that number, 7.6 million people, live in extreme poverty. (Times, 3/12/07)

For discussion

1. What questions do students have about the reading? How might they be answered?

2. What is a free trade agreement? Why do you suppose that the U.S. favors them?

3. What do you think are the pros and cons of CAFTA? If you think you need to learn more about this free trade agreement, how might you go about doing so?

4. Why do you think so many Guatemalan workers are young teenagers?

Student Reading 2:
Balochistan, Pakistan

Najiba, 15, is a refugee from Afghanistan and lives with her family in a village in the province of Balochistan in southwest Pakistan. Najiba is one of several young people in this area who are able to go to school because of support from Save the Children a children's aid organization has been working in the area for 25 years.

Najiba has already become a teacher. She received five weeks of teacher training, and now every morning teaches the Pashto language and Islamic studies to first and second grade students. In the afternoon, Najiba, a seventh-grader, goes to school herself.

One of the problems for girls like herself, she said, is that "Many of the parents, especially fathers, are uneducated and therefore don't send their daughters to schools." But Najiba's father reached grade 12 in school, and her mother can read and write, so they have supported their daughter's efforts to learn. "It is easier for the boys to go to school, because in a culture like [ours], boys are like free birds who can go anywhere and are allowed to do whatever they want to do."

Najiba hopes to return to Afghanistan as a teacher one day when it is more safe and secure. "In my country most people are uneducated, and I want them to get educated," she says. Najiba's relatives admire her and are "always asking for help. I feel very proud because I can read and write, not only for myself but also for others."

Save the Children struggles to recruit new teachers in the region, especially females. But this is very difficult because much of Balochistan's refugee population came from rural areas in Afghanistan "where education is either unheard of or not available for women." The organization has even started home-based primary schools for girls because they are not allowed to go to schools outside their homes.

But, Save the Children reported, "The world's richest countries are failing to help millions of children in conflict-afflicted countries get an education." According to the United Nations, these countries prioritize aid to stable countries. Worldwide, 77 million primary age children are not in school, which makes them open to exploitation as child soldiers and cheap laborers.

The United States government allots about 3 percent of its development assistance to education, most of it in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the U.S. ranks 20th among 22 wealthy nations in providing such assistance. The Netherlands and Norway are at the top of the list. (www.savethechildren.org) Substantial foreign aid from Americans also comes, however, from individuals, foundations, businesses, religious groups and colleges.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, between 2005 and 2006 aid to poor countries from the wealthy dropped by almost $3 billion (5.1 percent). Such aid amounts to only about 10 percent of what the world spends on the military. A spokesperson for Oxfam International said, "The fall in aid is a terrible indictment of the world's richest countries….These promises are a matter of life and death for the world's poorest-millions of people will continue to die every year from preventable diseases, 80 million children will not go to school and millions will be condemned to a life of poverty." (www.oxfam.org)

Plan, another children's aid organization, reported that 600 million Asian children "lack access to either food, safe drinking water, health or shelter." (www.plan-international.org)

For discussion

1. What questions do students have about the reading? How might they be answered?

2. Why do you suppose that Najiba, age 15, is a teacher of young children, rather than an older person?

3. Why do you think that "it is easier for boys to go to school" in Afghanistan and Pakistan? If you wanted to learn more about this situation, how would you go about finding out?

4. Why do you suppose the richest countries "are failing to help millions of children in conflict-afflicted countries get an education"? How could you get more information on this subject?

5. Why do you think the U.S. is far down the list in providing development assistance? How might you learn more about this situation?

Student Reading 3:
Darfur, Sudan

The highest percentage of malnourished people in the world live in sub-Saharan Africa. (www.care.org) Many of the poorest people live there, too. In the following West African countries, about half the people live on less than $1 a day--Chad, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Almost half the children in these countries do not go to school.

There is no one single reason for poverty in African countries. In Zimbabwe a dictatorial and incompetent government has produced soaring inflation. In Nigeria a fierce internal conflict between the haves and the have-nots over oil and a corrupt government have kept masses of people poor.

Another major factor is war. In Somalia, Islamists and others battle a weak government that has some support from Ethiopian troops. Uganda's government continues a 20-year-long fight with the Lord's Resistance Army. Congo has been wracked by civil warfare. Ivory Coast's government is in a conflict with rebel forces. Such wars destroy towns and villages. People lose their homes and become refugees.

