Tag: teachers

My 2015 Human Rights Wish List to Santa

paulmcadams
Dear Santa,

Let me get this out from the start so I can move on: you were 1 for 12 in making my 2011 wish list come true. Even then, the one wish that came true was a little snow, and I’m not even sure you can take credit for that one. But getting rid of all the human rights violations stuff – numbers 1 to 11 on the list – well that continued, and in some cases got a lot worse.
I was waiting, Santa.

But enough about unfulfilled wishes of past lists and the inevitable sorrow on Christmas morning! We all know things got worse in Syria (#3 on my 2011 list was to remove president al-Assad) and I never did get that Six Million Dollar Man Mission Control Center (somewhere in the middle of my list, circa 1978). On with this year’s list. With today, December 10, being International Human Rights Day, I thought I’d write my list based on a few goals that are rights-related.

First, a little background to bring you up to speed: The UN chose its annual Human Rights Day theme in honour of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the adoption of two main covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. I know what you’re thinking – laudable but astoundingly boring. They tried to spice things up with the slogan “Our rights. Our freedoms. Always.” I think Coca-Cola might have a gripe against them because they used “Always” in an ad campaign a while back. But enough about slogans and on to substance. The two covenants do set out a number of rights that people ought to have by simple virtue of being human (right to a nationality, education, a fair trial, innocent until proven guilty, health, freedom to practice religion, freedom of expression, and so on). Along with the enjoyment of those rights you’ve got obligations that states have to help realize them. Peachy. Problem is – and I know you know where I’m going here, because if you watch children sleeping I’m sure you have a rather sophisticated/creepy surveillance system – this doesn’t happen everywhere. Sure there are some countries where rights are respected; my country is pretty good though far from perfect, but there are plenty of other places where people struggle to achieve a modicum of human dignity, like pooping in a clean toilet, having enough food so as not to starve, and being able to walk around town without fear of being shot. If I were in any of those situations, I’d wish for a few basic things that would make me feel more…human, I guess. I wouldn’t even bother setting my expectations to “Our rights. Our freedoms. Always.” but probably aim for something like “A few rights. Some freedoms. At least sometimes.”
So let me get on with my list:
  • At the national level, make sure our new Prime Minister continues to govern properly and respects our rights (a site like TrudeauMetre can help guide you). So far, he’s off to a pretty good start: the government is moving ahead with a plan to welcome 25000 Syrian refugees, there will be a long-awaited national inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls, the government’s serious about climate change, scientists in Canada can speak up once again, and the long form census has been restored. If there’s one thing that bugs me about him, it’s that he keeps saying “Canada’s back.” Honestly, I never left, neither did my neighbours and pretty much the rest of Canada. We’re not back; we were just governed by someone for 10 years who, in opposition to most intelligent Canadians, did not value inclusiveness, acceptance, diversity, equality, openness, transparency, and international cooperation. 
  • At the provincial level, knock some sense into Premier Couillard with respect to demands from public sector workers, in particular the education sector. To be completely selfish about this – and let’s be honest, most kids writing to you want stuff for themselves so why should I be any different – I’m sick of the teachers’ strikes from the past few months. And for that I don’t blame the teachers, but the government. My wife’s a teacher – a damn good one – and has given her all to hundreds of children for over thirty years. Nearly a week of strikes has left us with a lot less money at the end of this year, and if we’re hurting financially, so are thousands of other families with parents who are teachers. Her profession has continuously been marginalized and undervalued by every government we’ve had since she’s been teaching. Like many teachers, she spends long days with young children – a number of them with special needs – and time during evenings and weekends correcting kids’ work and planning new lessons. Some kids have driven her bonkers over the years (I won’t name names, but you probably have a nice-naughty database you can cross-reference with class lists), but she still cared for all of them. The ill-informed, ignorant and dumb among the masses scoff at teachers’ demands for salary increases and reasonable class sizes, citing pensions and summers off as perks that outweigh any hardships, but such scorn makes no sense when you consider the work teachers do with the resources they have. And again speaking selfishly, my kids – now spending another strike day at home – are missing out on their education, like thousands of other kids across the province. By the end of this week, they will have lost six days of school. While I’m all for having my children improve their high scores on Super Smash Bros. on the Wii during those days off, I’d much rather they attend school. I know what you’re thinking at this point: Getting the Premier to agree to a deal is beyond the scope of your mandate! Well, technically, yes. However, it’s in your best interests to move things forward. The more kids stay at home, the more video games they’ll want for Christmas (this entails a greater expense for you, more work for your elves, and added weight on your sleigh). So send them back to school!

