Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,and the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we will read this week. Click on the picture to see her work on the draft.
In your Blog Journal on Bridges, do these two things:
1. Write a brief (100 words or so) reflection on the document. A reflection records your thoughts and sentiments about the content of what you read–how you feel about it, what it makes you think about.
2. Write three good questions about the document.
Good questions
A.Cannot be answered “yes or no”.
B.Cannot be answered by simply searching through the
document and copying.
C.Require some thought and analysis to formulate an
answer: for example, it may require discussing
alternative possibilities and the merits or failings of them.
DO NOT ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. JUST FORMULATE THEM
I'm going to begin by refreshing your minds about some of the things we discussed on Wednesday, especially the idea of asking good questions. I'll also talk about a common intellectual tool: grouping by similarities.
Children begin to learn this technique at an early age: if any of the students in this class were raised watching Sesame Street they may even remember the little song about things being "the same".
The remainder of the class will be devoted to looking once again at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration consists of a preamble and 30 articles. To prepare for class, to identify and number the assertions in the preamble, and then to devise a conceptual framework for organizing and classifying articles 1 through 30 in the document itself. A simple conceptual framework might look like the columns and rows chart below. To indicate that I'm not going to set either the number of categories or the number of items in them, I've let the example tail off into dotted lines..
Sesame Street provides an introduction to all the various intellectual activities one needs for survival in our modern world. Now over 35 years old, it delights and educates children and adults in over 140 countries.
Some things to keep in mind:
* 1. Some assertions may be compound or complex. If this is the case, break these into their most elemental parts. Either give each simple assertion a number of its own, or number the parts using a system which recognizes that these are parts of a more complex set. For example: “Mike Swanson is a tall man with a white beard” is a compound assertion with two parts. It is possible to number this in this fashion:
1. Mike Swanson is a tall man and
2. Mike Swanson has a white beard,
or in this:
1. Mike Swanson is
(1.a) a tall man
(1.b) with a white beard.
This is important to recognize because the entire assertion could be true, or false, or a part of it could be true and the rest false. (Mike Swanson could be a Smurf with a white beard).
There are many different points of view concerning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and indeed, the concept of human rights in general. The two videos above will give you some sense of this. To see even more, click on the button below.
* 2. While the articles in the document exist in the "real world," the organizing framework resides in your intellect. While there may be a nearly infinite number of ways to organize and categorize these, not all of them are equally useful, and only one may be useful for your purpose. For example, I could organize these articles into two groups, one of which contains assertions with the letter q and one with assertions without the letter q. But what purpose would this system serve? I want you to come up with a temporary organizational framework of categories into which you can place the assertions in the preamble and articles. When you've completed your organizational system you should be able to explain in one or two sentences why that particular system is useful.
* 3. Bring your reorganized document with you, and be prepared to explain to others in the class what purpose your organizational framework serves.
Put your categories up in the Blog. No need to type the articles in the UDHR. Just put the numbers of the articles under the headings.
No New Readings
Today, we'll work with the blog entries you made for Monday's class. Here's what we'll do.
First, read the blog entries of your classmates. Note as you read the "Three Good Questions" your classmates have asked.
Then, after you've read through them all, choose three (from different classmates) and answer them. Try to choose questions which haven't been answered before. If you feel you don't have enough information to answer a question, write a reply which indicates what further information you would need to answer the question which your classmate asked.
