Medieval Times through a Human Rights Lens

This year, as a part of my thesis work I will be helping a K-1 teacher integrate Human Rights Education into her classroom.  My goal is to help her integrate HR themes and values into the existing curriculum.

In the Spring, the classroom will be embarking on a study of Medieval Times. My task is to envision this with an HRE lens.

My first thoughts:

• All people matter.
• People live all over the world: really basic, but really important. 
• Learning Geography: It is a basic memorization task, but I believe that helping children learn to name and place the continents of the globe will help them begin to visualize the world as a bigger place.

If in the first part of the year, student learns their continents, beginning a study of medieval times might allow us to broaden our views of medieval times. I think HRE asks us to take a worldview of education. 

My second thoughts:

• What is happening all over the world during the time period referred to as "Medieval Times"?
• For the K-1 crowd, Queens, Kings, Princesses , Princes, Knights, and Warriors might dominate the curriculum. Who gets to play these roles? What are the visual images children learn to discriminate these leadership positions? Who gets to be a queen?
• What are the responsibilities associated with these positions?

• What about the commoners? Peasants? Serfs?What is the appropriate picture of this aspect of history for the K-1 classroom?
• Absolutely the medieval time period of history is RIPE for human rights abuses studies, but again, what is appropriate for kindergartners to study?

My first Actions:

• Do internet searches for Medieval Africa and Medieval Asia. I plan to continue searching for clues to what was going on during the middle ages on all of the continents.
• Look for books.  These two looked interesting to me> Kubla Khan; Emperor of Everything and African Beginnings. The primary goal of books like is to the balance the visual impact of history for students so that students learn to recognize alternative viewpoints on History, outside of the commonly used Eurocentric picture of History right from the beginning. I don't think we can underestimate the impact that an early influx of European -Dominated historical images has on our development.

In the mean time, I need to:

• Continue my research and readings about Human Rights and my favorite philosophy. Reggio Emilia.  I am currently reading The Hundred Languages of Children and the First Steps guide to implementing HRE.
• Develop a list of core values/principles in which to check your curriculum by (i.e., how does this support a belief in fairness and equality for all people? how does this take a worldview, etc...)
• Develop a timeline and plan for observations and classg meetings.

Also, as a side note--the other theme for the year is physical science.  Brainstorming how physical science and HRE fit together is on my mind as well.

I hope to continue using this blog to brainstorm issues as they emerge.  It is nice to have a "practice" spot outside of the graduate classroom to work these ideas out.