Let me get to a few other points:

  • On a global scale, make sure kids in certain places get a few more hugs than usual from their parents and loved ones. I know hugs aren’t included in international human rights law, and I also know not everyone around the world believes in you, but there’s no point in excluding anyone, so go ahead and make this an all-inclusive wish. Top of the list are children who are living through war, conflict, and situations of violence on a daily basis. Think of the children living in war zones like Syria or living in refugee camps, or who have lost family members to violence, or who are forced to become child soldiers, or who are kidnapped, exploited and sold. They’ve suffered as no one should. And I have to add more to the list as well: children living in poverty, who are gravely ill, living on the streets, forced into early marriage, unable to attend school, discriminated against because of their sex or race or sexual orientation – unfortunately the list goes on. Feel free to consult Benedict Cumberbatch’s letter to you for further guidance. 
  • Get rid of ISIS. Not part of your mandate, I get it. But you can’t blame me for asking. I fear another “Six Million Dollar Man Mission Control Center” letdown, so I’m bracing myself for the worst on Xmas morning. In the event of a letdown, could I at least ask you to whack some sense into convincing anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to be part of a violent group intent on killing innocent people to instead consider a life directed towards peace, non-violence, and kindness towards others (as in, all others, everywhere, and let me say it, “Always.”).
  • Down south in the US, give Donald Trump a brain and a heart. Once again I realize this is likely beyond your mandate, but I am also betting you have a wide-ranging list of famous people in your Rolodex, so maybe you can drop a line to the Wizard of Oz and see if he can work his magic on the Donald the way he did with the Scarecrow and the Lion. I’m tempted to say the guy’s not worth it, but everyone is entitled to the full realization of all their rights and freedoms (remember the UN slogan, “Always.”) and Trump is jeopardizing that by fomenting distrust, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance on a massive scale. My friends to the south deserve better than him.

Crap this list has degenerated into a depressing set of unrealistic aspirations. I might as well wish for stricter gun laws in the US. I’m feeling the need to watch a TEDTalk to cheer me up and restore my faith in humanity.

OK we’re a few minutes later and I did watch a TED Talk and it did give me an idea. So let me wrap it up with something I know you can do:

  • Give children the ability to believe they’ll make this world a better place than the one plenty of adults are screwing up now. To take but one example on how to achieve this, Sweden plans to provide each 16-year old student a copy of the book We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Sweden is arguably not the weakest country in terms of achieving gender equality – there are worse places – and yet they want every 16 year-old to read that book. So pack a few extra copies in your sleigh and pass them around the planet (try to get your hands on different translations. Again, you have contacts, so I’m not worried.). The book probably weighs about the same as a video game (it’s under 70 pages) and would likely have a longer lasting effect on its readers than playing a video game. As we wrap up a global 16-daycampaign to end violence against women, it’s pretty clear that we still have a long way to go, so please help out.

Thanks Santa.

Peace (always),
Paul

A Letter to My Sons: City of Dreams, Gaza

paulmcadams
Dear Alexandre, Dear Sam,

 

I’m back in Jerusalem, writing to you from the comfort of a guesthouse that’s part of a cathedral over one hundred years old. It’s relatively quiet save for the traffic outside my window, my room is sparse but pleasant, with archways defining a ceiling three times my height, and a garden a few steps away that a travel enthusiast would probably label as quaint or charming.

 

I do my best to appreciate my surroundings, but doing so after a trip to Gaza only compounds the conflicting thoughts I have in processing what I’ve just experienced. I have felt sadness and anger, frustration and disbelief, despondency and despair; yet in equal measure I have seen tenacity and hope, cheerfulness and gentleness, dedication and stoicism.

