Teaching When Schools Don’t
an article by Megan McDonald

A group of students at the University of Connecticut committed to human rights decided to put their knowledge into practice with lesson plans aimed at high school students. This initiative is being facilitated through the UNESCO Student Ambassador for Human Rights program, a group of students who have come together with a common goal: to promote universal human rights.

Each student took an article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and developed an interesting lesson about it. These lessons included interaction to show students what it was like to be ostracized and ignored (to symbolize the confusion many people face when arriving at Immigration and Naturalization Services), the plight of children soldiers with a video from the United Nations’ Office of Children and Armed Conflict and a workbook outlining how students can petition chocolate companies to stop using child labor. All of these exercises taught a specific article from the Declaration and related the article to the everyday lives of the high school students.

The Student Ambassadors got the idea to teach human rights to high school students from their own high school experience with human rights, or, more appropriately, their lack thereof. Many of the Ambassadors acknowledged the fact that they had not heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights until college and believed that this should be remedied. They hope that school board members will see their efforts and realize that human rights education is important and should be taught in primary and secondary schools.

DISCUSSION

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How do we promote a human rights, peace based education?


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SCHOOLS AND PEACE EDUCATION

LATEST READER COMMENT:

I can relate to Anna's school experience.  In America children are taught by society at a very young age that a sports/art/musical based talent will make you wealthy and powerful.  But usually the words talent and intelligence are not placed hand in hand.  The American education system emphasizes that education will give a person upward mobility. In turn the opportunity for a more prestigious job, which will enable someone to become wealthy and powerful?  However the education system does not teach us that education for the sake of learning is a gift and a reward in itself.  
It is important for adults to encourage today's children to use their intelligence as their talent and consider education a gift... . ...more.

This report was posted on December 4, 2004. The moderator is Danielle.

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