Starting To Plan Your Project To Fix The World
From Learning Activities Using "The Yes Men Fix the World"
Contents |
1 Starting To Plan Your Project To Fix The World
| “ | Do you think what you are doing is making a difference? We guesstimate that it is, somehow, somewhere. At least it’s better than sitting on our asses waiting for the world to change on its own. | ” |
| — The Yes Men |
The activities in Part Two of this guide are not focused on a close reading of the film, but, rather, on using the film as a catalyst for learners to want to fix some part of our world. The purpose of reviewing the underlying themes in the movie, as well as analyzing the actions of The Yes Men to fix the problems they identified, is to figure out what students want to fix, and why, and how they want to do it, and why. In addition, a goal of these learning activities is to connect students with groups in their communities who are already working on the issue they have chosen. A hope would be for these connections to last beyond the lessons about the film.
In some educational situations, you may choose to focus more on the film, and on discussions about what students might do about some problems, in some other context. In that case, you might want to focus more on the learning activities suggested for understanding satire and various perspectives to make sense of the world, and create lessons after the movie that explore the underlying themes of The Yes Men Fix the World—media literacy and the real-world consequences of an unfettered free-market world-view. You also might want to focus more on the specific issues The Yes Men tried to fix. The Appendix to this guide contains a list of resources to explore those issues further.
First, of course, the students will want to discuss their reactions to the film. In order to encourage everyone to speak, and not make anyone feel embarrassed, you can first have people discuss the film in small groups, or you can have people write their reactions (not for anyone else to see) in order for them to collect their thoughts. I usually then require everyone to either make a comment or ask a question. This gets everyone to participate in a way that does not embarrass anyone. You can also return to the first set of “before the movie” questions—now, what do you think is broken in the world? How can it be fixed? What’s being done to fix it?
1.1 What does activism look like?
If the students don’t remember too may specifics, you might want to replay certain sections of the movie and analyze them in detail. The teacher activity guide developed for the film by Toronto educators Michael Alex and Krista Hunt includes times for various parts of the film. I recommend doing this in the context of a discussion on what is activism? What does it mean to be an active citizen? What does it mean to advocate for something you think is right? How does this advocacy look like? (Like sitting in a legislative hearing room waiting for your turn to speak? Like sitting at a desk writing to your Congressperson? Like organizing tons of people to take charge of the situation?) What does it mean to protest against something you think is wrong? What do these actions look like? (Like a march and picketing? Like a Survivaball?) How do The Yes Men’s actions fit with typical images of people’s advocacy and protests? Have you participated in any advocacy and/or protest actions? Why or why not? How have any actions you participated in looked like?
1.2 What do you want to do in the world?
Out of this discussion, you could ask students what they might want to fix in our world. Probably, people will feel overwhelmed by the number of possibilities. When this happens to me, I think of various sayings I have read:
- Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci: “I’ve always been convinced that, even when everything is or seems lost, it is necessary to get down calmly to work, starting over from the beginning.”
- Howard Zinn, in a talk on why we need to start working for the abolition of war [1]: “When something is a long shot, but it has to be done, we need to start doing it.”
- Pete Seeger “I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and at one end of this the seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we’re trying to fill up sand. A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, ‘Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in.’ But we’re saying, ‘We’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time.’ And we think, ‘One of these years, you’ll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction.’ And people will say, ‘Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?’ Us and all our little teaspoons. Now granted, we’ve gotta keep putting it in, because if we don’t keep putting teaspoons in, it will leak out, and the rocks will go back down again.”[2].
Woody Allen:
One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
- If the class gets stuck here, you could ask students about situations in their own lives where things felt overwhelming at first, but later, they got ideas about how to work on and improve their condition. Using the students’ and your experiences, together the class can come up with a process for moving forward in situations where the choices seem endless. Then, later, when the class connects up with a community group working on the issue they chose, there can be discussions about finding fixable aspects of that issue to tackle first.
1.3 What does the ‘fixed’ world look like after you act?
- As a step in this process of deciding what to do to fix a part of the world, you can encourage students to imagine what the fixed world would look like for their issue, what would the news reports say about this fixed world? Remember in the film how the people who got the fake New York Times said things like “It’s a dream newspaper—you wake up and all the things you wanted have become real.” And Mike wonders: “What would happen if we set our imagination free?” Expanding students’ imaginations is important to break through the paralysis that can take hold in our society. The world can seem fixed in the sense of unchangeable. So why act to fix it?
