Lesson video

Hi there, thanks for joining me for today's citizenship lesson.

My name is Mr. Joy and I've been working really closely with Mrs. White to organise this lesson.

Sadly she can't be here today, so you've just got me.

We are going to be finding out all about fairness.

Let's get started.

For today's lesson, you're going to need a pen or a pencil to write with and some paper to write on.

Try if you can to find a nice quiet space where you can do your work without any interruptions, and any devices or things that might get you distracted, make sure you put them away out of reach and out of eyesight as well.

In today's lesson, we are going to explore the first question of what fairness means.

We're then going to look at whether we think school uniforms are fair or whether they're not.

And then finally, we'll be looking at who fights for fairness.

So we're going to start off with a brief task for you to complete.

I'm going to show you a list of new school rules in a moment and I want you to look at the list after I've read through them, and think about how those rules make you feel.

I'd then like you to write a brief explanation, just one sentence about why you agree or disagree with each of the rules that are listed.

So let's go through them one at a time.

Rule one, students will be sent home if they fail to wear correct school uniform.

Rule two, students may not gather in groups of three or more during school hours.

Rule three, teachers can check student's bags without gaining permission.

Rule four, teachers may take any personal items from students at any time.

Rule five, students must convert to their tutor's religion.

Rule six, if a student corrects a teacher's mistake, the entire class will receive a detention.

Rule seven, the head teacher may expel a pupil at any time for any reason.

And finally rule eight, anyone who criticises these rules will be punished.

So you can pause the video here to complete the task, you can either then rewind slightly so you can see that list, or you can click through at the bottom of the page to the worksheet where each of those rules is listed.

Remember, that for each of them I'd like you to write a brief explanation of why you agree or disagree with those rules.

Come back when you're ready.

So we're going to go through a couple of example answers just to check that you are on the right track.

So rule three, the one that said teachers can check students bags without getting permission.

You may have said something along the lines of, I don't like this rule because it's an invasion of our privacy.

And another one that I've got here you is for rule five, which is involving students converting to their tutor's religion.

This is a horrible rule as everyone can follow their own religion or have no religion.

I shouldn't be forced to believe what other people do.

Now, before we go any further, I will tell you that those rules are made up, but they serve a purpose because hopefully you will have used a very interesting key word which is the word fair.

And that is the whole point of this lesson.

So we are going to look at what fairness means and what fairness really is.

So to take a dictionary definition here, fairness means the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable.

And that comes from the Cambridge Dictionary.

So when we talk about something being fair, it might be that everyone is treated exactly the same or that it's a reasonable way to do it.

So you might say it's not fair because you don't think it's a reasonable action that someone is taking against you at that point in time.

There was some research conducted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission a few years ago and they found that there are two main ideas of what fairness is according to the cohort of people that they interviewed for this research paper.

The first one is about treating everyone the same.

So linking back into that definition, everyone gets treated exactly the same as every other person.

But the other interpretation of fairness was that we treat people differently according to what their characteristics are.

So that might mean that we treat older people differently to how we might treat younger people, or we might treat some people as though they need more attention and support to complete the task, compared to someone else who doesn't need so much support.

Sometimes you might not feel like a situation is particularly fair.

It would therefore be really useful to get an idea of what kind of contributes to a fair situation.

So if we look at what fairness involves, we can kind of boil it down to three things.

The first one is that there's some sort of process to establish what is fair and what's not.

So if we're talking about a sport, then we might have a set of rules.

And so we know that everyone should be playing by those same rules to make the game fair.

Or if we're talking about trying to get into a school and lots of people want to get in, a school will have a selection criteria that explains the process they're going to go through to make sure that everyone has a fair chance of getting into that school, and it's not just picking the people that they want.

The second aspect is that there is a quality that we consider whether everyone can achieve the same outcomes.

So everyone has an equal opportunity of achieving something, and that ties in with what I just mentioned about some people needing a little bit more support than other people.

And the third one is something called proportional decisions or proportionality.

And if you think of it from a maths point of view, it's about dividing things up and being a bit more equal in that process.

So proportional decisions based on people receiving their fair share.

Now that might be based on the effort that they put in, or there might be some other criteria.

So for example, if the whole class won a competition for doing lots of book reading or some other tutor time activity, if only two or three pupils had done the vast majority of that work, then possibly it might be fairer to give them more of the reward rather than it just being divided up across everyone who may not have contributed to actually winning that in the first place.

So fairness is really important for establishing good relationships between people so that we can live, we can learn, and work together in our communities and in the wider society.

Now you might be asking why I've got a picture of cake here because that cake doesn't directly tie into what I've just mentioned.

But there is a reason for that.

I want you to imagine a scenario where you and some of your friends decide to go for a picnic.

And the plan is that there's going to be six of you there.

And so you choose to bake six cupcakes, which actually look really good and they're making me quite hungry right now.

Anyway, so the six of you plan to go but at the last minute, one of the other friends decides to come and now there's seven of you, but you only have six cakes.

So how would you divide them up then? How would you decide which people get a cake? Would you say that you should get one because you baked them and you contributed, and otherwise there wouldn't be any cakes in the first place.

