Right ideas
by Dan Jones
Young people respond with passion, imagination and action when they catch the bug of human rights ideas. Dan Jones talks about Amnesty's encounters in the classroom - where over many years he has often found himself on a learning curve too.
A headteacher flying with superheros above a school roof decked with flags of many nations. Airborne books. 'Rights kites' with young hangers-on. Playground games of all sorts. City farm sheeps' poo and flying donkey poo too.
When Amnesty's Dan Jones was asked to paint Columbia School in Hackney, London, the children briefed him about what they wanted in the painting. A lot of their instructions involved taking flight. For the children, anything is possible - and why shouldn't we all fly with superheros?
Human rights are about everyday life. Going to talk about human rights in schools can start children on a life-changing experience.
Dan, a former teacher and youth worker, and long-time Amnesty supporter, finds stories are the way to light children's imaginations. And the story becomes real as the children play out the situations they are learning about - fleeing persecution and seeking asylum, for example.
'Children with problems are usually more sinned against than sinning', says Dan. 'Once they catch the light of understanding and achievement it can make all the difference to their lives. Sometimes children don't know what they can achieve - it is great to see the intense joy of finding out they can. They blossom and reach out.'A typical school project for Amnesty 'with little ones' in primary school is discussing what's fair, and not fair - 'children really understand that' - and talking about rights such as the right to food, and a home, and friends, and education. 'Then we will do a giant artwork where the children can express what they think about these rights - lots of fun with rice and glue - and the kids end up doing an assembly themselves.'
Sometimes schools ask Amnesty to work on an issue they have been working on. Refugees is a very topical, hot issue for schools. It can be disconcerting, says Dan, when you hear children mouthing adult prejudices and attitudes. 'It is only when you put them in the shoes of someone, tell the story, that you realise how open and receptive even very young children are and how they can think through a situation and understand how it feels.'
There's the refugee family story which takes the young people on a journey. 'There's Uncle Ali, who walks with a limp. He didn't use to, he was put in prison because of his religion. When he came out he could hardly walk - why do you think that is? The children will start with well perhaps he fell down the stairs, but in a while they come up with other suggestions.'
As young people put themselves in the place of a family in flight, they have to face up to discussing and deciding what to do. 'With the little ones it gets slightly dodgy because of Harry Potter.' The option will always include a big dose of invisibility cloaks and magic potions: 'We can magic down to a tiny size, then go down the sink in a secret submarine, then magic back into full size when we get out.'
When they leave to flee to another country, traveling on foot, they might be safe. What do you take if you have only three minutes and can't carry much? 'None of them think to take documents.' And then the immigration officer (played by Dan) in the new country, where they arrive ragged, tired, scared, is not very friendly and doesn't seem to want them to be there. How do they prove that they were forced to escape, that their lives were in danger?
'A terrific thing about working with children is that you may start going in one direction and they take you off somewhere else altogether, and make you think. I am not always sure who is the teacher sometimes!'
Human rights education is now in secondary school under the Citizenship curriculum in England. Actually governments have been very remiss since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born in 1948: one of the key things they agreed was to make everyone aware of their rights.
'A lot of teachers think human rights is too difficult for children to deal with - yet we have hundreds of youth groups, and loads of children under 12 doing Junior Urgent Actions, checking the spellings, making sure they understand the issue.'
Occasionally working in a school can be like being ambushed, he says. 'You can end up with a bit of a nightmare. You want to encourage argument, advocacy, debate, but sometimes youngsters think their job is to attack the speaker. But often you can start thinking this is going to be really tough - and it works out brilliantly in the end.'
Respect is integral to human rights - and this is another concept that has great resonance with young people. Children who are regarded as difficult often have little attention paid to them - but can absolutely blossom when they get half a chance. Kids from tough inner city Hackney had a chance to meet up with Brazilian music-performance artists. It was a wonderful project and the children put their hearts into it. In a week they were performing acrobatics, drumming, singing - and finding that they had real talent.
'It's never all brick wall with youngsters. I have known many examples of youngsters who tell me that an experience or insight changed their lives.'
Amnesty Magazine, September/October 2006
