[hr-education] Taking Note of Human Rights (USA)

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[This article has been excerpted.]

TAKING NOTE OF HUMAN RIGHTS By Samah Farah

13.2.01 (Christian Science Monitor): They're just words on a page. But when 
they're the harrowing account of a woman who fled genital mutilation, or 
the thoughts of someone working with victims of police brutality, they 
could nudge students out of complacency.

That's the hope of Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, who has just launched a curriculum 
that will be distributed to some 10,000 high schools and colleges. "I don't 
believe people are moved to action when they see horror," Ms. Kennedy Cuomo 
says. "They're moved to action when they see courage in the face of horror."

A longtime human-rights activist, Kennedy Cuomo worked with Amnesty 
International to create the curriculum. It's the most recent addition to 
her broader initiative, "Speak Truth to Power" - an umbrella term for a web 
site, a theater production, and a...book based on interviews with more than 
50 human rights defenders.

A handful of the provocative interviews make up the bulk of the curriculum. 
There's a nun who fights the death penalty, and a man who battles bonded 
labor in India. There's...Juliana Dogbadzi, who was 7 when she became a 
slave to a priest as part of a custom in Ghana known as Trokosi. She told 
Kennedy Cuomo: "Unlike most of the other girls and women, I got over the 
fear instilled by the Trokosi system. This was my weapon. Now that I have 
escaped, I help to diminish the women's fears by telling my story. I tell 
them what I am presently doing, that I am still alive."

It's a long way from a shrine in Ghana to a US classroom. But inner-city 
kids in often-dangerous zones can connect...the fear of a girl forced to 
marry a stranger and the terror of a rape victim. "They suddenly see 
themselves as part of a larger continuum," says Nan Richardson, the 
curriculum's editor.

For students limited to an intellectual understanding of such grave 
injustices, the packet...includes a play by Ariel Dorfman, which provides 
an opportunity to step into the roles of human rights fighters.

...according to Karen Robinson, the director of Amnesty International's 
Human Rights Education Program who helped develop the curriculum, the 
biggest hurdle isn't student apathy - young people are more active now than 
ever. The real challenge is persuading parents and educators...human rights 
topics can be aligned with state standards. Many teachers are unlikely to 
view a human rights play...as an indulgence.

But history teachers, she suggested, can galvanize a lesson on Chinese 
dynasties with a discussion on human rights violations in today's Communist 
China.  Injecting topics like the death penalty into a classroom will spur 
even the most relentless daydreamers to chime in.

Six years into the United Nation's Decade of Human Rights Education, 
countries like Germany and France have taken steps to develop national 
programs to teach human rights. In the United States, such decisions fall 
in the hands of local governments, and normally under the rubric of civic 
education.




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