Teaching Human Rights to Toddlers
The UN wants three-year-olds to learn about multiculturalism. How about learning right and wrong first? Or maybe just fingerpainting?
It’s not easy being a three-year-old. There’s so much to accomplish, what with potty training, learning to spoon-feed yourself, and negotiating the social minefield of play dates.
As if all that wasn’t enough, UNICEF — the United Nations Children’s Fund — now wants British toddlers to take lessons on human rights and multiculturalism, in between finger-painting sessions and nap time.
The UK branch of UNICEF is extending its Rights Respecting Schools scheme from primary schools to nursery school classes. According to UNICEF, the scheme “promotes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the basis for enhancing teaching, learning, ethos, attitudes, and behavior.” If you’re wondering exactly what that means in practice — or just what it means — then you’re probably not alone. The scheme’s website is replete with such NGO-speak:
A Rights Respecting School teaches children and young people that they have rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. From this starting point they also learn their responsibility to respect others’ rights in all relationships in the community.
The ethos created demonstrates to children the inclusiveness of a rights-respecting school and paves the way to participation in the life of the community. This in turn helps them to learn how to formulate, express, and listen to opinions, helping to raise their achievement.
According to the UK’s Telegraph, the project “will see teachers explaining to children as young as three that people across the world live different lives but everyone has a right to food, water, and shelter.” What the scheme actually appears to entail is an awful lot of poster-making. The report adds:
Primary and secondary schools can already win a Rights Respecting Schools award from UNICEF by putting up posters by the main entrance, signed by everyone from dinner ladies to the headteacher, which states their commitment to upholding the rights charter. Each classroom is also meant to contain a set of pupils’ rights and responsibilities, while wall displays are expected to continue the theme.
Parents reading about this new obsession with teaching “rights” could be forgiven for thinking that schools should focus on doing a better job of teaching the existing three R’s before adding a fourth to the syllabus. Because, while a decade and more of bar-lowering by Labour has led to more British pupils leaving school with more paper qualifications every year, anecdotal evidence from universities and employers suggests that educational standards are plummeting.
And the rot begins in primary school. A government report last year revealed that forty percent of British children struggle to write their own name, or form simple words such as “dog,” by the age of five, while a quarter fail to reach the expected levels of emotional development for their age.
And with British teenagers leading most of Europe in binge drinking, violence, teenage pregnancy, and abortions, it could also be argued that instead of teaching children about “rights,” or worrying about their tolerance of food from other cultures, schools should be more concerned with teaching them “right,” as distinct from wrong.
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Mike McNally blogs at Monkey Tennis Centre.
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40 Comments
1. Mary Jackson:Couldn’t agree more. Today’s children are coddled, monitored and fussed over far more than my generation was. Yet so many grow up uneducated and violent.
Jul 10, 2008 - 11:42 am 2. tanstaafl:But as we’ve learned from Rwanda, Sudan, and elsewhere, and as we’re seeing right now in Zimbabwe, where the most outrageous human rights abuses are committed the UN is usually powerless to do anything about it.
Beyond powerless. Absolutely inept and impotent.
UN peacekeepers and officials have exploited the children they’re supposed to be protecting…
Yes, those cute little blue helmeted guys soliciting young girls for sex and sex trafficking. Ironic that they would presume to give advice as to the raising of children, even the brain dead advice discussed above.
Honestly, as they’re sitting around writing reports and dreaming up ways to hasten the Brave New World, or appointing Libya (Syria?) to oversee “human rights” or members eating and golfing their way through Indonesia in a hugely wasteful meeting on “global warming”, or letting certain states use the agency to condemn other states, and so on…it’s hard to remember these days what “The UN” was actually conceived to be.
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:29 pm 3. mishu:What UK UNICEF fails to grasp is that the giant has the right to defend his castle from anyone trying to break in and that is not “bad”.
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:32 pm 4. John Samford:That isn’t the point.
