Global believe it or not!

Sometimes when students undertake quiz activities such as the global realities quiz or the state of the world test, they tell us that if they are not sure of the answer, they pick the most outrageous answer offered. Why? Because they have come to expect the outrageous to be the norm. If we think of some of the things human beings do to each other and to the planet, those that get headlines in newspapers, there is some justification for that belief. So we thought that it might be possible to document some of these outrageous events as a means of balancing our views of the world.

Why not have your students collect facts about our globe, and add a few of their own invention, and play with the information? The world is indeed a crazy and fascinating place. Once you have a list of great statements that will challenge students to believe it or not, try these four activities.

• Have teams of students create their own lists and challenge one another to see who can choose the real data from the invented.
• Discuss why the data seem likely or unlikely to be true.
• Discuss ways of finding out the truth of the data.
• Invite students to collect believe-it-or-not statements for you to share.

Here are some to start with (these statements are all true):

1. War and internal conflicts in the 1990s forced 50 million people to flee their homes.
2. The hourly wages of working women is about three-quarters of the wages of men.
3. 100 million children live or work on the streets.
4. The average African consumes less meat per day than an Australian dog.
5. The Internet has grown exponentially from 16 million users in 1995 to more than 400 million users in 2000? There are expected to be 1 billion users in 2005
6. Although we buy bottled water from clean springs in the developed world more than 2 billion people drink and bathe in water contaminated by parasites and pathogens.
7. Approximately one third of the world's population are under 15. In Australia, this is around 20%.
8. There are more than ten million refugees and five million internally displaced people.
9. Forty million births each year are not registered worldwide.
10. Men born in developing countries are likely to die ten years earlier than men in developed countries. Women born in developing countries are likely to die fifteen years earlier than women in developed countries.
11. To achieve universal provision of basic services in developing countries would cost an additional $80 billion per year.
12. The cost of transmitting a trillion bits of information from Boston to Los Angeles has fallen from $150,000 in 1970 to 12 cents today.
13. The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.
14. The combined wealth of the world’s richest 200 people reached $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion.
15. Adult literacy has been nearly halved in the last thirty years and combined secondary and primary enrolment has more than doubled.
16. More than 30 000 children a day die from mostly preventable causes.
17. Worldwide, women occupy only 14 per cent of parliamentary seats.
18. In two years from 1998 to 2000 Internet users increased from 1.7 million to 9.8 million in Brazil, from 3.8 million to 16.9 million in China and from 2, 500 to 25, 000 in Uganda.

Discuss the statements which either directly or indirectly relate to world poverty. Do you believe these statements or not? How might you prove whether they were true or not?

Here is one game you could try. Teams of three students will play a form of trivial pursuit based on the believe-it-or-not information. Each team will come up with a list of five questions and the other teams will be offered three possible answers to the question, but only one will be correct. All three answers must sound somewhat outrageous but, for the game to work, all must seem equally plausible. The game could be conducted verbally or teams could write their answers. The team with the most answers at the end wins. Teachers can direct students to formulate questions which are based on poverty issues

Adapted from an activity in The Global Classroom by Tony Townsend and George Otero, Hawker Brownlow Education, 1999, page 192 - 93

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