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'I Think...' – That's not fair
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Full details
Credits:
With permission of the Australian Children's Television Foundation, Film Finance Corporation Australia Limited and Heytesbury Pty Ltd
Creator:
Steve French, animator, 1992
TLF ID:
R6065
Source:
Australian Children’s Television Foundation, http://www.actf.com.au
Digital resource description:
This lively animated short features the unscripted voices of a group of 5- to 9-year-old children discussing the concepts of fairness and equality in relation to people and the environment. Animated drawings, photographs and objects together with sound effects illustrate, reinforce and expand on the children's opinions. The children explore how perceptions of fairness and equality may differ for different people in different circumstances. While the discussion is anchored in concrete examples, the clip demonstrates the creative, complex and divergent thinking of this group of young children.
Educational value:
- The clip illustrates how a discussion about fairness might proceed, for example through listening, responding to and developing one another's ideas, disagreeing appropriately and approaching the topic from different perspectives. The children use personal experience and specific examples as they attempt to define what is fair, and use verbal reasoning skills such as explaining, comparing and contrasting to build on and synthesise ideas in order to arrive at clearer understandings of the concept of fairness and ways to achieve it.
- The clip shows how creative animation can illustrate and support audio content for a younger audience. Colourful line drawings provide a visual accompaniment to the complex philosophical questions being explored and reinforce aspects of fairness as the discussion unfolds. At times an animated character's lips mouth a particular point being made in the voice-over, while at other times animated objects provide visual translations of the ideas being expressed.
- Fairness is discussed in relation to equal opportunity. One child's example of flipping a coin suggests that fairness involves giving everyone an equal chance of winning, with luck rather than bias being the deciding factor.
- The example of someone who is likely to win all the races being told they cannot race again leads the children to discuss whether something can be both fair and unfair at the same time, particularly if it involves making a choice between being fair to an individual or to the group. Another child suggests that, as in horseracing, those who are better at a task should have some form of handicap imposed.
- The children consider what criteria could be applied to make something fair. While one child believes the same standards should be applied consistently across species, others conclude that you cannot make everything fair. This point is discussed in relation to humans and animals and an example of farmers exterminating rabbits is used to explain that fairness to one group may sometimes be at the expense of another.
- The children discuss the need for all people to accept responsibility for decision making. When one child ponders the question of who really decides or judges what is fair, another child concludes that we have to determine our own standards when he says that we have to decide for ourselves.
- The children were chosen from schools where philosophy for children is taught. These schools encourage students from a young age to interact with each other within a 'community of inquiry'. Discussion was facilitated by an expert educator who encouraged the children to interact with each other freely and promoted the principles of cooperative learning. Discussions were then edited and the recordings given to the animator for visual interpretation.
- This clip forms part of 'I Think …', a philosophy anthology of 26 animations developed by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF). According to the ACTF website, a range of resources is available to support teachers in using the anthology.
Keywords:
Competition, Competition (Economics), Environmental stewardship, Equity, Equity, Fairness, Justice, Responsibility
Rights:
© Curriculum Corporation and Australian Children’s Television Foundation, 2007, except where indicated under Acknowledgements