Gains and losses

The world is a place of constant change. We can travel around the world faster than ever before and to more places. More and more people are being added to the world's population (there are also more an more places which are looking more and more like each one way or other). We build more skyscrapers and factories and houses and roads and lose more and more farmland and wilderness.

This activity is a variation on the More or Less activity and another good way to start talking about the state of the world and perspective consciousness. It is also a good way to talk about change.

Give the students the list on the following page, adding to it or subtracting from it as you feel appropriate. Ask the students, in groups of three, to identify those changes which they believe represent true gains (improvements) and those which they think are losses. Have them put all their improvements in one column, all their losses in another. Discuss the results. Why is a change an improvement? A loss? Is there a pattern to their responses?

Next, ask students to compile their own lists of gains and losses. Where will they go to find the information? They can draw examples from their own knowledge and experience, or they can use sources such as almanacs or the World Eagle (see Resources section). Then take all their separate lists and combine them into one single list. You may discover some significant differences of opinion.

The items in the large list can be arranged by categories; for instance, those things having to do with transportation, those things having to do with war and peace, those things having to do with the environment, and so on. Experts from the local college or university, from business, from government, or from non-profit organisations can be invited to give their opinions as to which of these things are really gains and which losses.

• The world's population grows by about 1 million persons every four days.
• The number of nations in the world has increased from 68 in the 1930s to 191 in 1994.
• The proportion of people living below the internationally accepted poverty line has fallen from around 28 per cent in the late 1980s to an estimated 24 per cent in the late 1990s.
• In 1990, 41 percent of the people of the world lived in cities: in 1992, 43 percent lived in cities.
• In 1988, the average infant mortality rate for the developing nations was 86 (per 1000 live births). In 1992 the average rate was 75.
• Each year the amount of land that is desert increases by about 15 million acres.
• Life expectancy in the less-developed countries has increased by 16 years between 1960 and 1990.
• In 1970, the proportion of the world’s population that was in the world’s poorest 20 countries: 47.8%; in 1999 the proportion was 7.3%
• 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.

Source: Global winners by Jan Drum, Steve Hughes and George Otero, page 157