Duerme, Duerme Negrito / Duerme, duerme negrito / Que tu mamá está en el campo / Negrito[*]

Vitor Jara

Overview

In this activity, participants discuss in small groups to share similarities and differences in their up-bringing.

Issues addressed

Equality and diversity

The cultural similarities and differences between people

The so-called "cultural differences" are not only cultural but also economic, social and political.

Aims

To learn about the different ways each of us has grown up

To understand the social and economic differences defining each individual and society

To generate empathy and understanding between participants

Time

45 minutes

Group size

Any

Preparation/Materials

Nothing special, but the group should have already been working together.

Instructions

Explain that the aim of this activity is to think about the different ways each of us has grown up, and to become more aware of the social and economic differences that help make us who we are.

Stress that no-one should feel under pressure to disclose anything which would make them feel uncomfortable.

Ask participants to get into groups of 4 to 6, and to talk about what their childhoods were like and what they did. Suggested questions include:

Where did you live? In a town or in the country? In a flat or house? What was the neighbourhood like?

At what age did you first go to school?

Who else lived in your family?

Did you have to take care of your brothers and sisters?

Did you have any kind of religious education?

Did you work when you were a child? What did you do? Was it for pocket money or to support the family?

What did you do in your free time? What books did you read? What games / sports did you play? Did you belong to a youth group?

What friends did you have? Did they have the same social, economic and cultural background as you?

What were your relationships with your parents like?

Did you have any animals? Were they pets, or kept for food, work or security?

Debriefing and evaluation

Ask the participants to come into plenary and ask:

Which events or people shaped your childhood most, for instance, friends, family, where you lived, or the economic, social and political environment?

How varied were other participants’ childhoods? Were there things you all had in common? What were the most significant differences?

What did you learn about yourself and about the others in the group?

What was the most interesting or most surprising thing about this exercise?

Did your attitudes towards the others in the group change in any way as you heard about their childhoods?

How important are childhood experiences for the sort of person you are today?

As you grew up, did all the children in your neighbourhood have similar childhoods?

Tips for the facilitators

Try to keep this activity simple. It should not become a session for false psychoanalysis, or an in-depth discussion about structural inequity. Its purpose is to raise participants’ awareness of the fact that we develop different perceptions of life from the world around us as a result of our family backgrounds and the social and economic conditions in which we were born or where we lived. These conditions may influence difference as much as culture does. In fact, one can also argue that they form part of culture, just as much as religion, language or skin colour.

As with all activities, the questions addressed in the debriefing and evaluation have to be adapted to the needs and experiences of the participants. For example, there is no point in asking how it felt to have a different colour of skin if everyone is white! You might like to ask: “As a child, did you have friends from other cultures? Why? Why not?”

Issues about differences and inequalities of opportunity could lead to an exploration of the Rights of the Child. There are relevant activities in both Compasito and Compass.

The activity can be made more lively if the participants illustrate their comments with photos or drawings.

The quotation from Philip Larkin are the first lines of his poem ‘This be the verse’. You can find the rest of it on the Internet. You may like to start or end the activity by reading it out to the group.

Variation

You may prefer to change the format and ask participants to make timelines of their childhoods. Give participants strips of paper marked off in years from 0 to 18, and ask them to mark the important events of their life, for instance: the places where they lived, when they discovered certain books or music, the schools they went to, the friendships they had, and perhaps the death of a pet. Then, in small groups, they should stick the timelines one below the other on a flip chart to show the “parallel biographies”; this adds significant visual support to the discussion.

Suggestions for follow-up

Take action: You might like to get involved in the personal and social education of children in your neighbourhood. Why not volunteer with a local organisation working with children, for instance the Scouts or the International Falcon Movement – Socialist Educational International (IFM-SEI)?

You could consider volunteering to help organisations such as Save the Children or UNICEF to fundraise. They usually need people to spend a few hours on their annual door-to-door collections, or to stand on the street to collect donations, or to sign up supporters.

Move on to another activity: ‘My Childhood’ combines very well with the activity ‘My Story’, which involves identifying key “public” events and asking: “What were you doing, or where were you living when this or that event happened?”

If you want to look further at relationships within the family and how attitudes may vary according to role and age, try ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner’.