Saturday 9 May 2015

The outcomes!

Identify the outcome and tell the examiner how it could be developed

Here are the ones you thought of:

1. People locally have an alternative to plastic they otherwise would not have had.
The bags were issued with 'how to' make your own guide, so people can now make their own bags.

2. Tesco has been made aware of consumer opinions.
They have put reusable cotton bags at a higher profile, end-of-aisle position in the store.

3. We organised litter picks in our group of friends.
We are confident that this could become a regular feature of our activities.

From your dinner discussion 2

The different views that can be held about the project!

Some people might argue that there are limits on individual responsibility. For example, everyone would have to make or buy dozens of cloth bags to reduce plastics finding their way to water courses! This is not realistic. We use plastics all the time.

Therefore, here are the three other opinions you thought about...

1. We should make recycling plastic financially profitable, and not just an ethical choice. The mining of landfills for plastics, for example, to recycle them should be made economically viable. Companies who want to recycle should be supported by subsidies and financial help from governments or NGOs or charities around the world.

2. The petrol and plastics by-product business is a huge global industry, employing millions of people. We should put pressure on companies to encourage their scientists and chemists working in this industry to create more environmentally friendly plastics.

3. People should put pressure on political parties to add green policies into their manifesto. Long-term change can be brought about politically, so the effort should be on political change first. It should be the government's role to support the recycling industry with financial help to create a new recycling industry.

From your dinner discussion 1

A write up of the things you talked about round the kitchen table.

Ways in which your project has helped your understanding of global citizenship:

1. Citizens can take control of activities beyond simple purchasing power or choosing which shop to use. We can create events and take practical steps to bring about change. We found out how a practical activity which focuses around an object is a useful way to begin a campaign or embody ideas.

In this, the visit to the Disobedient Objects Exhibition at the V&A was helpful.

'From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition was the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It demonstrated how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design.' (From the V&A site.)

We are now better informed about how to find out about issues, and about techniques of protest.

2. We learned how different organisations are tackling the issue of plastics in water, from interviews with the parks trust and Canals Trust, to finding out about river rinsing with BSAC, and how Tesco (and other major TNCs) have a policy towards reusable bags, cloth bags and product lines which indirectly address the issue of plastics pollution. We found out more about how companies are dependent on each other and are connected. We found out how companies rely on other industries, in this case the plastics industry, for food packaging, and we found out about the levels of responsibility different companies and industries are obliged to have about the environment.

3. We now know that the media can be an ally in an organised activity. The understanding of everyone about an important issue can be improved as a result of using traditional and social media for information. We understand more about how the media can be used by everyone to promote a message.

4. We understand that there are many different viewpoints about our project, and in this way we can see something of the diversity of opinion about our issue. We began the project thinking that no-one could object to it, but in the course of the project we found many different opinions.


Take these Online Quizzes!

multicultural & integration

Multi-culturalism’ and ‘integration’?

Check the Mark Scheme:

‘A multicultural community is a community made up of people from many different cultural backgrounds who maintain their distinct identities. An integrated community is one in which a dominant culture takes precedence. Multicultural societies encourage differences and integrated societies don’t maintain differences.’

BUT there is no harm in saying that definitions change according to political need.

Read the BBC Magazine site: 'Multiculturalism: What does it mean?' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12381027

Find examples of a multicultural community a) locally and b) in another country.

a) Example of a multicultural community locally: Milton Keynes Council policy on bereavement services is stated as follows:
  • To ensure that the needs of the whole community are met –the council will seek to meet the differing requirements for burial within the community.
  • The Council will ensure a flexible approach to memorialisation providing a choice of facilities to meet the needs of our multicultural society.
Dealing with processes of death when bereaved families may have particular practices, services, rites, and requirements shows whether or not we can be a society tolerant to many religions and belief systems. Times such as birth, death, marriage, separation or divorce are often testing moments which demonstrate how 'multicultural' a society can be.

b) Example of a multicultural society around the world. You could say that a multicultural society is one where different ethnic groups are brought under one legal system working over a defined territory, for example Canada. Multiculturalism was the official policy of the Canadian government in the 1970s and 1980s. Canada created the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 to 'recognize and respect its society included diversity in languages, customs, religions, and so on'.


Find examples of an integrated community a) locally and b) in another country.

