Food for thought for the new generation of us
---------------------------------------------
[This is a summary of a 5 1/2 pages paper on the topic. The full text
can be gotten from Claudio at the e-mail address below.]
A reader in Human Rights
ELEMENTS FOR A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS COURSE AND CURRICULUM
Giving graduate students in the different disciplines of development
work a chance to practice activism skills is a duty so they can bet-
ter confront their future ethical and political responsibilities,
i.e. those they will surely have to face when they start working.
The full paper proposes a course of 10 weeks with the following char-
acteristics:
It will be primarily based on a series of student debates and role-
plays. The students will research and prepare their debate strategies
and contents in two teams. A team of 3 faculty (teacher) judges will
preside each debate for a total of 8 debates. Guest lecturers will be
invited to discuss their Human Rights experiences twice a week. The
rest of the time the students will be preparing their cases. There
will be two teams of 6-7 students each. Each debate will consist of
an opening statement that will bring up the key debate points. The
opening statement will be followed by a mandatory role play in which
one set of 'actors' will represent the community and the other set
the activists. The team will then say how they want to implement what
they propose. The first role-play will be followed by the second team
presenting their opening argument and role-play.
After a break, the actual debate will start. The teams will challenge
each other on issues. The debaters have to point to a way out that
they think is better than what we have had so far. The debate will be
followed by a wrap-up session summarizing the major points made. The
judges will then point out strengths and weaknesses of each team.
Students will then be called upon to produce a short synthesis state-
ment.
The firs week will be an introductory week with instructions on the
mechanics of it all plus a couple of lectures on "effective and
critical reading" skills and on "how to build a case". The faculty
will set up all pertinent reading materials in a special shelf in the
library. At least 1 computer with internet access is needed for each
team. The following weeks will each have one debate plus 2-3 sched-
uled guest lecturers' seminars. The full paper presents a choice of
over 30 topics for these debates on Human Rights. The students will
vote for the 8 topics they want to cover in the course.
The last week of the course will focus on lessons learned on the
topic of Human Rights. Each team and the faculty will hang their con-
clusions in a poster. Each of the students will then be given an op-
portunity to tell the class what they want to do with all this in
their upcoming career.
Claudio Schuftan
Hanoi, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn
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