Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Project on the brain: Boosting awareness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I've mentioned it here before. I'd like find a way to publicize its existence, like maybe putting it in classrooms across America? I'd like to see it added to the curriculum in every county, every state. If teachers would at least mention it in high school Social Studies and/or History courses, I think that would help make our society more aware of our freedoms in this country and how the rest of the world, all of humanity, deserves the same and better.

There was an effort to promote the UDHR on its 50th anniversary (1948-1998) but I don't think it worked very well.

What I'd love to do is find the funding to put a cool poster of the UDHR in at least every SS/History class. Unfortunately, I don't know how I'd go about doing that. They're about $25 each, with S&H (poster at New Internationalist).

I started trying to find out how many high schools there are in the US. So far, I only have a list of all the counties - over 3000. Even just sending a letter to the county school boards would be more expense than I could afford. Let's say it cost 50¢ for ink, paper, and postage to send a cover letter and a text copy of the UDHR. Even just that would be about $1500. It would take me days and days to collect the county school board addresses, but I'm willing to do that.

This is probably another one of my ideas that will just fade away, but the UDHR does outline a world I want to live in. I can't force the world to be what I want, but I just keep thinking that if one more kid in every state takes the UDHR to heart, it would have to help. If it was one kid in every county school system, even more so. And one kid passing through every history classroom... wow

I need to think on this some more. I have the will. I need the way.

For reference: UDHR at UN.org

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