Be the Change!
Human Rights and Migration: Why should I care?
We are living in scary times. Indifference and ignorance threaten our existence from climate change to different raging conflicts disrespecting basic human rights. If we teach future generations to take the challenge and change the world by transforming their perception of people who are different from us, it can reduce the likelihood of conflicts and can promote innovative solutions to present problems facing humanity.
Teachers are committed to including topics of migration, cultural diversity, human rights in the syllabus as a cross-cutting element of the curriculum. Although the curriculum usually does not prescribe how to deliver the content, the educators can take the responsibility to integrate into all subjects. Helping teachers with planning, Europeana offers curated material like Migration collections, blog posts on Europeana Portal, viewpoints on Historiana Historical Content and learning scenarios on Teaching with Europeana Blog.
Resources on the Blog
The concept of human rights is widely recognized but difficult to understand and explain. From the student’s point of view, it is a topic that comes up time to time but it only makes sense if they can use it as either a window or a mirror to reflect on their own experiences.
They can take an active part in discussions and debates, participating sensitively and constructively on controversial human rights topics opening a window into past and present realities. A good example for this is The Belle Époque – Digital Storytelling which combines enquiry based learning and flipped classroom and it was implemented online. Writing in Exile: Hungarian authors in Paris and Berlin is a blog post on Europeana about how living abroad creates experiments for further exploration.
Looking in a mirror the students can not only identify human rights violation but also apply strategies for opposing all forms of discrimination like presented in the following scenarios . Changing role of women in the early 20th century reminds us that what we call democracy today is actually a rather young phenomena, and equality even younger. Women at Work and Where am I from? Human Migration are scenarios with a critical analysis of the topic through personal stories. We Have The Right To… contains an escape room where sudents had to find the answers to basic riddles based on Europeana resources.
Obviously, we also need a door that opens our mind to new possibilities through experiencing other cultures and travelling as it is shown in Culture is a Unifying and Diversifying Element. This is why the Erasmus Plus Programme, financed by the European Commission, is facilitating students across the EU to study in another country as an example of European integration.