So surely you deserve one.

Would you say that the person who decided to come late shouldn't get one because you didn't plan for them and therefore they just miss out.

Or should you try and find other criteria like whoever eats the most crisps or other things that are eaten and therefore they don't need a cake because they've already eaten enough anyway.

Now you might decide to be really mathematical about this and pull off a little piece of each of the six cupcakes so that everyone gets an even amount, and then you're trying to be as equal as you possibly can.

You might find that fortunately someone's allergic to something or just doesn't want to eat it and so you can give the six away without having any problems. But this is the type of example that really demonstrates how we might need a process to try and give everyone the same opportunity to achieve and making those proportional decisions as well.

What I would now like you to do do is to go back to those new school rules that I showed you earlier and choose five of them to make fairer.

So now that we've discussed them, you have a better understanding of what fairness is, and hopefully you can apply that in that situation.

But remember to be fair, they should treat everyone reasonably and proportionally as well.

So for example, you can't say year sevens always get to go first in the dining hall.

If you need to, you can pause the video here to complete your task and you can either rewind back to where I showed you the list or click through to the worksheet at the bottom of the page, and then come back when you're done so that we can keep going.

So some example answers here for you.

You may have chosen rule one and my adapted version to make this more fair says, students will be supported in wearing the correct uniform.

They will only be sent home if they repeatedly offend, and if no spare kit is available for them to borrow.

So otherwise they would be able to borrow something to try and keep them in school.

That's trying to give them the opportunity to have their education.

I also adapted rule four.

Teachers may only take personal items from students temporarily.

These must be returned by the end of the day, which may be to a parent or carer if necessary.

And my final example here is for rule six.

Pupils can be expelled, but only when every other option has been tried and it is no longer possible or appropriate for the people to stay.

But they may only be expelled if another school has a place for them.

So this is the type of thing that I'm after, examples where the rule still has a similar basis but it is now much fairer to everyone who is involved.

We're now going to move on to look at the idea of uniforms. Now people have very wide opinions about uniforms, but before we go specifically into school uniforms, I do have a mini task that I'd like you to do.

I want you to think about other than in schools, where else uniforms might be used in society and why.

And I'd like you to create a mind map of your ideas.

So come up with some examples of where you might see uniforms out in the real world, and the reasons why those uniforms might be in place.

You can pause here, complete the task, and then we'll go through.

So I've got in my example mind map here, and I've got some spaces to give you some examples of different people who might wear a uniform and I've also got some spaces to go through different reasons why people might wear uniforms. So first off, my list of who might wear a uniform.

I've got doctors, I've got police officers, firefighters, factory workers, and fast food employees which could also be extended out to anyone who works in a shop as well.

And then thinking about the reasons why, I've got promotion.

So to promote the brand or the company, if you are walking past a McDonald's and you see someone who's wearing the McDonald's clothing, then you'll kind of make that association.

You see that company being promoted beyond just where it's normally located.

Safety and protection is an important one.

If you think about firefighters, they will have specialist uniforms to ensure that if they are going into a fire, they can deal with the heat and hopefully they're not going to be burned.

And if we think about factory workers, it's for our safety.

If they're making some sort of food item that they don't get hair or other items into that cause that would be gross but also dangerous potentially as well.

Easy identification is really important particularly if we're talking about police officers so that if you're having a problem, you know who you can trust and who you can rely on.

So if you see someone in police uniform, then it's probably a fair assumption to make to think that they are actually going to be a police officer.

And for team building, what I mean by team building is the idea that if everyone is in it together, then it might actually be good for morale.

They identify as one team, they all support each other, they all want to go in the same direction, and to do the right thing, and end up with the best result possible.

So bringing it back to the idea of school uniforms, we're going to look at if school uniforms are fair.

We're going to look at the benefits and disadvantages of having a school uniform.

And we're going to do this through a task that is an internal debate.

So it's you coming up with both sides of the arguments because you don't have other people to be able to kind of have a traditional debate against.

We're going to use something called the hands method.

Now, if you look at the picture in the middle of the screen, you'll see I've got an outline of my left hand and an outline of my right hand.

And they've got captions saying on the one hand and on the other hand.

What I would like you to do is on your piece of paper to trace around both of your hands.

Now you might need to use opposite sides if you've got particularly big hands for this task.

On each finger and thumb on your left hand, I'd like you to list arguments to agree with the statement written in purple.

It's not fair to have to wear a uniform to school.

So on your left hand, all those are reasons why you shouldn't have to wear a uniform.

On the other hand, on the four fingers and thumb of your right hand, you're going to come up with arguments against that statement which say effectively, it is a good idea to have a uniform.

It is fair.

You are going to have some time.

You can pause the video here, make sure you've traced around both of your hands, come up with your arguments to agree and disagree with the statements shown.

If you need to, you can rewind back.

And when you're ready look at the arguments I've come up with, you can continue to press play.

I'm going to go through some examples with you now that Mrs. White and I came up with.

Now, you may have come up with different answers and different suggestions for your internal debate.

And as long as they make sense and they're under the correct subheading, then that's not a problem at all.

So let's look at on one hand the idea of school uniforms being unfair.

