SHOULD HUMAN RIGHTS BE PART OF THE CURRICULUM IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES?

I ask this question because it is useful to ponder the broarder picture: where does real change begin? Even something less than a robust common sense would cause one to say it starts in early childhood. So what's the problem? Why aren't people of every age, race, religion, and socioeconomic background demanding that some form of instruction in human rights be incorporated into the elementary curriculum? Of course, one could come up with a multiplicity of reasons why this is easily dismissed as an irrelevancy or a non-exigency of education in America today. One that looms in awful rage is the dastardly criticism of human rights, that the brand encountered through U.N. efforts and other international organizations is a foreign contrivance; they claim it is un-American. Some even suggest that it is an international ploy to force America to abandon its norms, values, and institutions in favor of ideas that have little to do with the nation's founding and purpose.

When we manage to extricate ourselves from the clutches of narrow political agendas, we are inclined to see more brightly; even without becoming necessarily cosmopolitan in our outlook, which I dare say is good, we might see that scattered throughout the curriculum and across the American landscape are pieces of the cloth that constitutes instruction in human rights (right to life, liberty etc., and the many protections in torts and the criminal law against grievous violations of the human person). Is it a bad idea to concentrate them and say, "We want to teach human rights?" If we lose the value attached to the human person and celebrate "things" above all else, we lose our humanity and render bleak our unrelentling ode to the future.

My deepest thanks for stopping by. Remember, change begins with you.