{"id":1677,"date":"2024-08-21T14:32:41","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T14:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/follow-the-things.onyx-sites.io\/?page_id=1677"},"modified":"2026-04-07T10:44:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:44:37","slug":"classroom","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/followthethings.com\/?page_id=1677","title":{"rendered":"\ud83d\ude8c Back to school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As a parent, I was both proud of the students and very pleased that my child is at a school where he is encouraged to challenge injustice. I was extremely impressed by the depth of knowledge and understanding shown by the students. They clearly felt strongly about the subject and displayed great persistence in their questioning. I thought their actual questions were perceptive and challenging. So much so, they were able to undermine totally, the weak case presented by Adidas.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was clear from the reactions of the audience, that the issues discussed provoked strong feelings in all of the students that took part. They were disgusted by the attitude of the offending companies, and the lack of sympathy that was portrayed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The [football boot] drawings are tremendous and I would like to do a story on how the kids got involved with this project and how you can see their alternative adidas posters online.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Source: discussion \/ responses to the Channel 4 TV show ‘Mark Thomas Comedy Product S5 E4 \u2018Pester Power\u2019’ (see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Resources for educators<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On this page, we share creative and engaging ways in which educators can introduce the geographies of trade (in)justice to their students.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The followthethings.com project began in the classroom and, from the start, took a material culture – thing – approach to teaching and learning about trade (in)justice (see Angus et al 2001, Cook et al 2007, Hawkins et al 2011, Evans et al 2013, Anon 2014, Cook et al 2017). This starts with a simple question – who made my stuff? – in the home that this will encourage trade justice to matter to everyone personally. Inspired by the political philospher Iris Marion Young (2003), however, we avoid engaging students (and wider audiences) with the trade injustices thay often find through ‘blame, shame & guilt<\/a>‘. Instead, our aim for trade justice education is for it to be positive, collaborative, future-oriented solidarity-building and world-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We follow the pedagogical mantra of the Fashion Revolution movement, encouraging students to ‘Be Curious. Find Out. Do Something’. We ask students to start with commodities that are part of their lives and identities. We ask them to think about what these commodities bring to their lives (e.g. fitting in, keeping in touch, etc.). We then ask them to think about the supply chain workers who make those commodities and help them to be who they are, and to live the lives they live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea is to ‘Pop the bubble<\/a>‘ of consumer culture, and then to encourage discussion about what happens when you see and make connections with workers worldwide. We start by addressing our students (and wider audiences) as ‘consumers’ but then try to pivot towards addressing them as ‘citizens’ and\/or ‘activists’ of one form or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We provide advice and guidance for researchers<\/em> who want to do this ‘follow it yourself’ detective work themselves on another page<\/a>. Below we provide a) the best prompts we have found for introducing trade (in)justice to the classroom, b) five classroom resources that we have created with and for trade justice activist organisations which dovetail nicely with the content of our website, c) a unique example of trade justice education where an adidas brand executive, an Indonesian factory inspector and a politician were quizzed in person by students in their classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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a) classroom prompts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because the true meaning of consumption is Christmas, there’s no better ‘who made my stuff?’ classroom prompt than this short ‘Jingle Bells’ video. Play it to your class and discuss:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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