And the first argument we've got is that uniforms can be expensive particularly if you were having to buy a lot of different items for your uniform or if you're having to buy items that have the school logo all over it, then that can add to the cost and can be a lot more expensive than just buying unbranded items from a supermarket.

Second thing is that children's own clothes might be more comfortable.

You might have to wear a shirt and tie and blazer, or maybe you don't.

But in any case, you may well prefer to wear some of your own clothes so that you feel more comfortable in those items. Some people will argue that if children wear uniform, then so should teachers, because they would say that that would be fair.

Obviously, as teenagers tend to grow quite quickly, that would mean that a uniform has to be regularly replaced.

And that ties them back into that first argument about the cost of them.

And finally, young people can express their individuality in a uniform because the whole point of the word uniform is the same.

So you can't really express who you are as a person and your personality if you are having to conform by wearing uniform.

On the other hand, let's look at reasons why school uniforms are fair.

So uniforms mean that everyone looks the same, so it reduces bullying.

Because if people were having to wear branded items potentially from peer pressure, it may all turn out that if they didn't wear those items that other people may not be particularly kind towards them.

And that ties into this second point about parents possibly not having the money to spend on fashionable clothing.

So as much as uniforms can be expensive, if there is a pressure to wear certain labels, then that might actually cost parents a lot more money depending on what that brand is.

School uniform is smart.

So it's about making sure that you look good, that you are presented neatly so that that can transfer later in life potentially into certain job roles where you have to wear a formal dress or you have to wear a uniform in another job.

Uniforms also can make you feel like you belong to a community which is what I mentioned before with the mind map about this idea of everyone being in the same boat, everyone going in the same direction and working together.

And finally, linking to first two bullet points on this slide again, children can concentrate on learning rather than trying to look cool because that ultimately is the primary purpose of a school is for you to be able to learn.

It's not necessarily about that social dynamic.

Although obviously having social relationships within school is still important.

We're now going to look at who fights for fairness.

So we're going to take a closer look at two organisations that stand up for fairness in the UK and around the world.

And they are the Children's Rights Alliance and UNICEF.

So let's look first off at the Children's Rights Alliance.

So they work to ensure that laws created and decisions made by the UK Government treat children fairly.

So this is primarily looking at children and ensuring the government is acting in a way that is in children's best interests and making sure they're doing the right thing overall.

And as part of this work, they research and reports about how children are treated, and they try and advocate for kids, they try to drum up support to try and almost force the government to work in a certain way sometimes.

They also train people who work in public organisations about how to act fairly towards children.

So it's not just trying to get government to do stuff, it's trying to get people working for government organisations to do it in practise as well.

And then finally, they also do some promotion and supporting of the work of youth groups and charities who further help individual young people at a more individual level.

If we look at UNICEF, this is on the more global level here.

So UNICEF is part of the United Nations, which is an international organisation and that's based in New York but it does work all around the world.

And UNICEF aims to ensure that a child's basic needs are met, and that children have the opportunity to reach their potential through a huge range of different areas.

And that includes promoting childhood education, running immunisation programmes, and also providing emergency disaster relief if there is some sort of famine or an earthquake or other natural disaster.

And they also, on top of all this work, work to promote equal treatment of women and girls across the world as well.

So you can see two very different organisations here.

The one on the left, the Children's Rights Alliance based within UK trying to ensure that children are treated fairly within the UK, and then UNICEF working more globally to try to ensure that key idea of equality and being able to achieve the same outcomes because different people aren't necessarily going to have the same opportunities based on where they are growing up.

For your final task, I would like you to write two paragraphs which answer the question what is fairness, making sure that you also explain within that what fairness is.

You can also use some examples to develop your explanation.

Once you've done that, I would then like you to talk through your learning with someone else so that you can demonstrate what you've now learned about fairness.

You can pause the video here to complete your task.

When you're done, I will go through our final example of what we've written for our paragraphs, and then we'll wrap up the lesson.

Here is the model answer that Mrs. White and I have come up with about what is fairness.

Fairness is about treating people equally.

It's not about what someone else wants to happen, but ensuring that we consider all the facts and viewpoints before coming to a decision about what to do.

Fairness is also about making sure people get their rights, and that might mean having to speak out for people without power or a voice, so they can be treated fairly as well.

One way we can work towards fairness might be to make sure that school events are accessible for all, including wheelchair users.

This is then fair to all people and everyone can participate if they want to.

And your explanation of what fairness is, is probably very different to what we've come up with because everyone's going to write in their own way.

Hopefully, from the conversation that you've been able to have with someone else, you've been able to demonstrate your understanding of what fairness is.

So looking back at what we've done in the lesson today, we looked at the definition of fairness and what fairness means, we considered whether or not school uniforms are fair, and then we looked at those two organisations who fight for fairness.

Thank you so much for your work in today's lesson.

I know that Mrs. White and I are both very keen to see what you come up with.

So if you'd like to, you could ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter tagging @OakNational and using the hashtag LearnwithOak.

We really love to see all the work that everyone gets up to.

So if you are interested, please do that.

I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson and I hope you enjoy the other lessons here on Oak, bye.