[hr-education-na] Re: Successful strategies for introducing HRE

Dear Colleagues,

I have followed the intense interactions of this listserv over the past
few weeks. I would like to add my contribution to the discussion, and I
look forward to speaking with you in person on Thursday and Friday.

As a teacher educator at an NCATE accredited institution, I am very aware
of the role accreditation standards play in fostering attention to
multicultural and peace education, as well as human rights education. When
NCATE changed its mandates, over a decade ago, many institutions of higher
education were forced to take a long, hard look at how they addressed
human rights, values and ethics, multicultural and peace issues. In recent
years, anti-harassment/anti-bullying strategies have been added to the
institutional responses to mandated program and curricular reforms.

My areas of expertise are social studies, multicultural and peace
education; early childhood education; and the history of education. These
concept areas are integrated in the experiences provided for the
pre-service and in-service learners I work with. As a delegate of an NGO
organization accredited at the United Nations [U.N.], I attend the annual
conference each fall. Every time I enter the buildings along First Avenue,
I am reminded that although President Clinton signed the Convention on the
Rights of the Child (CRC), Congress has not yet seen fit to ratify it. We
are one of the two U.N. member nations that have not ratified the CRC.

I use the CRC and its provisions with my classes. The CRC states that
every child has a right to a name and nationality, the first and most
basic of human rights. This portion of the document is used to look at
refugee and displaced children, and street children around the world and
in the U.S. Another basic part of the document discusses the right to
play. We examine this right using the history of early childhood education
as a vehicle for studying the progress towards acceptance of child's play.
One interesting example is the beginnings of the cooperative nursery
school - the middle class parents sought to have centers that were
socio-economically and racially integrated, by providing not only
scholarships to the school, but support for all of the children's
families.

The right to education is a major provision of the CRC. My students and I
read and discuss, "Did they know he had slaves when they elected him?"
Young children can ask powerful questions, from the book If this is social
studies, why isn't it boring? edited by Steffy and Hood (York, Maine:
Stenhouse Publishers), in which a discussion about George Washington led
to an exploration of the subject of slavery [in the U.S. and ancient
Egypt] in a third grade classroom.

I include Holocaust and genocide studies within the history portion of the
social studies education curriculum. We look specifically at the
incarceration and murder of Jews, gypsies, and others by the Nazis during
World War II, as well as camps like Manzanar that separated and isolated
Japanese-Americans from their homes and jobs. The New Jersey State
Holocaust and Genocide curricula cover the Potato Famine in Ireland and
many other geographic areas in which genocide took place.

In my creative arts course, the students work on a peace theme each
semester. We also participate in the "peace music" research study being
conducted by Dr. Candice Carter of the University of North Florida [See
The Peace Maker SiTe at www.peacemaker.st for work she is engaged in.] One
example of the creative projects my students have devised follows. In the
fall of 1999 one group told the class that the peace symbol of the 1960s
had been broken. To start the new millenium, students were asked to design
a peace symbol to replace the broken one. Later, following our full-group
sharing time, all of our pictures were taped together to form a "peace
quilt."

One of the most difficult times I have ever had as a teacher-educator was
during the fall of 2001. [See the Peace Education Special Interest Group
of the American Educational Research Association newsletter for my "Chair
letter" written at that time at www.unf.edu/~astomfay/oct01/oct01.htm]. On
September 17, 2001 [the first class meeting after the tragedy], I called
my graduate students into a tight discussion circle so they could "replay"
what was happening in their classrooms. One student told of a boy who
built one block tower after another, then crashed a wooden airplane into
the structures while screaming, repeating the pattern over and over again.
She had told him to stop. Together the class and I offered other possible
strategies and engaged in a pedagogical and affective [social and
emotional] dialogue.

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, after ascertaining that my family
members were accounted for, I sat down with two departmental colleagues
and wrote a guide to assist adults on our campus in helping children of
varying ages adjust. We each drew on the resources we had at our
fingertips - there was no time for research. Our ability to confront this
example of crime against humanity, let alone human rights, with positive
actions that rippled into the wider college community, speaks volumes for
the value of ongoing peace and human rights education.

These "stream-of-consciousness" thoughts represent but a few examples of
the ways in which I foster human rights, values and ethics, multicultural
and peace education in my classroom and my students' classrooms. I can
think of no greater tribute than watching my students take anti-bullying,
conflict resolution, peace building and human rights education into their
own classrooms to pass it on to their students.

Blythe Hinitz

Dr. Blythe Hinitz
Professor                  hinitz@tcnj.edu
Assistant Chair for ECED   FAX 609-637-5197
Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education
The College of New Jersey
Ewing, New Jersey



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