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:34 pm 5. Bullfrog:The point is that you can imprint culture thru education. Right now it’s cultural awareness. Soon enough the girls will have to dress Islamic. Then they will have to go to all girls schools. Next they will close down those schools ( budget crunch) since females don’t need an education to make babies. That is pretty much a biologically programmed function.
We are in a cultural war and so far we are losing. A lot of that is because most people are unaware of what is happening. Since there are no bombs being dropped, artillery landing or MBT’s grinding down the street, it’s not a “real war”.
The consequences of losing are VERY real.
The Chinese have been defeating their enemies this way for centuries. Westerners are more used to force of arms to gettheir way, so most people don’t understand that we are in a cultural war.
The Mulsims are trying to ‘Borg’ us. And so far, it’s working.
It’s cheaper to stop this nonsense now.
The farther the public school system gets from teaching sciences and teaches social indoctrination, the happier I am that we are home-schooling.
I am raising a 2 and 3 year old right now, and am certain if I started explaining human rights to them, they would not comprehend.
This is why I laugh every year when the school system whines about having their funding cut (which is usually not a “cut” but a smaller increase than they anticipated); why would I want to pour more money into a system that does not represent my values and doesn’t work?
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:50 pm 6. misanthropicus:Cultural relativists Hitlerjugend and komsomolists whose worldwiews transcend “traditional” allegiances like family and nation, who worship a guilt-inducing ungraspable eco-spirituality – one world, one planetary nation, a planetary redistribution system which disregards historical merits or achivements, one size-fits all, a Procrustian universal justice system, a humankind which can be best described as a planetary biological mass.
Jul 10, 2008 - 1:47 pm 7. Joanna:The human rights issues in the US surveyed and criticised by Sudanese, UN clerks from UN departments where Zimbabwe and Somalia run the show. The United Nations, the Unesco and the Unicef are post-colonial toxic rip-offs. Since Moynahan to Kirkpatrick to Bolton, this was the UN – and now looks more and more like a world-wide creeping coup.
John Bolton is so right regarding that bunch of creeps.
I’m reminded of the school in C.S. Lewis’ “The Silver Chair,” which was very Progressive, so that if you got in trouble you were sent to the office and they talked with you, and if you said the right things they said you were interesting and talked with you more instead of punishing you. Lewis put it better, of course, but that’s the gist of it.
Jul 10, 2008 - 2:01 pm 8. Steynian 194 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] THE UN WANTS three-year-olds to learn about multiculturalism. How about learning right and wrong first? Or maybe [...]
Jul 10, 2008 - 3:45 pm 9. John F. MacMichael:Joanna, another bit from “The Silver Chair” that strikes me as very on point here is what happens in the end to the head of the school: “After that, the Head’s friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn’t much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after.”
Jul 10, 2008 - 3:46 pm 10. Smarty:Is a part of the curricula how to let the peacekeepers molest you? Or how any cups of rice your virginity is worth?
Jul 10, 2008 - 3:53 pm 11. Scott:Everyone here agrees this is cultural warfare and we are losing. The question is what do we do to stop this runaway train?
Jul 10, 2008 - 5:00 pm 12. Richard:Oh, ffs (text slang for something vile and appropriate). WHAT has the UN EVER done worth a boars tit?
Jul 10, 2008 - 5:41 pm 13. RE:Name it!
Who gives a flying rat’s ass WHAT the freaking UN does? Not I.
CultiMulcheralism is a mob mentality, free-for-all inspiring load of horse dung, merely being perpetuated by My and Your Tax Dollars. Guess that makes you all and I co-conspirators.
I’m a 43 year old man, and I’ve decided I’m going ANTI-PC, PRO-COMMON SENSE. I know fully well when to say “I don’t give a F%$#”. I learned that a looooong time ago, on my first tour overseas with Uncle Sugar’s Army, and remembered it fairly recently, and I must say, it’s quite liberating.
Honesty, even if put into brash terms is refreshing.
Take Mr. (Hardly Reverend) Jackson’s comments. I believe he meant it, and only apologized for being caught.