A few exercises that can start to open people’s imaginations:
- Students can reflect on an experience the late Palestinian intellectual, Columbia University Professor Edward Said recounts from in his early education[3]:
During the first weeks Baldwin [his teacher] assigned us an essay topic of a very unpromising sort: “On Lighting a Match.” I dutifully went to the library and proceeded through encyclopedias, histories of industry, chemical manuals in search of what matches were; I then more or less systematically summarized and transcribed what I found and, rather proud of what I had compiled, turned it in. Baldwin almost immediately asked me to come and see him during his office hours, which was an entirely novel concept, since VC’s teachers never had offices, let alone office hours. Baldwin’s office was a cheery little place with postcard-covered walls, and as we sat next to each other on two easy chairs he complimented me on my research. “But is that the most interesting way to examine what happens when someone lights a match? What if he’s trying to set fire to a forest, or light a candle in a cave, or, metaphorically, illuminate the obscurity of a mystery like gravity, the way Newton did?”Students can think about totally different ways of organizing aspects of society. For example, I challenge my students to discuss why food is not as free as air. Would we stop someone from breathing the air if they could not pay? Would we stop someone from breathing the air if they did not have a job? For another example, in a recent article in Z Magazine, “What’s Wrong with a 30-Hour Work Week?” Fitz (2009) argues that shortening work to 30, or even 20 hours per week, would decrease unemployment (more jobs would be created to make up the “missing” hours), improve our health (with leisure time to relax and take care of our health through exercise and preparing nutritious foods), improve our environment (we would not spend time producing stuff we don’t need), and, is also necessary for active citizens to have time to participate in government. He does not deal with the question about whether a shorter work week would have to mean less pay, or could it mean less profits for the corporations? Shaw and Miles (1979) hypothesize that in a liberatory society:
For literally the first time in my life a subject was opened up for me by a teacher in a way that I immediately and excitedly responded to. What had previously been repressed and stifled in academic study—repressed in order that thorough and correct answers be given to satisfy a standardized syllabus and a routinized exam designed essentially to show off powers of retention, not critical or imaginative faculties—was awakened, and the complicated process of intellectual discovery (and self-discovery) has never stopped since.
we would replace accountancy in terms of money and profit by accountancy in terms of social needs . We would replace the definition of social goals by those at the tops of the bureaucratic pyramids, by democratic self-control over all collective activities. We would then require new ways of measuring our needs and goals, which expressed their great variety rather than reduced them to money values or standards imposed from abovep.36.
- Students can think about totally different ways of organizing the entire economic and political institutions of our society. For example, David Schweickart presents a vision of economic democracy as an alternative to bailing out the financial institutions; Michael Albert presents a vision of participatory economics and the two debate their different alternatives.
1.4 How should the class organize itself?
As a teacher, you will also have to assess whether or not it makes sense for the entire group to pick one project, or for small groups to pick their own projects. Probably, some of the decision will depend on the amount of time involved and whether the learning is in-school, and at what grade, or out-of-school in a community group. It could be a wonderful learning experience to have each individual write down a list of ideas, followed by small group discussions with the goal of picking one project per group, followed by group presentations where the entire class agrees on one project to fix a part of their world. Or, it could be terrible, diverting too much attention away from all the other learning activities. Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing (Stout, 1996) contains many ideas about getting people who have different experiences and ideas to work together on social change projects. A number of traditional resources on consensus building, from the field of conflict resolution, can be found at, including an overview essay, “Consensus Building”; and a summary of one of the classics in the discipline, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In[4].
In addition, some students may think there is nothing in our world that needs fixing, or nothing they can do to about the problems that need fixing. I suggest their task should be to develop a strong argument about why they believe nothing is broken, or why they believe nothing they do will fix what is broken. Part of their argument should address why they disagree with The Yes Men (i.e., why Bhopal is not broken.)
1.5 What role should the teacher take?
In terms of the teacher role in the final decision about the process and the choice of topic, I take a fairly activist role in introducing students to material that they may not currently be interested in. My friend and colleague Sam Anderson has said, “Students may not initially be interested in some idea, but they can become interested.” And, you might have a chance to talk with students about why so many citizens feel alienated from interest in economic and political issues, why so many people think they can’t have any impact on our world.
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1982) is insistent that his concept of dialogical education does not mean teachers are merely a “passive, accidental presence.” Teachers listen to students to discover themes that teachers then organize and present as problems challenging students’ previous perceptions. Teachers also suggest themes they judge as important. Teachers can be strong influences without being “superiors” who totally control the learning environment.
The opposite of manipulation is not an illusory neutrality, neither is it an illusory spontaneity. The opposite of being directive is not being non-directive—that is likewise an illusion. The opposite both of manipulation and spontaneity is critical and democratic participation by the learners in the act of knowing, of which they are the subjectsFreire, 1981, p.28.
1.6 Notes
- ↑ University of Wisconsin, November 2006
- ↑ Democracy Now! July 4, 2007
- ↑ Out of Place: A Memoir, New York: Vintage, 1999, p.231
- ↑ Fisher and Ury assume there can be objective criteria, citing examples like “scientific findings, professional standards, or legal precedent.” If you decide that some process of negotiation is needed to find agreement about an issue to fix in the world, it might make sense to have students read some of these traditional views on consensus building and critique and modify them. Certainly, for example, from a left perspective, there are strong arguments that many scientific findings (e.g., drug company research) are far from objective!
