Those were questions posed to Lower School students to ponder over the weekend preceding Human Rights Day, a day set aside for the whole School to talk and think about human rights in some form. Children’s rights in the Middle School, “Crime and Punishment: What is Justice?” in the Upper School—for each division the topic was carefully geared to the students’ developmental level. There were speakers, movies, creative activities, and discussions.

In the Lower School, students wrote poems and made a mural—a collage of individual illustrations of various aspects of human rights. They saw a movie, “Ruby Bridges,” about the girl who desegregated the New Orleans school system in 1960, and each class read and discussed a book. In one class, the book was a retelling of “The Little Lame Prince,” with a discussion about disabilities. The students talked about Helen Keller and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; they considered various kinds of disabilities: blindness, deafness, dyslexia. “But who cares if you’re different? Everybody’s human,” said one student. The lesson they drew from the book: “No one cares about your legs when your head is wise and your heart is kind.”

For People Who are Downhearted
By Connie Campbell’s Grade 1 Class

Every human being
Every child
Every person
Every baby
Has rights

The right to choose
Right from wrong
Good from bad
Nice from mean
And acceptance for everybody

We need peace
We need care
We need freedom
From destruction and war
These are human rights.

The Middle School started the day with a performance of Strings for Schools, a quartet playing Middle Eastern music from Greece and Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon. The musicians pressed one point: they, themselves, people of different nationalities traditionally at war with each other, do just fine working together. They also explained the instruments and the music—the rhythms and notes within notes that are strange to western ears. “Something you take for granted may not exist in other places, and what’s normal to others may seem weird to us.”

Later in the day, all over the Middle School, classes were discussing aspects of children’s rights. In one session, on creativity, there was a general opinion that adults, peer groups, and society in general inhibit creativity, not only in children, but in adults as well. The students saw clearly the difficulty of retaining creativity in the context of society’s expectations and the need to make a living as people mature. “We need to find new ways of thinking about things—a revolution,” one of the participants concluded. After listening to a presentation on homelessness in Philadelphia, Middle School students made dolls to give to homeless shelters.

In the Upper School, a highlight was a game, “Wheels of Justice,” similar to “Monopoly,” and devised by Upper School art teacher, Steve Baris. Everyone had a chance to play it—to roll the dice, move a marker, and end up in a variety of situations: “Busted for tax evasion. Fines and back taxes…Pay $3,000;” “Just out of Harvard Law. Serious loans
to pay off. First payment: $300;” “Your daughter's car is totaled by an uninsured motorist. You spend $1,000 to
replace car and $300 to a lawyer who fails to win any damages. Pay $1,300.”
 
In addition, there was a host of speakers and workshop leaders: District Attorneys and other lawyers, professors, Pennsylvania Prison Society and American Friends Service Committee representatives, among others. Discussion topics ranged from assault and murder to white color crime, from prison reform to genocide in Rwanda. One session, on war crimes, from Nuremberg to Abu Ghraib, was moderated by History Department Chair, George Wrangham, and several Shipley seniors. The Deputy Police Commissioner of Philadelphia and the Head of the Ex-Offender Association of Philadelphia gave the final presentation of the day.

Who should get a heavier sentence, the white collar criminal or the thief or murderer? asked a lawyer specializing in white color crime. The workshop was having a lively discussion about Enron, HealthSouth, and Martha Stewart. Which one does the most damage? Which is more likely to repeat his or her crimes after coming out of jail? Should their sentences reflect these considerations? They are difficult questions that, in various forms, were being posed all over the Upper School, testing the ideal vs. the practical. Well after the discussion periods were formally over, students and workshop leaders were continuing to wrangle over these questions: What is fair? What is just?

Posted February 7, 2005