As to what the UN wants to do. Well…let’s see. Government schools teach kids aberrant behavior is normal, A La the Homosexuals, Gay Rights, Can’t say Mom or Dad, etc. The U.N., being the logical superior to the “BIG GOVERNMENT” scheme merely puts forth it’s ideal scenario. Where A government owns your ass from Cradle to Grave.
I’ll die before that ill fruit is brought forth, but I’ll have raised three little hellions to follow suit.
God Bless America
Your tax dollars at work!
How much are we foolishly giving to the UN every year?
Jul 10, 2008 - 7:18 pm 14. newton:Yet another (strong) reason to homeschool your child…
Jul 10, 2008 - 7:36 pm 15. Morton Doodslag:When I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, UNICEF suddenly descended from nowhere upon us from the clouds. Lurid posters suddenly appeared everywhere featuring fly bespeckled doe eyed Africans with distended bellies jutting out over their sad ragged clothes. We were shocked. We felt ashamed. We wanted to help.
That was, of course, the entire purpose of the exercise. Now these were the days when kiddies still packed their own lunches, and a nickel was collected from each first thing if you wanted to get your little half pint. The thrust of the UN operation entailed collecting nickels for the little starving African (if you remembered to bring an extra nickel, that is…). Not being sticklers, if we forgot the “extra” nickel, the folks from UNICEF weren’t shy to pilfer Johnnie’s or Suzie’s milk money to make up for the short take.
I’m now certain that most of the money bilked from little American kids went into the pockets and Swiss accounts of slime. I only believe in charity applied locally where one can directly see and assess the need and the consequences of giving. These UN alphabet NGOs are little more than fronts for boondoggles, shakedowns, and all manner of nefarious hidden agendas.
Jul 10, 2008 - 7:47 pm 16. John Samford:Smarty:
“Is a part of the curricula how to let the peacekeepers molest you? Or how any cups of rice your virginity is worth?”
A low blow, but I liked it.
Jul 11, 2008 - 3:19 am 17. Teaching ‘rights’ to three-year-olds at Joanne Jacobs:[...] Pajamas Media, Mike McNally is skeptical. . . . with British teenagers leading most of Europe in binge drinking, violence, teenage [...]
Jul 11, 2008 - 4:16 am 18. tanstaafl:How much are we foolishly giving to the UN every year?
The United States provides something like 22% of The UN’s total budget.
Reading the above, I recalled Kofi Annan and his freewheeling son Kojo and their likely depredations during the years of Oil For Fraud with Saddam.
I couldn’t wait for Kofi’s 7 year term to end and had hope for Ban Ki Moon. But Ban Ki Moon doesn’t seem like the brightest bulb in the stack. I’m guessing cardboard cutouts of real people are considered the best choice for the position of Sec. Gen. UN.
Also regarding Oil For Fraud, the head of the program, Benon Sevan, fled to his native Cyprus to avoid charges of corruption. In Cyprus, his aunt “fell down” an elevator shaft and he inherited her money. These days, he probably lives well and might even get some kind of UN stipend.
Jul 11, 2008 - 6:28 am 19. Boris:“Parents reading about this new obsession with teaching “rights” could be forgiven for thinking that schools should focus on doing a better job of teaching the existing three R’s before adding a fourth to the syllabus.”
Don’t know much about preschool, huh? Preschool is not where the three R’s are taught so talking about rights doesn’t take away from instruction. But the exercises you describe do seem like they teach critical thinking skills (sorry you didn’t like the children’s answers, but the teacher is not supposed to give them answers.)
Thinking about your own rights and the rights of others fits in perfectly with goals already implemented in all preschools.
So maybe don’t let your hatred of the UN cloud your thinking?
Jul 11, 2008 - 7:36 am 20. tanstaafl:I believe this is the main thrust of the UNICEF initiative
A Rights Respecting School teaches children and young people that they have rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The agenda is to teach a child that he or she has “rights”. Specifically, that he or she has “rights” that may well circumvent those laid down by a parent or other authority figure.
The effects of such kinds of insidious teaching are already seen in American public schools where more and more students feel free to challenge an adult trying to get them to conform to school rules.
