Article 26 September 2006 Letter from the HRE Program Dear Educator Activist, First and foremost, I want to send my heartfelt thanks to the many of you who contacted the HRE program after the last two issues. I am thrilled to hear that you find the resource helpful and appreciate the constructive feedback. Please know that feedback is always welcome! In response to one piece of feedback regarding the meaning of our newsletter's title: Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the right to education. The Human Rights Education program (volunteers and staff) decided to use the article number as the title of our on-line newsletter because we all felt that it is the driving force for the work we do. So much has happened over the course of the last month that it would be hard to recap all of it, so I want to highlight just a few events and share a couple of thoughts: The Western and Mid-Atlantic regions kicked off the new semester with a training for teachers and facilitators involved with the ACTIVATE/Human Rights Education Service Corps. The program will be active in close to ten schools, reaching hundreds of students. The level of enthusiasm, passion for human rights and commitment to the young people in both regions bodes well for the success of this program. Go to our website for more information about the ACTIVATE program, and look for updates over the next few months. On 14 September, the HRE program hosted a meeting of iCOPE (Independent Commission on Public Education), the independent education task force and the independent borough commissions. The purpose of the meeting was to bring everyone together, put faces to names, and to hear from the folks working to bring a rights based approach to education to the New York City public schools. It was enlightening, inspiring and energizing - exactly what we need for the challenge in front of us. For more information about iCOPE. On a more personal and reflective note, on Monday, 18 September, my husband became a U.S. citizen. How is this relevant? Well, as I sat in the auditorium in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, with Independence Hall in sight, I could not help but think about the state of affairs in my country - soon to be the country of 90 new citizens. The people being sworn in were diverse in many ways: age, ethnicity, national origin, the clothes they wore, the looks on their faces - excitement, joy, pride, anticipation, fear? - some with children, some with parents, some all alone. None of this surprised me. What did surprise me, in light of all that is going on, in light of the role that the U.S. is playing in relations to human rights, was how proud I felt to be a part of this country. The words of the speakers, challenging the new citizens to become active members of their new country while sharing with children, family and friends stories about where they came from, were powerful. One speaker mentioned the need for them, as citizens, to question our government and others when they take action that is contrary to who we are and who we should be as a country. I was proud, I was inspired and I felt a renewed energy for my work. The experiences of the people sworn in on 18 September in Philadelphia will probably never be known to more than a handful of others. What will be known is that they have made a significant change - for whatever reason - and I am thankful that that opportunity was available to them. A basic fundamental human right being carried out. While the challenges to our human rights work are often overwhelming, it is important to know that we do not work in vain, that change can happen and that hope and desire for change make for a great starting place. In peace, Karen EDUCATION IN ACTION Shushanna Ellington, human rights educator activist, Vintage High School Since 1989, the Vintage High School student group has written tens of thousands of letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, organized community art exhibitions on the Power of Hope and other themes, and sponsored 33 all-day human rights teach-ins for students and teachers. Our goals are to provide relevant perspectives on human rights issues not addressed elsewhere in the curriculum and to inspire participants to commit to a continuum of actions, transforming the school culture and the communities in which we live. The teach-ins have focused on specific campaigns (the child soldier, the USA campaign, the death penalty moratorium, the campaign to end all forms of torture), on country-specific projects (the Guatemalan Strike of Sorrows, the genocide in Rwanda, the status of Palestinian refugees in West Bank and Gaza, the disappearance of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico), and the dynamics of school culture (identity-based issues, systems of privilege). Every teach-in includes a visual arts component and/or a spoken word workshop by Youthspeaks' award-winning poets because we believe in the intersection of social justice and the arts to create sustainable social change. Typically, we have 2-3 teach-ins per year with 125+ students and 10-15 faculty participants per event. Campus meeting spaces limit the number of participants. Our fundraising campaigns include partnerships with nationally recognized NGOs and other community-based organizations. Evaluation comments from teachers and students reveal the necessity of and appreciation for the integration of human rights issues into the curriculum. • "My own education completely neglected human rights; therefore, I see the need to transfer this new way of thinking about education for social change to my classroom practice." • "At first I was skeptical. Was this just another political agenda that would make me feel bad for