The most dramatic example is Darfur, a large area of Sudan. President Bush has called what is happening there "genocide." In recent years 200,000 to 400,000 black Africans have been killed and more than 2 million forced to leave their homes, mostly because Arab militias called the janjaweed supported by the Sudanese government attack, murder, and rape them. They also burn their villages and force children to become soldiers. Violence in Sudan has spilled over into Chad, where 70,000 have fled their homes. Some 150,000 have fled Central African Republic.

The reasons for the violence-political, economic, social and environmental--are complicated, but often boil down to a struggle to control resources like oil, to win or hold power, or to gain wealth. Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir has said repeatedly that the attacks on Africans are "exaggerated" or even "fictions." The overwhelming evidence is that they are murderously real. Bashir has accepted several peace agreements, but violated all of them. An African Union peacekeeping force is too small to be effective. President Bashir accepted, then rejected, UN efforts to increase this force. Recently, under pressure, he accepted it again.

The United Nations has reported that President Bashir's government is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur. This is a violation of Security Council resolutions. The Sudanese government has painted military planes white to disguise them as UN or African Union aircraft. According to the report, rebel groups are also guilty of violating peace agreements and Security Council resolutions as well humanitarian standards.

According to Oxfam America, in the first two months of 2007, more than 80,000 people in Darfur have fled their villages and become refugees, many for the second, third, even the fourth time. Almost daily, humanitarian workers, like those who work for Oxfam, have been robbed, their vehicles hijacked, their offices looted.

"The time for promises is over-President Bashir must act," President Bush said on April 18, speaking before Holocaust survivors, "The world needs to act. If President Bashir does not meet his obligations to the United States of America, we'll act." Actions could include tough economic sanctions, an arms embargo, and enforcement of a "no-fly" zone to prevent bombing and strafing attacks on the people and villages of Darfur.

Sam Bell, a director of the Genocide Intervention Network, was unimpressed. "These kind of empty promises, empty threats, just fuel the government of Sudan," he said. But Larry Rossin, an official with the Save Darfur Coalition, was optimistic. The plan to make Sudan act is "out of the mouth of the president of the United States before a bunch of Holocaust survivors….It's on the record now, and they [the Sudanese government] are on the hook." (New York Times, 4/19)

For discussion

1. What questions do students have about the reading? How might they be answered?

2. Besides the reasons for global poverty that you have already discussed, what others are raised in this reading?

3. The UN, as well as individual nations including the U.S., have repeatedly pressed President Bashir to stop the genocide in Darfur. Why do you think he has not done so? How might you find out more?

4. What can the UN, the U.S., and other nations do to stop the genocide? Why do you suppose they haven't already taken these actions?

Student Reading 4:
Commentary by Alan Shapiro

Nicholas Kristof wrote that the vast majority of American students graduate from universities without ever gaining insight into how most of the people in the world live.
How many of these students might answer, "So what"?

The most obvious humanitarian and unselfish answer is that they are human beings. Because they are fellow humans, we need to learn about their lives, act in ways that demonstrate our solidarity with them--or at the least avoid making their lives even worse.

But there are also answers that reflect enlightened self-interest. Here are two.

First, learning the histories of other nations, learning what is important to their people, learning how they live, learning how they view us and why, leads to understanding. Without understanding, we are unlikely to act intelligently. Unintelligent acts can lead to disasters. Americans were ignorant about the Vietnamese people, their culture and history. So were our leaders. Americans were ignorant about the Iraqi people, their culture and history. So were our leaders.

In each case, U.S. leaders misled the American people and themselves about why the country needed to go to war. In each case, our leaders were confident that the overwhelming power of the United States guaranteed victory, that this power made understanding Vietnam and Iraq unimportant. The result has been death, destruction, violations of the constitution, war crimes, and a global blot on the reputation of the U.S.

Historically, many Americans have viewed our nation as a beacon of light in the world and a haven for the oppressed. They have viewed themselves as standing for democracy, freedom, human rights, justice and the rule of law, a peace-loving people. But today this self-image is not shared by most of the people in the world. Why? If we do not understand why, how can we act intelligently in our own interest?

Second, consider the continuing debate in the United States about illegal immigration. An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants are in the country. More keep coming, especially from Mexico and Central America.. Some immigrants create problems for the towns and cities where they settle (though most do not). Feeling the pressure, our elected representatives cry: "Build walls, install sensors, and beef up security at the borders to keep them out."

