Title: Approaching Human Rights

Staci Mercado

Ed Vance

Kris Smyth

This series of lessons is designed to prepare students to approach a variety of possible human rights issues. We will be reading about Japanese-American internment camps after these lessons. Excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar and a diary excerpt from Camp Harmony will be used to give students narrative accounts of this experience.

Essential Questions:

  1. What is a “right?”
  2. What can be the cost of trying to balance the right of an individual against the need for order and the defense of society?
  3. What forces in society cause people to violate others’ rights?
  4. What are the effects of human rights violations?
  5. How far should a person go to protect another person’s rights?
  6. What are the roles of a responsible citizen?

Learning Goals:

  1. Students will develop a working definition of a right.
  2. Students will understand the difficulties in balancing rights with the need for order and defense.
  3. Students will identify the causes and effects of human rights violations.
  4. Students will identify the responsibilities of citizens.

McREL Civics Standards:

25.Understands issues regarding personal, political, and economic rights.

  1. Understands issues regarding the proper scope and limits of rights and the relationships among personal, political, and economic rights.

27. Understands how certain character traits enhance citizens’ ability to fulfill personal and civic responsibilities.

Key Words:

Human rights

Violations

Bill of Rights

Activist

Privileges/rights/responsibilities

Profiling

Stereotyping

Prejudice

Discrimination

Scapegoat

Martin Luther King Jr.

Gandhi

Lessons

Part 1:

Title- What is a right?

Objectives:

  1. Students will determine prior knowledge of individual rights and responsibilities.
  2. Students will distinguish the difference between rights and responsibilities.

3. Students will create a class list of rights.

Materials:

  • Human Rights Discussion Questions
  • Computer access for students or copies of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights

Procedure-

  1. Explain human rights focus.
  2. Distribute Human Rights Discussion Questions Sheet. Discuss key vocabulary and personal responses.
  3. In small groups, brainstorm lists of human rights and responsibilities.
  4. Develop class list of rights.
  5. Individuals compare/contrast class list to U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

Student may access U.N. Declaration via computer access or they may be given copies of the declaration.

Assessment:

  • Informal assessment of group work.
  • Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting class list to U.S. Bill of Rights.

Human Rights Discussion Questions

1. What are human rights?

2. Why are human rights important?

3. What are some of your rights?

4. Do you think there should be laws protecting your human rights? Why or why not?

5. Do you know of any documents that protect human rights? Name them.

6. Do you think that people from other countries have the same rights as people in the US? If you say no, what are the differences?

7. What is the difference between a right and a privilege?

8. Can you think of any examples of human rights violations?

9. What responsibilties do you have to prevent human rights violations?

Part 2:

Title- Human Rights Violations

Objectives:

  1. Students will recognize violations in their lives and others.
  2. Students will analyze violations in current events.

Materials:

  • Copies of current events from the following sources:

A copy of the book The Whispering Cloth: A Refugee’s Story by Peggy Deitz Shea

Procedure-

  1. Students journal about a time in which their own rights were violated.
  2. Discuss.
  3. Introduce and read a part(s) of The Whispering Cloth: A Refugee’s Story
  4. Class discussion of the human rights violations found in the stories
  5. Brainstorm violations found globally.
  6. Divide students into small groups. Each group is given a different news article to read and questions to answer.
  7. Jigsaw.
  8. Class discussion on essential questions 2,3,and 4.
  9. Individuals read an article and analyze violations.

Assessment:

  • Informal assessment of group work.
  • Completion of group questions.
  • Individual response to article.

Part 3:

Title- Pass it On

Objective- Students will synthesize their knowledge of rights and violations.

Materials:

  • Posters, markers, magazines, computers, quotation books

Procedure-

  1. In the same groups as used in part 2, students review the human rights violations shown in that article.
  2. Students brainstorm a list of possible ways to promote that right in poster form.
  3. Using on-line and print resources, students will select an appropriate quotation to be used in the poster.

Bartlett’s Quotations

  1. Students create a rough draft of their idea.
  2. Students create a final draft of their poster.
  3. Groups present their posters to the class.

Assessment:

  • Rubric

Part 4:

Title- Tragedy in TudorTown

Objective:

1. Through a role-playing situation, students will develop a deeper understanding of the challenges present when trying to balance the rights and safety of a people.

Materials:

  • Profiles of people
  • Description of the options
  • Chart, on-line copy of Tragedy in Tudor Town

Procedure-

  1. Teacher reads a description of the tragedy in TudorTown.
  2. Discuss.
  3. Divide class into small groups of 4 or 5.
  4. Each member will be given a profile.
  5. Students read profiles.
  6. Discuss what options they think their town needs in order to make their town more secure. Students need to debate using the opinion that their character would want.
  7. Select the options making sure they stay within a budget.
  8. Group presents idea to teacher to determine success.
  9. Individuals write a short response on what it was like to try to stay within the parameters of their particular character profile while making decisions.
  10. Discuss the responses and the difficulties in balancing town security with the rights of individuals in large group.

Assessment:

  • Group chart.
  • Informal assessment during small and large group discussion.
  • Individual paragraph response.

Additional Helpful Websites:

Gandhi-

Martin Luther King Jr.-