Living Fairly
Senior 6 · English (Languages)
Living Fairly
Lesson 1 of 4
30 min
Let's begin
"That's not fair!" is one of the first moral sentences a child learns to say. But what does fairness require: that everyone is treated the same, or that everyone gets what they need? This lesson reads an account of a community that had to answer that question at a water tap, and then practises the skills of mediation, the oldest and most local way of resolving a conflict fairly.
A feature written for this lesson; the community and the people are imagined.
1 The public tap at the bottom of our road opens at six in the morning and closes at eight at night, and for most of those fourteen hours there is a queue. For years the rule was simple: first come, first served. Nobody wrote it down; nobody needed to. It was the kind of rule everyone agreed was fair, because it treated everyone the same.
2 The trouble began with Mzee Rukundo. Since a stroke last year he has walked with two sticks, and on a hot afternoon the queue can last forty minutes. One Saturday a young man let him go to the front. The next day, a woman with a baby on her back asked for the same favour and was refused by a man who had been waiting since before she arrived. Voices were raised. By Wednesday the tap committee had received eleven complaints, and a meeting was called.
3 At the meeting, two ideas of fairness collided. The first said: everyone is equal, so everyone waits. Any exception, however kind, opens the door to favouritism; today an old man, tomorrow the chairman's nephew. The second said: treating unequal situations equally is not fairness but indifference. A queue that is easy for a strong eighteen-year-old is a different thing for a man on two sticks.
4 Philosophers have argued about this for over two thousand years. Aristotle held that justice means treating like cases alike and unlike cases differently, in proportion to the difference. The twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls asked people to imagine designing the rules of a society from behind a "veil of ignorance", without knowing whether they would be born strong or weak, rich or poor. Rules chosen in that way, he argued, would protect the least advantaged, because any of us might turn out to be one of them.
5 The committee did not quote Aristotle. It did something better: it wrote a rule. Between ten and twelve each morning, older people, people with disabilities and people carrying small children may go to the front, once a day. At all other times the queue is first come, first served. The rule is posted on the wall beside the tap, so that the exception is public and limited, not a favour granted by whoever happens to be standing in front.
6 Not everyone is satisfied. A few people still mutter at ten o'clock. But the complaints stopped within a fortnight, and something unexpected happened: the late-morning queue grew shorter, as people with flexible days began to come early or late. Fairness, it turns out, is not only a feeling. It is a design problem.
Definition
Key terms
The committee's problem is often drawn like this. Which panel matches the first view at the meeting, and which the second?
| Word (paragraph) | Word class | Meaning here |
|---|---|---|
| collided (3) | verb | came into sharp conflict (literally: crashed into each other) |
| indifference (3) | noun | lack of concern; not caring |
| proportion (4) | noun | the correct relation of size or amount between things |
| least advantaged (4) | adjective phrase used as a noun | the people in the weakest position |
| mutter (6) | verb | complain quietly, half to oneself |
| fortnight (6) | noun | two weeks (British English) |
In Rwanda, many local disputes are first taken to Abunzi, mediation committees reintroduced in 2004. They work at cell level, with appeal committees at sector level; their members are elected by the community for their integrity and mediation skills and serve as volunteers. For certain civil disputes, mediation by the Abunzi must be tried before a case can go to court.
In groups of three, role-play a mediation between the woman with the baby and the man who refused her. One student mediates. Follow these stages.
| Stage | The mediator's job | Useful language |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Explain the process and agree ground rules | "Each of you will speak without interruption. My job is not to judge but to help you agree." |
| 2. Telling | Let each party tell their story | "Please tell us what happened, from your point of view." |
| 3. Reformulating | Restate neutrally, removing blame | "So what matters to you is not being late for work." |
| 4. Interests | Move from positions to interests | "Can you say more about why that is important to you?" |
| 5. Options | Invite solutions from both sides | "What could work for both of you?" |
| 6. Agreement | State and record what has been agreed | "Let me read back what you have agreed …" |
Worked example
A mediation exchange, analysed
Man: She thinks a baby gives her the right to push in!
Mediator: So you felt that the rule of the queue was being ignored. What made that so important to you that morning?
Man: I start work at seven-thirty. If I'm late twice, I lose a day's pay.
Woman: I didn't know that. I just couldn't stand for forty minutes with her on my back.
Tip
"I" statements lower the temperature. Instead of "You always push in", try "I feel frustrated when the queue changes, because I have to be at work by seven-thirty." The pattern is: I feel … when … because …. It describes a feeling and a reason, not a fault.
Warning
Practice
Sources and credits
