Bringing WTO issues to schools

Two UW projects being held in connection with the World Trade Organization’s autumn meeting in Seattle involve extensive collaboration with public schools. The projects are part of the official Seattle Host Organization effort at education and outreach to the community.

Both “Digital Divide” and “WTO Student Ambassadors” will present middle and high school students with issues that are part of the WTO ministerial conference and engage them in discussing possible solutions to the problems confronting world leaders.

Digital Divide

The idea behind the Digital Divide is that the fruits of the information revolution are distributed unevenly, both within this country and around the world. Access to technology is influenced by race, class and geography. Access to information, and ability to evaluate it, is increasingly a factor in economic well being, in obtaining adequate work skills, in social mobility and, increasingly, in simply being an informed citizen. This threatens to accentuate divisions within society, allowing some individuals greater opportunities, while others are more isolated and shut out of perhaps the most intellectually exciting development of the latter part of the 20^th century.

The UW, through the Office of Educational Partnerships, and the Seattle School District are using the WTO conference as an opportunity to interest public school students in exploring these issues. Two teachers from South Shore Middle School and a teacher from Ballard High School are creating a 10-lesson curriculum that explores the origin and ramifications of the digital divide.

The curriculum will be broadly applicable to classes in language arts and social studies and combines historical, social, political, economic and technical perspectives. Students will get a feel of how e-commerce works by being asked to hunt across the Web and locate various products and services. This will help them understand how markets and consumer habits are changing.

Teacher training began in August on campus. UW students will provide training and support on technical aspects of the curriculum.

The next step will be to translate the curriculum materials into several languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Xhosa, and to distribute them to schools in Japan, China, Mexico and South Africa, respectively. These schools will generally be near universities, so that students have access to the Web and technical help.

The goal is to have the curriculum culminate in an online forum and discussion involving students from the various countries, and perhaps delegates to the WTO, in December.

“This is an exciting opportunity,” says Alia Jackson, the project coordinator. “The students will be looking at the current distribution of information resources and discussing whose role it is to fill the gaps, around the world and in their own community. While the WTO is providing the impetus, we hope the curriculum will be sustainable beyond the conference.”

Student Ambassadors

The WTO Student Ambassadors project will train UW students in how to use a trade dispute in a hands-on classroom experience for Puget Sound-area middle and high school students. The project is being conducted under a grant from the Seattle Host Organization to the Center for International Business Education and Research. The issue chosen by Debra Glassman, senior lecturer in finance and business economics, was the effort to sell Washington apples in Japan.

“It’s a relatively simple issue, at least on the surface,” she says. “And it fits well into the social studies curriculum in most schools, which involves study of this state and the Pacific Rim. It’s inherently dramatic, and it provides valuable insights into issues beyond trade, such as politics, culture and national identity.” The curriculum has been developed with the assistance of three public school teachers, two from Mercer Middle School in Seattle and a ninth-grade teacher from Timbercrest High School in the Northshore School District.

Glassman recruited UW students in spring quarter. The students received their training in a one-credit course, which will certify them for going into the classroom. “One of the things the schoolteachers impressed upon us was to make the classroom material concrete and interactive if we wanted to engage the students,” Glassman says.

So the two-session curriculum will have the students play the roles of the various participants in the Japan-US trade dispute. The first session will explore the challenges faced by Washington apple growers in trying to sell their products in Japan. The second session simulates a WTO dispute-resolution hearing, with students on the WTO panel reaching a decision based on the evidence they have received. While some students will testify in front of the panel, others will play the role of journalists reporting to the public on the hearing.

Glassman and the students already have tested the curriculum on groups of students. “We’ve learned that this approach can appeal to many age groups. I’ve actually learned a lot from watching the students. I’m amazed how realistic this exercise has become, even with sixth-graders. This is going to influence the way I teach in the future. I plan to use more interactive exercises in my classroom, because they really help students understand the issues.”

The UW’s partner in the ambassador program is the World Affairs Council, which has been conducting The Global Classroom program in schools around the Puget Sound region and, in the process, has established contacts with teachers who are interested in further international education in their classroom.

Training for UW students is continuing this autumn quarter, with students entering middle and high school classrooms at the end of October.

The dispute-resolution module, along with three other follow-up simulations, will be available to classroom teachers in printed form and on the World Affairs Council Web site: http://world-affairs.org/Default.htm .¶

Bob Roseth, News and Information