One day a whole lot of comments on the film The Corporation appeared in our online forum. As he set out to respond to their comments online, Mark Achbar was amazed at the level of engagement that 13 and 14 year-olds had for this film. But I wasn’t quite as surprised, though no less pleased, at the impact the film was having. I think Grade 8 is a magic age. It’s the transition to the teenage years, and contrary to all the stereotypes of out of control teens, I’ve found that working with this age group means that I’m challenged to make my sometimes academic and esoteric “theories” actually comprehensible. They get boiled down to what is really at stake. And the reward is that once an idea takes hold, this age group does have the intellectual capacity to really engage with the ideas. And these students have a pretty special teacher. Mr. Urban first saw the film while channel flicking on TV Ontario. “Urbs,” as he is known, thought he would bring it to his class and he worked it into his curriculum all year. His own excitement about the film is hard to resist.
So the insights and enthusiasm the students of Mr. Urban’s Grade 8 class at the Holy Name School in Essex, Ontario, Canada (all 56 of them) inspired us to take a trip to see them. Film co-creators Mark Achbar and Joel Bakan, along with myself, Sean Lang and Siobhan Flanagan took the trip to Essex. Thanks to the Atkinson Foundation who supported this project with travel funds. It took us a while to get the project completed, and Mr. Urban’s new class has posted more ideas on the forum. So check out the video online. What we hope is that this video will get around and inspire others to both use the film educationally and tell us what they are up to. We would not have known what this class was up to had they not written to us. And please support our Campaign 4 Corporate Harm Reduction. We are in the development phase and this is the only way we can continue to do awareness work like making this video, tracking the outcome of the film, and working towards steps to rewrite corporate constitutions, reform corporate behavior, and bring about more democratic regulations on what corporations can and can’t do.
