POST 1: Why are you taking this class and what do you expect to know by the end of the program?
Here are some questions to help guide you:
Ø Aim to write at least 15 to 20 minutes a day.
Ø Think about what you did in class today. What did you find most and less interesting? Can you write three things you liked and three thinks you disliked or would like to see improved?
Ø What impacted you the most today during class? Anything that you didn’t know, or already knew but discovered a new perspective?
Ø Was there anything you wish was elaborated in today’s lecture?
Ø Can you think of any questions now that you would have liked to ask during class?
Ø Did anybody say anything in class that particularly struck you?
Ø Anything that you would like to share with your parents from today?
Ø Lastly, please be mindful and respectful of what you post. Remember, parents, educators and all CTY staff have access to this class blog.
13 comments:
How can any right be inalienable? There are no absolute circumstances in human rights in which something should never be changed. For example, the most basic right in our list of rights was the right to life. Most obviously, the United States has a death penalty which would, theoretically, violate the right to life. But even if you're like me, and don't support the death penalty, there are other circumstances in which the right to life should be taken away. If someone is attacking you with the intent to kill you, does defending yourself by killing the attacker violate his/her human rights? Or is the right to life a right that is "alienable."
Certainly when regarding less basic rights, such as the right to travel or freedom of expression, there are many instances in which those rights can and should be taken away. Should a wanted convict be able to travel freely? And what about shouting fire in a crowded theatre? The language of human rights seem too full of absolutes, so that if we took our definition of human rights literally, nothing would qualify.
Today was our first day of class and we already got to dive into the depths of Human Rights. One of the first things we did today was help come up with a definition for "Human Rights". I found this incredibly interesting because it was difficult to come up with such a specific definition of such an important term. After that we discussed different specific human rights which we believed all humans deserved. This list was pretty standard and included things like right to one's own body, freedom of speech, etc. When we finished the list, we got to the interesting part: labeling which rights we felt were violated in our daily lives, and all around the world. A startling fact revealed itself at the end when we learned that about 90% of these human rights had been violated. I would have to say that this startling fact probably resonated most with me because it was such an intense revelation that so many of the things that we took for granted were being infringed upon around the world. After that discussion we went downstairs to another class room and read the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and compared the two. They were both very similar in the sense they both used very intense language, but I felt that they differed because the American Declaration of Independence focused a lot more on economic freedom and freedom of government and very little on working conditions, torture and slavery, which I felt were the main focus of the UDHR.
I found today's class to be quite enlightening for the fist day. The class disscussions are definately my favorite part and seem to be the essence of this course. I must say the class started off with good energy and it was fun discussing and listening. Learning some brief history and where the ideas of human rights came from was definately useful. What actually seemed to strike me today is what I already knew for so long. When we thought about which rights are violated from our list, the result was shocking as it always is for me. I especially enjoyed listening to what the class said about why human rights are violated. There are a million reasons undoubtably. However, I wished to have talked more about how the moral aspect of human rights comes in contact with a materialistic world. I'm sure a search down this path would give light to many reasons why nations and people may be so constantly ignorant of human rights violations around the world. I look forward to learning how human rights evolve and interact with society. I have no doubt that by the end of this course everyone will have different and diverse views on what exactly are human rigths.
-I am taking this class because my dad said I had to go to CTY, and this course looked the most interesting =] I would like to learn about relevant issues outside of the United States to improve my understanding of the world.
-The most interesting thing today was learning everyones name. The least interesting activity was the the evening reading.
-I was not in class for only the evening session, so there was not very much material. I thought that the U.N. Declaration of Rights was interesting, but too vague. I did not feel especially impacted by it. The most useful thing today would probably have been learning people's names but I have already forgotten 90% of them. However, I did like the way that the exercise with grouping the various rights revealed their interdependence.
-I wasn't there for today's lecture
-No Questions
-I liked the point that countries would may agree on a guideline for human rights, but not agree on why that guideline was necessary.
-To my parents: I'm keeping the extra money because the books weren't that expensive =]
when we wrote down some of the HR's on the board i pretty much thought that i was set. recently in california specifically the right to choose a spouse was established so i felt that i had all of the rights to a certain extent. when we started to cross out and discuss which rights we actually didnt have i was very surprised. for the most part though the reasons why some people didnt have the rights didnt occur or apply to me- living in the united states the fact that we have an exceptional and unique standard for human rights is something we're taught from birth and the fact that in so many cases i was possibly deprived of these inherent rights was surprising.
when i first read the udhr i felt that some of the rights were so clearly inherent and inalienable that we barely had reason to write them down. later during discussions and upon thinking about different world situations it occurred to me how vitally important it really was to document the rights and have them be very visible to everybody in the world. i was also very surprised at the similarity in the language between united states documents (declaration of independence, constituion, etc) and the udhr.
the first excersise we did in class shocked me a little. not going to lie. I always knew that HRs would be violated, but i didn't realize to what extent my own rights were being denied. I liked how we all questioned to what extent different rights were being violated, finally understanding the relativity of it all. its weird, to me at least, to try to comprehend how we take things for granted that citizens of other countries might not even know they are being denied. the bob marley concert vagisha used as an example was eye opening for the most part too. the excersise we did with the AB +- identifications of the articles in the Universal declaration of HRs was, as much repetative, as helpful. I liked how Vagisha and Nereyda had us discuss until we all realized how interconnected all the rights were. And yet, somehow they are all interdependent from one another.
Reading the declaration of independence in comparison to the UDHR was helpful. to me it seemed that the drafters of our declaration seemed to recognize the rights listed in 1948, and took it upon themselves to stop them from being violated.
I look forward to learning more tomorrow, and kind of getting a higher understanding of it all.