The message of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is that the imposition of standards will be, from now on, in the hands of “state parties”.
2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members.
This agenda parallels the agenda of the World Court which is the removal of local jurisdiction for legal decisions.
Convention on the Rights of the Child
I’m wondering how that “Convention” might be working on the practitioners of female circumcision (FGM) on young girls in Somalia. Has “The Convention” slowed them down ?
Oh wait, it’s “The UN”. The object is some kind of vague worldwide control, not actual protection of individual children. Never mind.
Jul 11, 2008 - 7:45 am 21. Queen of the Qwerty:What a confused, arrogant, misinformed piece – not at all what PM readers have come to expect from the writer. Would the people who have left equally didactic comments refer to the entire Queen’s Lancashire Regiment as group of vicious, racist bullies? I wouldn’t have thought so. So what gives you the ‘right’ (sorry – I know you all hate the idea of anybody, anywhere having ‘rights’) to call the UN child rapists? Further to Boris’ comment above (a glimmer of sense in a sea of nonsensical ranting), might I suggest that, while frantically researching links to fit your rather odd agenda, you research exactly what – and what isn’t – taught in pre-schools? And perhaps you might like to suggest exactly what teachers of very young children might reply in response to the question, “why did both America and England invade a country illegally?”. On second thoughts, I can imagine your answer to that one already.
You and your friends might prefer your children to look to you and only you for ‘moral’ guidance (lord help them!), but some of us want to bring up children with a balanced, informed world view.
Mike McNally’s articles here have, until now, been lively, informative debating pieces. One can’t help wondering what’s happened.
Jul 11, 2008 - 8:44 am 22. Richard:“why did both America and England invade a country illegally?”. On second thoughts, I can imagine your answer to that one already.”
Don’t imagine, research.
For the tons of Yellow Cake Uranium twits said wasn’t there, but were mysteriously found very recently?
“You and your friends might prefer your children to look to you and only you for ‘moral’ guidance (lord help them!), but some of us want to bring up children with a balanced, informed world view.”
Moral Guidance from the UN? Who exactly is sitting on the Human Rights Council these days?
Long ago Americans left British/Monarchical “morality”. Britain and Europe is a moral cesspool these days. Moral ambiguity except for your most recent wave of immigrants(who practice a “radical” “morality”) is the norm in the old U.K.
God Save The Queen
Jul 11, 2008 - 9:25 am 23. ReCon USMC:Tis’ my Fathers no B/S Hand and Belt … my Mothers small tree limb that brought be to discovering Right and Wrong and too a Conscious soul.
Jul 11, 2008 - 9:53 am 24. sonoffar:Twus The USMC that lead me to expect TO Do and BE my very best , good and honorable things from my Mind and Body no matter how difficult the CHALLENGE …….. Or Else !
That teaching was never done with Pills , no Begging me , $$$$ me or Requesting it from me sweetly ….. It was demanded ….. Thank God !
Life was a bowl of cherries after that “”Training “” !
ReCon Marine and dead broke to being in the top 10 % of the entire Furniture Industry , retiring to Race Horse Country of VA at 52 …..
No Problem !
No one does well in Life as a “Candy Butt” ! You live Life 99 % in fear of NOTHING AND MAYBES ?
Failure is training ….. Winning is humble …The Art Of War .
What a great article!
Jul 11, 2008 - 11:45 am 25. SuzEQCitizen:It’s worth is proven by the comments of it’s readers. Each commenter exercising their RIGHTS to be outraged, disappointed, confused, fearful, inspired, misinformed, gratified, victimized, and on and on.
There’s the real mission and beauty of UNICEF and the UN.
After all the gold is squandered. After all the blood has been spilled. After all the children have been victimized. After all the tears have watered the earth. Mankind is left with the sum total of how he must behave in order to survive, not as an individual, “cause no one is gettin out alive”, but more as an adaptable species.
Play nice.
Don’t hit.
Queen of the Qwerty sez:
“You and your friends might prefer your children to look to you and only you for ‘moral’ guidance (lord help them!), but some of us want to bring up children with a balanced, informed world view.”
