Lost Futures: A lesson in life, civics and social responsibility
Teachers laud AFT's child labor curriculum

Thanks to an AFT teacher's guide published in November 1999, students are learning about the worldwide social and economic impact of child labor. By focusing on school-aged children who are working rather than learning, "Lost Futures: The Problem of Child Labor" is teaching students what might be the most important lesson of all--the value of their education.

"Education is the key to future economic growth in every country," says AFT president Sandra Feldman. "It is a basic human right, yet an estimated 250 million children under the age of 14 are sewing clothes, making rugs, mining coal and tending crops instead of learning to read and write and add and subtract."

The "Lost Futures" teacher's guide is designed to bring the AFT's Child Labor Project to the classroom by emphasizing multidisciplinary, project-based learning and community involvement.

By incorporating "Lost Futures" into instruction on subjects ranging from history to geography to art, teachers are encouraging all students to think beyond the margins of their own lives and to realize they can make a difference when they put their minds --and their education--to work.

'Lost Futures' laboratory

Last spring, students at the Robert Wagner Middle School in Manhattan were the first in the city to try "Lost Futures." Specifically, students there:

• Raised $900 through bake sales to buy supplies for schools on the Indian subcontinent;
• Wrote letters to President Clinton about the importance of global education;
• Painted murals about child labor; and
• Wrote and performed a play about child labor.

Richard Miller, the United Federation of Teachers junior high school/intermediate school vice president, says there was a "natural bonding" between the New York City students and the child laborers they were learning about. Many of the students have ancestral ties to the countries where child laborers are working rather than attending school.

The program complements UFT's work with the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition to promote child labor awareness in schools. Since 1998, the UFT has helped underwrite the coalition's "Sweatfree Schools" poster contest, which is part of a campaign to encourage schools to stop buying apparel and sports equipment made with sweatshop or child labor.

Lessons close to home

In Louisiana, a state with one of the highest levels of child poverty in the country, teachers in New Orleans are praising "Lost Futures" as an effective vehicle for teaching their students about the city in which they live, as well as the world to which they scarcely have been exposed.

"When we talk about child labor, we are interested in beginning where we are, by looking at the problems children face in our city," says Jim Randels, a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans and director of Students at the Center (SAC), a grant-funded school program based on academic and community projects that foster critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills.

One problem, according to Randels, is that the New Orleans economy is "built around an uneducated work force" that provides cheap labor. Another problem, he says, is that "we have a society that teaches consumerism," so working students are "more interested in their jobs at fast food restaurants than they are in school."

Randels is not alone in his view of using "Lost Futures" to encourage students to think locally and act more globally. "My student population is obsessed with designer goods and appears to be unconcerned about who is really making them and who is getting paid the money they are spending on these goods," says Laura Tierce, an UTNO member and co-director of SAC. "When I've tried to incorporate this into my lessons, I've been unable to reach the students--that is why I am excited about this curriculum. [From] what I have seen so far, this reaches them in ways that I have not been able to. There is an awful irony in that the people in our country who are oppressed spend a great amount of income on goods that are produced by people in similar situations."

Tierce, who recently showed the "Lost Futures" video to one of her classes, followed it up with a lesson about living wages and the working poor.

"Because many of my students are the children of working poor and the children of service industry workers who are really exploited, I am hoping they will realize that education is the key to avoiding some of these exploited jobs," she says.

Last year, as president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, AFT vice president Tom Mooney bought copies of the teacher's guide for every junior high and high school in the district. Now, as president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, he is planning to publicize the program statewide.

"If teacher's don't take up this cause, who will?" asks Mooney. "To me, 'Lost Futures' blends our union interests in making sure all workers are treated fairly and paid fairly--so they don't have to send their kids out to work--with our interest as professionals to make sure all kids are in school so they can have a future."

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001