I am taking this class because it would enlighten me about human and social justice, two topics which I take fore granted because I am American, and we freely enjoy these rights. This particular subject is of interest to me, because I would like to know how various non-governmental international organizations effect sovereignty of individual nations and the growth of these NGO bodies.
I found the most interesting part to be, the open dialog between students and how the instructors took a hands-off approach to student interaction. This allowed the students to speak freely without feeling they would be corrected by the teacher.
The least interesting part of class was when we dissected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only to find out that all the sections could be applied to all the examples of rights. I did not know that the foundation of international human rights began as early as the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), because I thought it did not arise until the period preceding the first World War.
I wish that more information was elaborated on the particular NGO bodies and their techniques for introducing these rights in countries was explained, but I am sure that they will be explained later.
I decided to take this course because I was interested in the subject and I could see myself doing something with human rights later on in my life. By the end of this class, I hope that we will cover the history of human rights, human rights theory, and specific cases.
But "human rights" uses 9 letters too many so I will just say "HR."
The class discussions today were interesting. I know that we are only covering the bare bones of HR right now but although definitions are helpful, they do not get to the heart of the matter. I understand why we must understand the language in order for everyone to be able to communicate ideas with the same meanings behind the words. I feel that this stuff is much drier than the real world applications of HR. I really enjoyed hearing personal stories about HR because that is what I can visualize and understand. Those stories bring life to the course and I hope that we can hear more of them.
I always knew that rights were, and are, denied all over the world but I did not realize how much even the U.S. limits rights. For example, a prisoner does not have freedom to travel and a druggie does not have right to body. Obviously, limitations of rights are something to avoid but I also think that some limitations are necessary for a peaceful and successful society. Even President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, in an attempt to piece together two halves of a country. Honest Abe eventually accomplished his honorable goal but at the price of restricting rights.
The sheer relativity of things in life (all things, it would seem) is simply frustrating, especially in the topic of "human rights". I think we saw that in today's class, during the time we analyzed different examples of human "rights" we gave beforehand to see if they applied universally, and came to see that even America violated or limited what we see as basic rights. I found this interesting; it's obvious that no country is (and perhaps never will be) perfect in upholding every human right, but there's a general perception of America as a country that's above-average in individual liberties and rights. Reviewing over what we generally see as basic rights, at least for us, and seeing that they're actually, in some cases, quite limited by our own country is somewhat surreal.
I found the rest of today's class extremely interesting as well; I guess what really sticks to the top of my memory are the class discussions we had, since they were most engaging. While the reading we did was also interesting, I found the textbook reading to be sort of dense. Still, I have no complaints about the class.
I found today's class extremely interesting. It was our first day so we were getting a feel for the class and understanding what we will do and what will be covered in the course.
Today we wrote down all of the human rights that we could think of, then went through them and realized how many people are restricted in the world today. This supprised me about how many human rights we crossed off. Not everyone has all of the rights and we even realized that where we live we can be restricted. Such as with the right to marry, many people are restricted to marrying people of opposite genders. We also realized that the right for equal pay for equal work is not always in force, such as, in the world women are not always paid the same as men.
We covered some of the reasons why there are human rights violations occuring today. What i found interesting was revenge, which happens because of the country's, or group's history.
Then we did an interesting activity, which showed us that all of the human rights are interdependent. I liked how the teachers approached this, as i was not expecting it.
What i was not very keen on was the reading during study time, i guess it was useful but it took a while to get through.
:D
So, here it is...
I found the fact that almost all of the Human Rights listed in the UDHR are violated to some extent in at least one country in this world today. The first time I read the article, the notion of "duh..." was constantly in my mind. I guess I didn't even take into consideration of how many rights are being violated in China today, somewhere i have spent 7 years in. Most of us are very blessed, for me at least, and so we often have a tendency to stay in our safety bubble and not be aware of how basic human rights are being violated every day and at almost everywhere.
On the other hand, I also found the ambiguity of all the articles fairly interesting. They are so vague that everyone can have their own interpretation. I also find the articles contradictory. For example, I think that if we believe that none of our human rights should be in any way violated, we also hold the responsibility of our own safety. However, almost all citizens feel that their government has partial responsibility on our security in the country. Therefore, are government justified in violating our human rights with the intention of bringing safety to us? If so, to what extent? I don't know. It seems like HR is just an idea; and in a way, we are not ensured with human rights, at all.
The least we can do though, is to be aware of the fact that many many people are deprived of their human rights each day.
We started the day by analyzing what is meant by the term "human rights". Some of the answers to this question involved protection by government, living independently and with dignity. To further our understanding we examined what we consider to be human rights; such as freedom of speech, religion, travel, the right to live, to nationality, to body. In continuing this exercise the class went back throught the list and found that nearly all the rights listed are violated in one way or another when considering the U.S., other countries, and the world as a whole. This was very surprising to me, and I'm sure to others. I suppose I never considered all the possible circumstances that could contribute to the violation of rights. This activity was enlightening and I found it very effective.
The afternoon session consisted of reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations and classifying the rights listed as either Civil and Political, or Economical, Cultural, and Social. We found that all fell into both categories. This exercise was intersting and helped to outline the current human right expectations for the world as a whole.
Overall I cetainly found todays lesson and activities intersting and helpful in developing a basic understanding of human rights, which I'm sure will be helpful as the class progresses.
We are off to a great start in our study of human rights this summer at CTY.
By characterizing and identifying human rights and then evaluating our extensive, but by no means exhaustive, list, we found that (virtually) all of our human rights are being violated to some degree, which was definitely eye-opening.
After analyzing the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights for rights that were civil and political versus rights that were economic, social, and cultural, we found that human rights fall into both categories, which raises a point that all rights are interdependent.
Today we came up with some very interesting ideas, which I look forward to studying in the coming weeks.
Post a Comment