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Lesson 4 - Fair Trade — in Super Stores?

Objectives

• To help students gain an understanding of the difference between modern factory production, which has as its aim to produce items as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and craft production by artisans.
• Teach students how workers in factories in Central and Latin America, Asia and Africa often suffer from working too quickly, working too long hours and earning low wages.
• Give students an opportunity to consider whether the ordinary person in the USA knows how long it takes to produce many craft items and whether this is important to them.

Materials

The Maya Arts & Crafts of Guatemala Coloring Book, or photocopies of the pages referenced in Background and Learning Activities sections.

Actual Maya craft items, if available.

Vocabulary

Artisan: a person who has skills to perform the tasks from start to finish to make pottery, carve wood, weave cloth or make other kinds of useful and pleasing items; the items he or she make are called arts and crafts. Another word for artisan is craftsman or craftswomen.

Factory Worker: a person who works, often in a large building (factory) with many other people, using machinery to make pottery or to weave cloth or make other kinds of things, more quickly than an artisan can work. This enables mass production — making and assemling parts of an item rapidly — which at times endangers the health of the worker.

Huipil: the beautiful and generally handwoven garment worn by Maya women in Guatemala and Mexico. To weave a huipil requires artistry, skill and much time.

Sweatshop Worker: A factory employee who suffers bad working conditions, no union protections and who earns very poor wages. sweatshop a factory with the above conditions.

Learning Activities

Using images from the coloring book and the background information for this section, lead discussions with students in the following areas:

1. Ask students for volunteers to tell the class if they think an item shown on a particular coloring book page could be purchased at a super store or in a mall. Answer: Very few are available, with the exception of baskets (page 15), wicker furniture (page 16) and hand blown glassware (page 26).
2. Discuss with students what it is like to work in a factory.
3. Ask students why they think super stores do not sell many hand made crafts? Answer: Even buying at non Fair Trade prices, they would still have to pay too much to the producers. It is much cheaper for such stores to buy factory made products to put on their shelves because of the way factory made items are mass produced.
4. Discuss with students their opinions whether or not people in the USA or Canada are willing to pay more for a craft item if they know it will give adequate pay to the artisan for the time they spent making it.
5. Make a list of the names of stores that can be called "super stores" and what characteristics they have in common.
6. Ask students to make a list of reasons why many people often shop in "super stores," and then to list reasons why people might make the decision to pay somewhat higher prices for the items sold in Fair Trade stores.
7. If you go to a super store, look at the labels of clothing and other items to see where they were made. Make a list of all the different countries.

Assessment

After class discussions, students should be able to articulate the differences between how a factory worker works and how an artisan works.

Students should be able to talk about the issues of low prices in super stores and to understand that to have such low prices, the factory worker who makes them must them earn a very low wage.

Further Exploration

UNICEF www.unicefusa.org/child labor to find out about child labor throughout the world

United Students Against Sweatshops www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org

U.S. Labor Education in The Americas Project www.usleap.org

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