Labels (30 mins)

Goals of activity
Students understand the bad effects of discrimination
Students undertake not to discriminate against others in the future.

Activity guidelines
Step 1:
Give each person a small piece of paper.
Step 2:
Each person writes on their paper something that they would not like to be called. It can be a label referring to their age, gender, religion, language, race, culture or anything else that identifies them as different from others, e.g. 'a swot,” a “bush man” or a “gold digger”.
Step 3:
Now collect all the labels and, with the group sitting in a circle, and hand them out at random to everyone in the group so that everyone gets one.
Step 5:
Each person in turn then looks at his/her label. He/she should then say how he/she feels and what he/she does not like about being called that label.
Step 6:
When everyone (who wants to) has had a chance to speak, pass a paper bin around the circle encouraging every person to destroy the label and place it in the bin, saying, “I will never use this label on anyone again.”

Tips:
Encourage students to take this activity seriously. Even if someone lands up with a label that is laughable, e.g. a girl lands up with a label saying “male chauvinist pig”, encourage her to put herself in the shoes of that person and speak meaningfully about why she does not want to be called that. After all, we all have enough experience of being on the receiving end of prejudice and stereotyping to know how harmful this can be.

Questions to ask
  • How did it feel to do this activity?
  • Why did we do this activity?
  • What have you learnt about yourself and others from this activity?