But why do immigrants come in such numbers? Mainly they come because they are poor, often so desperately poor that they are willing to risk their lives to get here, where there are jobs. Another and much less understood reason is that U.S. trade policies, subsidies for corporate farmers, and trade agreements like NAFTA have resulted in lost farms and manufacturing jobs in Mexico.

American corn is subsidized by the U.S. government and therefore is cheaper than Mexican corn. The result, according to the Mexican government, has been to drive two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers out of business during the past dozen years. How many of those workers became illegal immigrants to the United States, where they can pick fruit and vegetables? What do most Americans know about these trade policies and subsidies? NAFTA? CAFTA?

Americans have frequently shown themselves to be very generous with their money to help others. Many give to organizations like Oxfam, CARE, and Save the Children. Yet Nicholas Kristof charges that most Americans graduate from college still ignorant about how most of the people in the world live; still unprepared for global citizenship.

Are you? If so, what, if anything, will you do about it?

For discussion

1. What questions do students have about the reading? How might they be answered?

2. Use pair-share dialogues to have students consider each of the arguments for global citizenship in the commentary.

The pair-share dialogue is a simple technique to get everyone engaged in conversation at the same time. Ideally, it is a way to brainstorm, to begin discussion of a compelling question or issue, and assess what people know.

Students pair up in twos facing each other. They bring their own knowledge, opinions, and experiences to the topic. The teacher might ask in turn each of the following questions, asking one person in each pair to respond for one to two minutes, and then the partner, reversing the roles of speaker and listener. Remind students that when they are in the role of listener, their goal is to focus their complete attention on the speaker and listen in interested silence.

1. What is your view of the "enlightened self-interest" reason for learning more and acting upon knowledge of how a majority of the world lives?

2. Based on what you know of the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Iraq, do you agree that the American people and their leaders demonstrated ignorance about the culture and history of those countries? Why or why not?

3. Will building walls at our borders be sufficient to stop illegal immigration? Why or why not?

Following the pair-shares, conduct a general class discussion of these questions.

For writing

Do your best to imagine yourself into one of the situations described in the readings. For example, imagine that you are a worker in a Guatemalan sweatshop, a teenage teacher in southern Pakistan, a homeless refugee in Darfur, or a corn farmer in Mexico who becomes an illegal immigrant into the U.S. Write a diary for three days in your life.

For inquiry

Inquiring into subjects like those listed below can help students prepare for global citizenship. Have students, either individually or in small groups, prepare a carefully-worded question to guide their investigation.

1. NAFTA

2. CAFTA

3. The National Labor Committee

4. Save the Children's work in promoting education

5. UNICEF's work to prevent childhood starvation and disease

6. Darfur genocide

7. Oxfam's work in Darfur

8. The UN Millennium program to cut world poverty by half in the next decade (See www.unmillenniumproject.org)

9. The work of the World Bank, which, among other things, provides low-cost loans to poor countries

10. Evidence that the world's poorest nations will suffer most from global warming (see the New York Times, 4/1/07 and the 4/6/07 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

11, U.S. foreign aid

For global citizenship

The NetAid Global Citizens Corps, an initiative of Mercy Corps, a relief and development agency, is creating "a national network of high school student leaders working to educate and mobilize their peers in efforts to end global poverty." (www.netaid.org)

CARE has initiated a student global campaign for education involving "a lobbying effort that seeks to hold lawmakers accountable for their promises on education for the world's children." (www.care.org)

Oxfam America's "change initiative" invites college student who are entering their sophomore or junior year to apply for "intensive leadership training" on its social justice mission and work on campus for one or more years. (www.oxfamamerica.org and www.oxfam.org)

Nicholas Kristof writes, "For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at our computer and become a microfinancier." He recommends two such sites: 1) www.kiva.org, "a website that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries-their photos, loan proposals and credit history-and allows people to make direct loans to them." 2) "Another terrific website in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that Global-Giving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans." (See in this connection, "2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner: The Potential of the Poor" on this website, which deals with Muhammad Yunus, who made such loans internationally known. A class project might be to investigate each of these websites and then to raise money for either or both.)

There are multiple opportunities for global citizenship activities in the students' school. See "Teaching Social Responsibility," which is available on the website, for suggestions.

Below are a few books about poor people worth reading and discussing. The first three are classics that describe American poverty; the last describes poverty around the globe.

Fiction

Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Non fiction

James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
William Vollmann, Poor People

This lesson was written for TeachableMoment.Org, a project of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. We welcome your comments. Please email author Alan Shapiro at: ashapiro7@comcast.net.

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