Imagining the future
Cartoons can be used to introduce some major development, human rights and justice issues. Sometimes the complexity of these issues can hinder accessibility. A cartoon can encapsulate views and issues that would take hundreds if not thousands of words to articulate. This is one of the reasons why cartoons can be a versatile and flexible teaching tool. Each individual will have their own interpretation dependent on their own experiences, perceptions and learning maturities. Cartoons provide us with a medium through which to explore controversial and multi-layered issues. They are a prompt to further questioning, reflection, analysis and discussion. Such experiences will inform the way that we think and act in the world, and the decisions we make each day that influence and inform the future.
Many of the cartoons selected for the 'futures' activity at the beginning of this unit concern the United Nations (UN):
A priority in the years ahead must be to improve human development statistics - at country, regional and international levels. The statistical map of human development still has too many blanks. Too many indicators are missing.
(UNDP Human Development Report,
1994, quoted in Regan (ed.), 2002, p. 5)
This is one vision of the future, based on one set of interpretations of citizenship and sustainable development. A different vision is expressed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide:
The world is like a table. Twenty percent live on the table and eighty percent survive underneath it. Our work cannot be to move a few from under the table onto the table, or vice versa. Our task is to move the table, to change its position if necessary, and all to sit together around the table.
(Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
quoted in Regan (ed.), 2002, p. 5)
Activity Resources:
- Images
- Interactive
- Sound
- Text
- Video
Activity
You can choose between two quite different endings for this activity. The first two steps are generic.
- Go to the UN website to find out background information and the work of the UN. UN Note that there is also a useful page concerning the UN millennium development goals.
- Then click on the Interactive icon and view the three cartoons from Activity 1 again (Regan, 2002, p. 142, and Regan et al., 1994, pp. 95 and 97).
Now, either:
- Click on the Images icon activity resource and consider the development compass rose in the context of 'Development: interrogating the future' (Regan (ed.), 2002, p. 49). Make your own personal responses to the questions and challenges posed in the frame. You can plan this activity for a group of post-16 pupils, or challenge a group of colleagues, and hold a discussion forum to consider your responses. What perceptions of citizenship and sustainability are your responses based upon?
or - Consider how to incorporate the three cartoons in the animation into a teaching unit. The topic and year group will be dependent on your own curriculum plan. How could the use of the cartoons enhance pupils' abilities to think geographically about the future, related to either sustainable development or global citizenship?
