Nobody would notice
You are last to leave a room and the lights are on. Nobody would ever know if you left them.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
Litter that is not yours
There is litter near where you are sitting. You did not drop any of it.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
One dropped wrapper genuinely does not matter much. That is true, and it is why it is such a good excuse.
The real question
What if everybody did it? Three hundred children each dropping one wrapper is a covered playground.
It works the same for good things
One person turning a tap off saves very little. Everybody doing it saves a lot. Small actions only ever make sense as a group.
People copy what they see
A clean street stays cleaner. Somebody picking litter up makes the next person less likely to drop any.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
How Much Is Everybody?
Work it out.
There are 300 children at a school. If each drops one wrapper a week, how many wrappers a week is that?
wrappers
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
Why is "my one does not matter" a bad argument?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Multiply it
- Pick one small thing people do where you are.
- Work out what it comes to if everybody does it for a year.
- Tell somebody the number.
Why: The number is far more convincing than the argument, and you worked it out yourself.
Step 6: What You Learned
- One really is almost nothing.
- Everybody’s one is a lot.
- People copy what they see, in both directions.
For the grown-up
Being honest that one action barely matters is what makes the argument credible. Children spot the exaggerated version and discount the whole thing.
The multiplication makes it concrete in a way that appeals to responsibility do not, and it uses arithmetic they can already do.
The copying point is well supported and encouraging: visible good behavior changes what other people do, so the small action has an effect beyond itself.