A SIMPLE CHOCOLATE BAR

• Describe how a candy bar illustrates the working of global systems.
• Recognize that a breakdown in one part of a system affects other parts.

Comments to the Teacher

For this lesson, students should be divided into seven groups. They will consider a very simple item: a chocolate candy bar. Bring one to class as a prop to focus students' attention and ask them to imagine the following story:

Suppose we think of a small town where most of the people earn their living working in a candy factory (Hershey, Pennsylvania, is an obvious example). Appoint (Group 1) to represent the candy town.

Ask the class what goes into a candy bar. Besides sugar, chocolate, and nuts, you might mention corn syrup and coconut.

For each of these items, identify on a world map or globe where it comes from:

• Chocolate comes from cacao seeds, cultivated, among other places, in central Africa. Appoint Group 2 to represent the Africans who grow and sell cacao seeds.
• Sugar might come from a Caribbean island (Group 3).
• Coconut from the South Pacific (Group 4).
• Com syrup from the com fields of Iowa (Group 5).
• Nuts from Brazil (Group 6).

In addition, the candy needs a paper wrapper, which might involve a lumber company in the Pacific Northwest (Group 7). Make sure that the children are well aware of the wide geographical distribution of each of these. Then ask the students how their groups might be affected by each of the following events:

• A drought in the Midwest damages the com crop, making corn syrup hard to get.
• A good advertising campaign on television makes many more people want to buy this particular brand of candy bar.
• A tropical storm destroys the plantations that sold their coconuts to the factory.
• A revolution in a Caribbean island cuts off an important supply of sugar.
• War in central Africa involves the cacao regions.
• The workers in the candy factory go on strike for higher wages.

It is important that the children not be overwhelmed by the potential catastrophes. Make sure that they see that none of the negative events will necessarily wipe out the candy bar industry. But these calamities would make things difficult for everybody involved. And that's the key concept: that even with a simple thing like a candy bar, we are mutually dependent on people scattered all over the world and on events that we might not even be aware of.