Human Rights and Social Justice Conference
Make human rights courses mandatory, students urge
Printed from the Winnipeg Free Press
Sun Feb 25 2007
By Nick Martin
KIDS as young as Grade 2 can understand human rights -- they should be learning social justice in the classroom, students activists declared Saturday.
"Human rights should be integrated into the curricula as holistic issues," University of Winnipeg Collegiate student Jayne Miles told the university's conference on social justice and human rights.
"As soon as you're at the Grade 2 level, as soon as you're conceptually able, those should be ingrained," said Hugh Crawley, a student from Springfield Collegiate in Oakbank.
"At the Grade 6 graduation, you should have children who are aware of human rights," Crawley said. He said that ethical thinking "needs to be in every field" of education.
About 65 students from 20 Manitoba high schools met earlier to discuss human rights issues, then presented their findings to the conference.
The students said that young people are a source of untapped hope. They urged that schools have mandatory courses on human rights, and that governments finance international student exchanges to promote understanding and to reduce hate.
Springfield Collegiate student Hannah Rob said Canadians take their rights for granted: "We live in a privileged society here. It gets to the point where we forget they (rights) exist, and that's when they get dangerous."
U of W Collegiate student Nicholas Kotoulas said that education is integral to understanding and promoting human rights: "If you don't know what you're acting on, what's the point?" he said.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca