[hr-education-na] Re: Rationale for Human Rights Education revisited

Dear colleagues,

Why create a human rights-themed school? One good reason, I believe, is to
strengthen community capacities for "youth-led poverty research."

The insight that "poverty is a denial of all human rights" has not moved
far from the stage of rhetoric. A local human rights education community
therefore may consider inviting young citizens at the table to lunch a
research-based campaign to influence the local governmental units and
public school system to internalize the notion that "poverty is a
violation of human rights," and to raise civil society awareness of the
political implications of this fundamental paradigmatic shift.

When young people experience a multi-dimensional view of poverty and
understand the historical validity and empirical reality of the injustice
of poverty -- as a chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities,
choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate
standard of living and other civic, cultural, economic, political and
social rights -- they lead themselves to the civic leadership of
"abolishing poverty through the international human rights framework."

As such, the aim of a human rights-themed school may be to open lines of
communications for the youngest of our citizens through utilizing the
international human rights approaches, and thus provide a comparative
political and legal basis to the abolishment of poverty and redistribution
of resources and influence.

Nurullah Hajra, Math Teacher
Irvington High School, NJ




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