To begin exploring the human cost of food, my eighth graders read excerpts from The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Young Readers Edition) by Michael Pollan and Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson. Both of these works have eye-opening chapters dealing with the conditions of workers who process our food.
To give my students a historical perspective on agricultural work, we examine several documentaries. Edward R. Murrow’s 1960 Harvest of Shame (available on the YouTube CBS Channel) deals with the plight of agricultural workers on the east coast. Teaching Tolerance’s Viva La Causa allows students to demonstrate that farm workers have the power to organize and create positive change.
Discussions are often initiated by students: What do we do as consumers to enable these poor working conditions? What role does the government play in maintaining and/or improving these working conditions?
As a culminating activity, my students formulate a food consumers’ bill of rights. This is a chance for the students to synthesize what they have learned while encouraging people to become socially conscious consumers.
Most students’ bills of rights highlight the poor working conditions of food workers and encourage students’ peers and families to purchase food from farms or companies that promote fair labor practices, but some students choose to focus on other important issues concerning our food consumption, such as animal rights or the nutritional impact of poor-quality foods.
Joe Golossi
Elysian Charter School
Hoboken, N.J.
The Viva La Causa DVD and teaching kits are available to educators, free of charge, at tolerance.org/viva.
