Bring with you the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This time, organize it in a different fashion. For example if the first time you organized into categories like political, economic, and social rights, This time you might organize by whether you agree they are truly rights, whether they are “goals” to try to reach to improve society (aspirations), or “impossible dreams”. Again, think of your own categories, for your own purposes.
The UDHR was proposed in 1948, and the CRC went into effect in 1990. The United States has not signed either. There are two things I want you to do.
1. Historians usually don’t work with one document at a time, but with many. I would like to see you begin to practice this. One symbol which some use is cf. This is shorthand for the Latin word, confer (Compare). Where you find a resemblance or relationship between an idea in the UDHR mark cf. In the margins of both documents. Number the points of comparison and indicate the pages or articles in which they occur, for example, you might right cf 1. UDHR article 3 on the CRC, and do the opposite on the UDHR. (cf 1, CRC article ___)
2. Would you, personally, sign the UDHR? Would you, personally, sign th CRC? If so, why? If not, are there changes which could be made so you would be in agreement with them? Write a little about this in your “Clog.”
(The League of Nations, September 26, 1924)from the Core Canon.
Bring it with you, or put it in your resource folder on Bridges.
We're going forwards and backwards the first part of this week, and we'll be going backwards again come Friday. I hope you're not getting dizzy from all the time travel. The League of Nations was the idea of American President Woodrow Wilson, who saw it as a way to prevent another catastrophe like the First World War. Unfortunately, President Wilson took ill the last two years of his second term, and the United States never joined the League of Nations, which had its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerand.
Using the same technique you used to prepare for Monday's class, compare this document with the one you read for Monday, and also with the UDHR from last week. In your opinion, why is the earlier declaration so much shorter? Do you suspect it was less controversal? Why or Why not? Think about the videos above.
“State of the Union Address,” Franklin D. Roosevelt, known as “The Four Freedoms.” Delivered 6 January, 1941
Forward again. You’ll notice that FDR’s speech refers to “freedoms”. Can we say that these are equivalent to rights–at least as he uses the terms? He mentions four of them. Do you see any relationship between these and the articles in the UDHR and the CRC? Could these “Freedoms” serve as categories for the “rights” expressed later? What do you think? Roosevelt’s address relates in other ways to the ideas in our documents, though the primary part of it is focused pretty strongly on World War II, in which the United States would become involved less than a year later. Notice that two of these are "Freedoms From" and two of them are Freedom's Of". Could this be a way to organize the articles in the UDHR?
Above, a recording of the speech. At the four corners are illustrations of the four freedoms by one of the most famous illustrations of magazine covers, Norman Rockwell. I expect you can figure out which one illustrates which. Learn more about him by clicking on the illustrations.