not knowing or not doing something? Then, I realized that I had been doing the best I could do with what I knew. Now, I know better. Watch me do better." • "Why aren't these stories front and center in the news? Am I naive--or what? This really pisses me off that all of this is being trivialized or distorted." • "The teach-ins are such an integral part of student activities that I can't imagine not having them to look forward to and to make space for in the school calendar." • "Participating in the teach-ins reminds me why I got into teaching in the first place! It is easy to lose the passion in the grind of the routine." • "I'd heard about teach-ins from other students, but I had no idea how different they are from regular school. I love the opportunities to speak-out through art and poetry." • "Awesome! I'm exhausted emotionally at the end of the day. Can't take in one more thing. But, it's a really good kind of being tired, because I know I that I did something today to stand up for myself and others." STUDENT WORK Kortney Hartz, Senior at Elisabeth Irwin High School Resist and Desist Sudan, Iran, Uganda, Rwanda, Vietnam, Russia, Brazil All within the vicinity of hate, Two miles away from the tag line Never Again. And men take the bait of humanity's Degeneration kept in a mason jar at the bedside Of exploited power. And those hippies replacing bullets for flowers Aren't Americans Because they don't understand how we win. So, cut off your long hair and replace it with this hardware Created by politicians that glorify silence through blood-encrusted reverence. Who forgot about the whips and the colonization of our Mother Country, They took the slave-ship and called it a yacht Bought and sold oppression without a mention to the Livelihood of humanity. So I get down on my knees for the Sudanese who are waiting for the pressure of atrocity to implode the measure of guilt we all supposedly feel. Note that in my anger I can only speak for my weak soul That can't bear the excursions that justice likes to take in times of need. So put one hand over your heart and repeat after me Resist and Desist Injustice. PARTNERSHIP UPDATE Felisa Tibbitts, Executive Director Human Rights Education Associates, Inc. (HREA) HREA, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote education and learning in human rights, has been working closely with the HRE program office of Amnesty International USA for many years. Both offices have embraced the idea that it is essential for individuals and organizations in the HRE field to collaborate in order to facilitate the sharing of experiences, the development of new ideas and the improvement of our work. Informally, staffs from both offices are in regular contact with one another to consult and support plans in the larger human rights education field and to facilitate outreach efforts for HRE events and resources. The relationship has been an extremely pleasant and supportive one for both sides. Formally, HREA staff has participated on the editorial staff of Amnesty's publication "The 4th R," as well as playing a significant role on the HRE Steering Committee. Both organizations were also involved in the launching of the Century 21 small school, The School for Human Rights, in Brooklyn, New York. HREA, which is based in Boston, co-operated with the Northeast Regional Office this past spring in co-sponsoring a teacher training on service learning and human rights. HREA regularly offers HRE workshops at Amnesty's meetings in its Northeast region. The spring 2006 training was based on the forthcoming joint publication with Amnesty International and HREA called "Human Rights and Service Learning." As each organization was interested in developing this resource, cooperation was spontaneously launched in 2004. Staff and volunteers from both organizations worked on the publication, dividing up sections and reviewing each other's works. The combined effort has resulted in a high-quality publication that has benefited from having a number of writers and editors review content and piloting trainings. HREA and Amnesty's HRE program anticipate further cooperation in the distribution of the manual, which we anticipate will be of great interest to progressive educators in the U.S. Stay tuned for more information about this resource! VOICES FROM THE FIELD Tammy A. Shell, HRE volunteer coordinator, L.A. As a new volunteer and coordinator of Amnesty International's Human Rights Education Program, I was asked to record my philosophy and my interest in this field, which has proven to be both a simple and complicated task. Simple, because I am a great advocate of humanist education; complicated, because there is so much to say on a very complicated species--human beings. Adding the concept of education to Human Rights already reflects the core essence and capability with which human beings are bestowed; a magnificent potential, though not always astutely used. The question, then, is how can we teach Human Rights without it becoming a primarily external concept, without substantial internal value? For that, I argue that any society that aspires to be considered humanist must focus on humanist education in which what we learn stems from the ethics of inclusive caring. That means that we learn to see ourselves in relation to others, to understand that the world is like one fragile web and each tiny rupture can break it. The world is also like a colorful quilt, and each one of us is responsible to enhance its beauty by emphasizing human kindness and generosity, to share the space we possess. Recently, I joined a group of distinguished scholars and cohorts to publish a book on the philosopher Herbert Marcuse. In my chapter, I wrote about the dialectic of tolerance