Writing poems to explore 'unfairness'

In a previous article for p4c.com, I reported on a lesson using a poem format to elicit examples from children to show their understandings of concepts like 'delight', 'pain' and 'unfairness'. With another class of 9 and 10 year-olds, I had them focus their attention on 'unfairness' to see what they came up with. This sound file will give you some examples of what they wrote.

Then I talked with them about what they thought made things, in general, unfair. What were the best criteria for unfairness? Our dialogue did not take place in a p4c session, only in a short discussion after a writing class. The children had never done p4c before. However, this might be like the sort of discussion one could have with children about a concept-stretcher exercise. I started off with a general question. It might have been better to take one of their verses as a starting point -- or maybe not.

In the sound file below, you can hear some of our conversation. I am more articulate and conceptually aware than they are so I offer my interpretation of what they might be saying about why something is unfair. That is something I think one would do with children from the nursery upwards -- talking with them and extending their own interpretations. Joan Tough has a good way of putting this in 'Talking and Learning' (Ward Lock Educational 1977). She says: 'In dialogue, each participant must project into the other's meanings, trying, as it were, to judge the possibilities for meaning that the speaker has left unrecognised ... We look for the possibilities of meaning for the child in any particular context and help him to extend the interpretation he is making of it.'

That is what I try to do in developing the criteria for unfairness that seem, to me, to lay behind their examples. I interpret three criteria you can hear on the tape:

1. Unfairness is not getting what you deserve or getting what you don't deserve
2. Unfairness is being treated differently from others.
3. Unfairness is not getting what you need.

In fact, I get a bit jumbled up myself about this in the session. I mis-say a few things along the way. It's an advert for writing stuff like this down to straighten out thinking and having it available for children to check on. In fact, I could have said something like: 'wait a minute, I'll have to write this down to sort it out better.' We did that later but we should have done it earlier, I think. Writing down also provides a record. We can leave it around and keep coming back to it, amending it, or challenging it.

We went on to develop a fourth criteria in relation to an example about bullying: 'Unfairness is getting what no-one deserves' (eg violence and being 'picked on'). I also set up some examples of situations when these criteria conflict: for example if a teacher spent an equal amount of time helping each child in the class. Some children were quick to suggest that this would be an example of being treated equally but would still be unfair. So they thought that unfairness involved a judgement and that you had to weigh things up.

One could argue that I am forcing my meanings onto the children, but in the course of a number of conversations on this day and in the future, they could have opportunities to test the criteria I have suggested as an interpretation of what they say. At one point in the discussion, I ask them if a new example - being promised something and then not getting it - fits the criteria but I don't give them enough time to think before replying. A little bit of talk with a partner would have been good for them at this point to prepare a considered response to my question. I could have asked them to return to their poems and work as a group on each verse to see if the criteria apply or not. Instead, I moved on to allow another pupil to have a say but, instead of responding to the previous child, she gave another, different example and the moment was lost.

There were other opportunities to delve deeper into that they said during this discussion. I didn't take those but, had I been the teacher I could have followed them up later.

By the end of the lesson, I think there was plenty of potential for follow-up about the concept of 'deserve'. Also, as all the examples were about the children's lives, it would have been interesting to ask them to write a new set of poems about unfairness in 'the world outside' and to see if the criteria were applicable to those as well - maybe to ask the children to work out the criteria themselves in small groups and present them to the class. I could also ask them to see if the criteria, reversed, work for fairness and to come up with some examples.

Taping this session was useful to me and made me think about the value of taking time to write significant opinions down to slow the discussion and clarify some meanings - particularly when, as sometimes happens in discussions, I don't explain myself clearly to the pupils but don't notice this at the time. It also made me think that it is important to keep in mind the question of what the best times are to move between large and small group discussions. As, I said, this was more of an exercise or concept-stretcher than a discussion leading on from a pupils' question in response to a text but I think it indicates the potential of using some of the pupils' own writing in p4c sessions.

As, I said, this was more of an exercise or concept-stretcher than a discussion leading on from a pupils' question in response to a text but I think it indicates the potential of using some of the pupils' own writing in p4c sessions.