That is a pretty sweeping assumption, to assume that Smarty (or any one else here) does not possess a balanced and informed worldview from two short sentences.
That aside, what happens when (and I mean w h e n) what is being taught to your child does not reflect your worldview? I certainly do prefer that my children look to me and those with whom I trust my children for guidance. Why in the world would I wish otherwise?
What about the parents of Hitler Youth, which was compulsory for some time, who didn’t want their children indoctrinated into Nazism? Were they being narrowminded, unfair, and imbalanced as to the superiority of the “Aryan” race?
Who is to say what is far and balanced, if not the parents of a child? Are you to say what is far and balanced for my child? Or am I to say what is fair and balanced for yours?
Newsflash, we are not one world, one mind, one culture. Someone is dancing with Alice in Wonderland, if one thinks so.
Jul 11, 2008 - 1:14 pm 26. Rob Farrington:It’s becoming more and more clear to me that at least half of the people we share the planet with are absolutely insane. Or stupid. Or possibly both.
I can live with these people coming round to my house and licking my windows, but what really irritates me is the fact that I’m expected to respect their opinions just because they can claim that they represent the guv’mint or the UN.
Like hell.
Jul 11, 2008 - 3:49 pm 27. Moe:If you bother to read the CRC ( here’s a synopsis http://www.unicef.org/crc/files/Rights_overview.pdf ), you’ll notice that its 54 articles are intended to secure rights in and among states. It was not designed, nor was it authorized, to define a prescriptive moral philosophy or ethic. And it was certainly not authorized under a theory or rights which grants children extensive positive rights that supercede parental authority.
What UNICEF, and so many Human Rights campaigners, are now attempting to do is to exploit the convention to affect their own partisan social goals in explicit contravention of the convention’s own restrictions (e.g articles 5,8,12,14,15,16,19,29 and 41).
Jul 11, 2008 - 10:02 pm 28. tanstaafl:…54 articles are intended to secure rights in and among states.
What exactly does that mean, Moe ? What do the practical applications look like ? Have (signatory) “states” in the far East been cutting down on child prostitution ? Is Iran (a signatory state) hanging fewer 16 YO old girls for being “raped” by an uncle ?
And it was certainly not authorized under a theory or rights which grants children extensive positive rights that supercede parental authority.
Sorry to disagree, but the intent of “The UN” is, unmistakably, the institution of a world wide order that supersedes an individual order in all realms of human experience.
It seems to me that teaching toddlers in the UK all about “rights” falls in perfectly with that agenda. There is hardly an age that is too young to start, exactly as Palestinians are wiring up their 3 YO children these days with “play” suicide bombs and teaching them to say that Jews are apes and pigs.
At what age do you think bin Laden started in “conditioning” his 16 YO son, who last week listed several European countries that are deeply in need of destruction ?
Jul 12, 2008 - 7:16 am 29. Javelin:What is the point of dreck posts like this except to give some stupid right wing jerks a chance to vent and show what paranoid, stupid fools they are? The writer and the posters seem to talk and think in cliches and slogans and simply repeat the usual juvenile right wing talking points.
Jul 12, 2008 - 9:27 am 30. Boris:“Is a part of the curricula how to let the peacekeepers molest you?”
Is part of the Catholic Church’s teaching how to let priests molest you?
Jul 12, 2008 - 9:41 am 31. Akatsukami:The point, javelin, is to remind us of what worthless, immoral scum the thugs at the UN and their useful idiots shilling their positions are.
Jul 12, 2008 - 9:44 am 32. Javelin:Akatsukami,
take a look at yourself before you condemn the whole UN. Is teaching kids about rights a bad thing? You seem to think they are teaching them about cannibalism or they have taken over the educational system too. As far as I am concerned, you seem more like worthless, immoral scum than UNICEF. Funny, but the same fascist cretins here fulminating about the UN peacekeepers are the same ones who are first to excuse any wrongs the US military commit, such contemptible hypocrites. Always ready to point someone else’s faults is usually a sign of guilt anyways.