First off, this statement from Wiki: 'Social Integration can be seen as a dynamic and principled process where all members participate in dialogue to achieve and maintain peaceful social relations. Social integration does not mean forced assimilation.'

a) Example of an integrated community locally - Chickenshed Theatre. We attended drama groups in London and Milton Keynes. The theatre group invites involvement of children, teenagers and adults, of all backgrounds and abilities. It has strong roots in a belief and practice of 'inclusive theatre' – theatre that is open to everyone, regardless of wheelchairs, sticks, variations in skin colours, all shapes and sizes...

b) Example of an integrated community in another country. I'll use here a pan-country example of social networking. Over the internet, members of any discussion group may be unaware of the skin colour / belief system / class background / cultural heritage of the other members in the group. Global communities can be formed where people are interested in the subject under study. Perhaps these can be a new form of socially integrated communities?

(Examples above started from Wiki. Check text books. Check the talk around the dinner table.)

Wednesday 29 April 2015

Plastics in water

Please don't forget what you did! It was formidable! Your active local project is part of a global issue!

You undertook as a group, and as individuals, research visits to local lakes, rivers and canals. You assessed the scale of the problem as you could see it.

You conducted lake-side questionnaires for members of the public to see whether other people thought that plastics in water was an issue.

You created a facebook page, worked on logos and other promotional routes such as friendship discussions.

You organised your local communities to create litter pick teams, patrolling by water margins.

You interviewed by questionnaire the Canals Trust environment officer for information on their policies towards creating a plastics-free canal network.

You interviewed, face-to-face, an officer at Milton Keynes Parks Trust, who was responsible for dealing with environmental issues connected with waterways.

You sought out the latest publicly-available research from departments, such as from Exeter and Plymouth Universities. https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/microplastics-in-the-ocean and http://www.adventurescience.org/microplastics.html

You listened to environmental science programs on BBC Radio 4.

You have followed leads given to you by Tutor Dorothy, such as http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32384763

You interviewed the local Tesco store to find out about a source of plastic - they hand out thousands of bags every week just in one store alone.

You decided to use the local Scrapstore facility to buy fabric, from which you made dozens of shopping bags.

You organised with Tesco a day when you could hand out cloth bags for free at the entrance way.

You handed out over 50 bags with tags which conveyed information about your project, with instructions on how to make a simple cloth bag to replace your plastic one!

You created a press release/information sheet about your work to publicise the hazards of plastics in water.

Plastic pollution is a global issue. It is a hazard not only for our marine life but for people. Millions of people around the world do not have access to fresh water. Water reservoirs, even in remote areas such as Yemeni villages, are visibly contaminated with plastic bags, plastic containers, plastic objects, which will never fully degrade. By acting locally, we can all do something about a global problem.

I am hugely proud of you all! It takes team work, organisation, strength of purpose, and the sacrifice of personal egos to pull together and achieve something. I think you did that. You are under the pressures of having to think about how your project can be represented in an exam, and you did all this in under one year. Well done! I know how hard you've all worked.  


Global Citizenship cross-over - Global Goals

What 'global goals' should the world have?

(Whose global idea is this anyway?)

Watch people in selected posts explain what they think...

Go to http://globaldimension.org.uk/news/item/16826

Listen for the points that they make. Which points do you agree with? Which points do you disagree with?

Sometimes I find it is difficult to disagree, even though I want to! It may be the speaker makes a point using language that I sympathise with, even though I don't like their conclusion.

It may be because the speaker is held in high social esteem, or is particularly persuasive, and it doesn't seem decent to undermine them. (I'm English, so I should have a complex apology strategy ready.)

It may be because somehow you fear their ideal will be picked up and used by people whose agenda you don't like the look of... but disagreeing is difficult.

For example! I expect others would like to bring shame upon my head for this one ... but I disagree with the goals of Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year old Nobel Laureate Peace Prize winner, shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting an education. (I cannot argue with that, huh?) She said at her award ceremony: "I will continue this fight until I see every child in school".

But the UK is not Pakistan, Nigeria, India, or elsewhere. The UK has long held many philosophies of education, and Malala's goal, if realised, would see our nuanced philosophical traditions wiped out for a simplistic totalitarian solution. Maybe she's confusing the two words that so often are used interchangeably ... school and education. In the UK these different words have helped define very different worlds.