Lesson 2: Human rights: what do they say?
Living Democracy » Textbooks » Growing up in democracy » UNIT 8: Rights and freedom – My rights – your rights » Lesson 2: Human rights: what do they say?Students compare their needs to the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
| Learning objectives | By matching each of their own needs to an article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the students recognise that the declaration has been very closely aligned to the needs of people. |
| Student tasks | The students think about lesson 1 using a list or chosen articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
| Resources | Handout (simplified version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), lists of needs from unit 8, lesson 1. |
| Methods | Group work, research. |
Lesson description
At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher should summarise the results of lesson 1. He or she should make a connection between needs and human rights and make a short presentation on the history of human rights (see handout ‘Human rights: a list for comparing rights and needs). The teacher’s input should not last for more than 10 minutes.
The students are given the task to match their own needs (which they have def ned) to the human rights shown on the simplified list of human rights (handout). They should work in the same groups as in the previous lesson and should consider the following questions: which human rights are important to them, even unconsciously? Can they understand the connection between rights and needs? Can they think of examples from real life which relate to a particular right? The handout can help with this. The teacher should decide whether to work with this simplified version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or with the original document (available via the website www.un.org/ en/documents/udhr/). Using the simplified version, the students should be able to recognise quite quickly that human rights were developed on the basis of everyday needs.
Example from the handout:
| Basic rights list | The “NEEDS” we have def ned | To which article of the original human rights declaration does this belong? |
| Right to live, exist | ||
| Right to work | ||
|
Right to own property |
||
| Right to free speech | ||
| … |
The students should try to copy their list of needs from the previous lesson onto the handout. This won’t be very easy, as the wording of the rights and needs will not be the same. This might stimulate discussions and trigger decisions that are not always clear. This is intentional.
In a second step, the groups that have already finished should compare their list with the original declaration of human rights.
At the end of the lesson, a class list should be developed. This means that the group lists should be copied onto one larger list, which will be presented to everybody. If computers are available, the students could make an electronic list, using the handout as a template. This task can be assigned to a small group of students who could complete this as homework. If necessary, the teacher could compile the list instead.