By the way, UN peacekeepers are not part of UNICEF, they are national forces contracted by the UN to serve as peacekeepers. So that means you end up with third world armies who’ll take the low bid. But why let facts get in the way of some geek’s rant?
Jul 12, 2008 - 11:09 am 33. tanstaafl:By the way, UN peacekeepers are not part of UNICEF, they are national forces contracted by the UN to serve as peacekeepers.
You don’t expect that “UN peacekeepers” should have any values and that using their tenure in Africa to exploit the local teenage girls should be OK ?
However, an argument can be made that outright exploitation is preferable to insidious “UNICEF” sponsored mind conditioning of 3-year old children.
Jul 12, 2008 - 6:41 pm 34. Heh:Akatsukami, a minor quibble:
Reminding us of what worthless, immoral scum the thugs at the UN are is PJM’s job.
Reminding us of useful idiots is Javelin’s job.
In both cases, a fine job done.
Jul 12, 2008 - 8:39 pm 35. John Samford:Keyboard queen;
““why did both America and England invade a country illegally?”
Please provide an incident and evidence to support your wild and slanderous claims.
Jul 12, 2008 - 10:06 pm 36. Richard:“Funny, but the same fascist cretins here fulminating about the UN peacekeepers are the same ones who are first to excuse any wrongs the US military commit, such contemptible hypocrites.”
I couldn’t decide if Javelin was kidding or not. What “wrongs” and what “excuse”?
Broad accusations, kind of light on substance though. Last I recalled we investigate, interrogate, and prosecute our own rather thoroughly to the point of persecution in some instances. Does the UN have it’s own lawyer corp? Didn’t think so. No, they have widespread acceptance by people like you.
God Bless America
P.S. If I and vets like me, are fascist and cretin in your jaundiced eyes, so be it.
Jul 13, 2008 - 4:28 pm 37. Mowog:We’ll be there when the shit hits the fan for you just as much as any one else.
And who will provide the right to food, shelter, and everything else that the children are taught is theirs to consume without heed to or respect of production and producers?
Why do people keep tolerating such rubbish?
Far better to make the kids start cleaning their own schoolrooms and making lunches in rotating shifts like some Japanese schools. Saves on labor costs (It’s for “the public good”!) and teaches both real-world skills and (grudging) respect for work.
Jul 14, 2008 - 5:25 am 38. tanstaafl:Here is a variation on the theme of teaching “human rights” to toddlers.
Yes, the world has gone quite mad. The politically correct brain dead seem to be running the show as to “conditioning” of children.
Psychiatrists can look forward to a lot of future business.
LINK: Safety warnings a new chapter for fairytales
Child development experts have backed the measures, but critics believe they are an example of political correctness overkill that could turn children into “little nervous wrecks”.
Parents across SA are being briefed on the impact of the new curriculum, which aims to teach children from preschool upwards the early warning signs of being unsafe and recognising abuse.
Jul 14, 2008 - 11:09 am 39. Javelin:You are all right, UNICEF should be teaching kids how to be abusive, simple minded selfish people. Pretty much every commenter here is a cretin, you are twisting something prety harmless into some evil conspiracy!
Jul 15, 2008 - 5:11 pm 40. shaun fischer:More useless, flavor of the month,pop psycology,political correcness run amok.Toddlers?Come on!Recently at a family get together I observed my 27 yr old niece talking to her 3 yr old daughter who was trying to get candy out of the candy bowl.She was camly explaining to this toddler how candy could cause childhood diabetes and other horrible physical side effects!!I said to my neice just say to the child NO!Supper first then candy if your’e good.She stood up and haughtly and smugly said”At Berkly my profesor taught us the use of reason and conversation is the key to raising children starting at infancy”.I replied back “Well I learned at the University of Life That one cannot reason with a human that still leaks from all it’s orafices AND eats it’s own Buggers” Later that evening I heard her in a stong voice say NO!! Supper first then candy if you behave!!Mabey there’s hope still for mankind.
Jul 16, 2008 - 2:34 am