Whole Earth Curriculum WEC

Lesson 02 — Weighing a Technology: The Phone in My Hand

Learners weigh the benefits and harms of a technology they use daily — the phone — across its full lifecycle: minerals, manufacture, use, and disposal. A worked example models the weighing skill, then learners apply it stage by stage and write their own reasoned judgment.

D09 P4: Contextual & Ecological Awareness D09.S1 55 minutes Draft

Objectives

Essential question

How do I weigh the benefits and harms of a technology I use every day — for people near me and people far away?

benefitharmstakeholdersupply chaine-wastelifecycleweigh

Materials

Standard materials

Low-tech / no-cost

Enriched / lab & device

Works in different contexts

A four-stage lifecycle of a phone — minerals mined, factory, hands using it, discarded pile — with a benefits column and a harms column beside each stage, grayscale-printable
A four-stage lifecycle of a phone — minerals mined, factory, hands using it, discarded pile — with a benefits column and a harms column beside each stage, grayscale-printable

Lesson 2 — Weighing a Technology: The Phone in My Hand

Summary

Learners weigh the benefits and harms of a technology they use daily — the phone — across its full lifecycle: minerals, manufacture, use, and disposal. A worked example models the weighing skill, then learners apply it stage by stage and write their own reasoned judgment.

Objectives

  • Apply ethical reasoning to a technology — weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet — and defend a reasoned judgment. (D09.S1.10.01)

Connection

The phone in your pocket can call a friend across the sea, find a health clinic, move money, and read a schoolbook — in a single hour it can do work that once took a journey of days. But that same phone began as rock dug from the ground, was assembled in a factory far away, and will one day be thrown away. Some of the people who dug that rock or sorted that waste worked in conditions that hurt them. A phone is not simply “good” or “bad”: it is a trade-off, and weighing it honestly — benefit against harm, near against far — is exactly what ethical reasoning about technology means.

Materials

  • Phone lifecycle sheet
  • Worked-example card

Preparation

  • Copy the lifecycle sheet and worked-example card.
  • Retrieval: from Grade 8, recall that every tool has effects — who benefits, who is harmed (the phone’s life cycle; e-waste and cobalt). Today we weigh those effects with more care.
  • Prepare one worked example of weighing a single benefit against a single harm.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). The idea to land: a technology is never all benefit or all harm; weighing it means naming benefits and harms for the people near it and the people far away, across its whole life — then judging which trade-off you can defend. Teach the weighing skill with a worked example first, then guided practice, then independent work — novices learn a procedure this way (S-011). Keep the facts accurate and hedged: cobalt and other minerals in phones are sometimes mined in conditions that harm and exploit workers, including children (S-398); discarded phones become e-waste, which when improperly dumped or recycled can release hazardous substances, with children and pregnant women especially vulnerable (S-397). At the same time, mobile connectivity is real and widely valued — it is how hundreds of millions of people bank, learn, and stay connected (S-281, S-211). Hold both true at once; do not collapse into a verdict that a phone is simply evil or simply wonderful. The egalitarian lens: always ask who bears each harm and who keeps each benefit — the distance between them is the point. The global lens: the people harmed by a phone’s birth and death live on other continents; the question of fairness crosses borders. Distinguish evidence (the documented harms) from values (how much each harm should weigh). Preview: next lesson we weigh an environment, not a device.

Procedure

  1. Recall (5 min). From Grade 8: what is one benefit and one harm of a mobile phone you already know? Say each in a sentence.
  2. Meet the lifecycle (10 min). Look at the lifecycle sheet — four stages: minerals, factory, use, dispose. For each stage, read who is touched there.
  3. Worked example (10 min). Watch one weighing done step by step: (a) name the benefit — connectivity lets a family stay in touch and a shop take payments; (b) name the harm — some of the minerals inside are sometimes mined in conditions that exploit workers, including children; (c) say who gains and who loses; (d) judge: is the trade-off worth it, and what would make it fairer? This is the pattern you will use.
  4. Guided practice (15 min). In a pair, weigh one more stage (e.g., dispose — e-waste that harms soil and the people who sort it, against the phone’s long useful life). Use the four steps aloud, then agree on a judgment.
  5. Independent practice (10 min). In your journal, weigh the whole phone in four sentences: one benefit, one harm, who bears each, and your reasoned judgment. Mark yourself “not yet” if you skipped a step, and try again.
  6. Close (5 min). Read your judgment to a partner. Notice: two people can weigh the same facts and reach different judgments — that is reasoning, not failure.

Differentiation

  • Support: Provide sentence starters (“The benefit is…; the harm is…; who gains is…; who loses is…; I judge…”).
  • Extension: Add a second, less visible harm (energy used by data centers; the minerals in the battery) and fold it into the weighing.
  • Expression: Learners who do not speak aloud can write or draw each weighing step, arrange benefit/harm slips on the lifecycle, or have a partner read their written judgment — no step requires the voice.

Assessment

  • Formative (peer + self): Can the learner name a benefit and a harm, say who bears each, and give a reasoned judgment?
  • Portfolio artifact (unit): The completed weighing (four sentences), as the first page of the unit’s “ethical-reasoning” portfolio.

Home connection

With a family member, choose one household object and trace one step of where it came from and where it will go. Name one benefit and one harm together.

Resources