Amnesty Wales has just launched its teaching packs for primary schools, making primary school children aware of key topics of human rights. Amnesty claims that the pack 'encourages young children to think about others and contains creative suggestions to bring human rights to life through artistic projects'. These are the first educational materials for 5-11 year olds that focus on human rights; helping teachers explore topics of fairness and freedom, in the classroom.
Some examples of the content include: what it means to belong to a group, how a child understands their identity and, for older children, the history of the U.N and what it stands for.
One of the lesson plans targets a personal frustration of mine: childrens' relationship to food. In this lesson, aimed at children between 5 and 7, the class are asked to draw what they ate for dinner the night before. They are then asked to consider; 'how it got onto their plate, where it came from, who was involved in growing, moving and preparing it'. In the age of peri-peri chicken, popcorn chicken and flame-grilled steak childrens' awareness of meat production begins at its preparation, rather than its origin.
This food lesson aims 'to explore where an everyday item comes from and how it reaches us, and encourage pupils to make links between their own lives and the lives of other people around the world'.
Just as this one activity removes the gap between meat and meal, the concept of the pack from Amnesty is to make links between the child in Wales and the rest of the world.
Education Minister Leighton Andrews and Keith Towler, Children's Commissioner for Wales, launched the first free, bilingual pack for primary schools in Wales at the Model C.I.W. School, Carmarthen.
Whilst this is only the start of a Human Rights education system, in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘Where, after all, do human rights begin? In small places, close to home; in the everyday world of human beings – the neighborhoods they live in .. '.
To see the full lesson plans dowload pack in English/Welsh from: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10458
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