and intolerance in the in the ethics of caring. Marcuse published an article in the 1960s, titled "Repressive Tolerance." In it, he claimed that we should advocate intolerance against tolerance that leads to intolerance. We must vehemently act against aggressive and repressive tolerance that waters seeds of intolerance. At the same time, though, we must cultivate and establish conditions that can help diminish violence and aggression. Education is an integral part of that process. We need to encourage respect for human beings and to cultivate children as caring leaders to be inspiring role models at home and in public, in order to disseminate more love and compassion and thus to diminish violence. Boys, for example, need to learn to respect girls from a young age so that there will be less domestic violence and less demand for trading of women and their exploitation. Children need to learn that each one of us is accountable to what happens in the world. We each influence the local and universal environment in our daily conduct for better and for worse. Growing up in the Middle East, a region marred by violence, increased my dedication to explore the connections between the human condition and emotional and intellectual growth. My early studies on gender socialization and moral growth led me to examine how both gender and societal differences cause variations in the understanding of love and caring, masculinity and femininity, and leadership. The goal is to find a common ground among individuals and communities and to utilize the findings in educational settings by bridging differences between the micro and the macro, from men and women and small societies, and, subsequently, nations. The road is long and for every step forward toward a humanist civilization, there are still daily and severe violations of human rights, both covertly and overtly. There are atrocities that human kindness cannot bear and tolerate, whether in oppressive and/or democratic nations, and in people's homes. Suffice to mention sex trafficking, slavery, child soldiers, poverty, rapes, domestic violence, wars, and other forms of violence. Such atrocities all contribute to a lack of respect toward humanity at large; therefore, as part of my role, I aspire to start working locally with a few teachers in Los Angeles, training teachers how to teach Human Rights through the ethics of caring, despite the constraints entailed by the No Child Left Behind Act and standardized testing. >From day one, we've been responsible for nurturing and cultivating in children's hearts and minds the notion of inclusive caring as second nature. Every human being is a leader and we must each aspire to have caring leaders as individuals and as members of society. Humanity has great potential for love, caring, generosity, kindness, and this is what education should nurture and cultivate inclusively, rather than putting great emphasis on standardized testing and discriminative ideologies. In the final speech of the film The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin asked soldiers to fight for freedom and human liberty and to rebel against tyrants that demand war for their personal gain. Chaplin talked about letting human kindness rule. "Greed," he said, "has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all." Recently, I watched The Wonderful and Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl shot films for the Nazi regime. In her defense, Riefenstahl claimed that she did not know what was happening around her until the war ended. But perhaps she also did not want to know because she wanted to focus on art, regardless of its consequences. Ignorance is an enemy of Human Rights, as is the lack of accountability demonstrated by such figures as Riefenstahl. We need scientists, but caring scientists. We need artists, but caring artists and so forth. First and foremost, we need a compassionate universal society if we want to live peacefully. Without addressing the space each individual must have to meet his or her potential, and without addressing the need to share that space at home between men and women and alike, Human Rights education will remain a concept and less an advantage. However, humanity did grow and did change over centuries, and that gives us hope. The world shrinks, and more people travel, more people are exposed to others and learn to accept them. We must think generations ahead and speak on behalf of those who cannot. We should bear in our minds and hearts the face that education is everywhere and therefore, eventually, all the rivers lead to one sea--The Sea of Education. CALL TO ACTION 1) Submissions: 4th R, Article 26, Lesson Plans, Student Work The HRE program welcomes submissions for the 4th R and Article 26 and for materials, lessons or programs that you would like to share with others through the AIUSA HRE website. We are in the process of putting guidelines for submissions on the website but in the meantime, please feel free to send your work to HREintern@aiusa.org 2) The "America We Believe In" Campaign: Please check out amnestyusa.org for more information about this campaign. 3) Looking ahead with Article 26: October will focus on the issue of torture, November will focus on the Speak Truth to Power program and defenders, and December will focus on Children's Rights, highlighting the work with the Mine & Yours project. ======== North American Human Rights Education listserv ======= Send mail intended for the list to < >. Archives of the list can be found at: http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-education-na/ **You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the original and listserv source.
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