I'm going to spend this class working continuing to work with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One thing will be to think more about the idea of I will select a group of questions from those you noted on your documents, and we will discuss them. Which are the easiest to answer, and why? Which are the hardest? (Hardness is not the measure of good questions.)
I will also think with you about the idea that any document or any piece of history can be analyzed in different ways. You've analyzed the UDHR one way already. But there's another way these can be analyzed: The common intellectual tool known as organizing by similarities.
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.This time use your word processor to create the chart. Extend the chart as necessary--it is for you to determine the number of categories, not for me. When you're done, put your chart in your dropbox. Remember, if you are a Mac User, to save the chart in some form other than .pages (use .doc, .docx, or .pdf. By the way, the young woman in the picture above is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Ever. Listen to the speech above, and click on her picture to learn her story.
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.
For Tuesday, September 15
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". I have heard that new episodes of Sesame Street will be broadcast on Home Box Office starting soon.
For Thursday, September 15 or Friday September 17
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).
* 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.
This speech was given January 6, 1941. Much of the rest of the world was at war, both in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The United States would join this "Second World War" in December, following an attack on Pearl Harbor.
World War II is properly the subject of Western Civilization II. Here, we're still tracing the ideas we've been looking at backward in time. As you read this speech, look for hints of some of the ideas in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was to be written following the conclusion of this war. The part of the speech where Roosevelt declares the "Four Freedoms" is rather late in the speech, beginning on page 7. But you'll find relevant parts earlier in the speech as well. Here's a hint. look for paragraphs containing only a single short sentence. We'll see that technique used in other documents we read. Using the cf technique we started using week, class period, when you find the "Four Freedoms, compare Roosevelt with the rest of the the speech and with the UDHR. Using the comparison chart idea, you can also turn each of the Freedoms into a category and see how many of the UDHR articles might fit into one or the other. You can do this by either marking up the pdf, or constructing a chart using your word processor and turn it into a pdf. Either way, submit it to your drop box when you've done it. I already showed ways President Bush borrowed an idea or two from the Roosevelt Document. Is there good evidence that the UDHR was also indebted to it?.
Seventy Years after the speech was given work was begun on a memorial park to commemorate the ideas the speech contained. The park is located on Roosevelt Island in the Hudson River, unfortunately, not very accessible.. Click here for the website for Four Freedoms Park. It opened on October 24, 2012
Probably the most famous visual interpretation of Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech was a series of four magazine covers prepared the the Saturday Evening Post by the famous American Illustrator, Norman Rockwell. I bet you can figure out which freedom is represented by each.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office, his fourth term being completed by his Vice President, Harry S Truman. Truman appointed Roosevelt's wife,Eleanor, Ambassador to the United Nations The . She chaired the Human Rights Commission and her influence on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, was very strong. Thislink will take you to a copy of her speech. Hear it by clicking here.
