Whenever people discuss inequity, I am always struck by the inevitable intersection of class, gender, and race. Although I have not picked up my own copy of The Hockey Story, I found David's focus of class interesting. Immediately I think of race and gender when I think of hockey. It's a sport that typically excludes black people and women. I thought David could push students to think about multiple inequities at play... even beyond class, gender, and race. Age discrimination is a very empowering example of inequity when discussed among young people. It would also fit into their discussion of child labor.
We use Responsive Classroom for a social curriculum at my school and we have been (obnoxiously) trained to think, speak, and teach in positive ways. Traditionally, rules are often framed with "no" and "don't." Rather than create rules about how people should behave, they are told what not to do. At my school, we translate "no running" into "walk." "Don't talk while someone else is talking" changes to "listen while others are talking." It seems very simple, but it makes a huge difference. How can we expect students to know what they should actually do if we all we tell them is what they shouldn't do?
I thought of Responsive Classroom when I read about the anti-Nike posters and boycotts. How could David encourage his students to research and promote alternative brands that do not exploit children? I say research because (while I know about Nike, Hanes, Gap and a laundry list of other brand names that exploit children), I can't name many companies that I know for sure provide fair pay to their workers. In a way, negative attention is a promotion in itself. It's attention, whether negative or positive. David's class could focus their attention on the positive by making posters to inform people of the brands they should purchase. Rather than boycott companies like Nike, they could support the companies that do the right thing by purchasing a wearing those brands. Who knows, they could start a trend!
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I really liked your idea of making sure people have an alternative route to Nike. When I did debate in college, we always had to explain why something in the status quo was having a negative impact and then explain what actions we could take to make things better. How can we make sure our products are produced ethically? How can we continue to get cheap products without exploitation? Let's compare Nike to a few other companies. If it can be done better, who is doing it better and how? Then, maybe students could even write a letter to Nike telling them what practices they could change and how it would affect their revenues/reputation.
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