 

Over three years ago, in my first letter to you from Gaza, I described the beach view from my hotel window as “beautiful, and it’s full of garbage.” This time, my hotel offered a similar view, although added to the garbage were piles of rusted scrap metal and heaps of crumbled concrete. The scenery going through town and all over the Gaza Strip wasn’t all that different; it was dirty, but once in a while you saw a massive, stinking garbage bin in which people with busted brooms dumped their crap. There were occasional mounds of concrete where buildings once stood. Once in a while you’d see a mosque or an apartment building that would look fine and you’d wonder why no one was in it until you’d turn the corner and realize the front had been bombed to pieces, steel rods sticking through pulverized foundations.

 

There are no traffic lights that work. Banged up cars share the road with carts pulled by ragged donkeys and emaciated horses, trucks that would have failed any road safety check just about anywhere else on the planet, and a parade of international vehicles including the armoured one I was in. Billboards have layer upon layer of faded, posterized martyrs either looking thoughtful or brandishing guns and rocket launchers. The buildings are grey and brown and the roads are just as drab. There are plenty of people milling about, some merchants selling fruits and vegetables in their carts, others smacking the dust off their displays of children’s clothing or cheap toys made in China. Flocks of uniformed students pour out from the walled schools and flood the streets with their brightly coloured cheap backpacks adorned with Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob, and Mickey Mouse always offering their best smiles. Candy wrappers littering the ground mark the students’ homeward journeys.

 

As we drove up to the blue gates of one school yesterday, the words “We need homes” were spray painted in red. After the violence and destruction that shook Gaza last summer, there are still thousands of people who have no homes left, and with winter’s sting approaching, the suffering of many will only worsen.

 

I felt tremendous trepidation coming to Gaza this time. I wanted to know how people were doing without prying. When I asked a friend how things were, he looked at me and spoke with his usual, even tone: “My father passed away two days before the end of the war.” Upon seeing my face, he went on to explain that his father did not die as a result of the violence this past summer, but that he’d been battling illness for some time. Still, I reflected somberly, how horrible for his last days to be spent under the veil of constant fear.

 

My friend told me that it was the first time he’s ever felt truly frightened and helpless. “We were staying at a safe house at one point,” he told me. “I received a call telling me that the house was going to be bombed within five or ten minutes. But when I phoned the police, they could not verify the threat. I didn’t know what to do, so I told the people inside the house about the threat, and they kept on asking me to tell them what to do. But how could I know what was right? What if I told them to go elsewhere and that place would be bombed? How can I have this responsibility to tell someone what to do? I can’t do that, I simply can’t.”

 

He decided to stay in the safe house and insisted others make their own decision as to stay or go. In the end, everyone stayed and the house was not bombed. His story reflects only one moment from that horrible time, a time in which he, like so many others, felt defenseless. The depth of fear and despair Gazans suffered was enough for many people I met to label what happened as a “war,” whereas in the past, there were conflicts or incursions.

 

People are still recovering from the devastation; later that day my friend said his colleagues went to the beach “for stress relief because of the war.” Going to the beach doesn’t sound like much, but when there is so little to begin with, a group of colleagues going to the beach together is as much therapy or freedom or stress relief or faith in God to keep their spirits up and show up for work tomorrow.

 

The teachers I met over the past three days play a significant role in helping children keep their spirits up while providing a safe and sheltered environment in school. I saw them encourage students to express themselves, to be creative, to participate in class and to proudly assert the rights they have, or at least should have. In one activity in which Grade 3 students drew a new city where they would all like to live, one student showed his artwork and explained to the class, “This is Freedom City. And there’s a school here, because that’s where we go to learn.” Another child’s city was “City of Dreams,” and was drawn next to the sea.


To a cynic, such an activity is meaningless, and if anything gives false hope to children who will more than likely live in poverty for years to come. But human rights education has always been more than learning about rights. It’s about helping create a culture of human rights among all people so that we can live a life of dignity and treat others as we would want to be treated by them. Hoping for a City of Dreams in a place that is so often associated with despair, destruction, and hate gives me reason to believe that today’s children will have the strength to dream and contribute towards a better world than the one we’re living in. If a child can do that while living in Gaza, there’s still hope that they will be kinder than those who today act only through violence.

 

I guess I’m hoping for a City of Dreams too.

 

Je t’aime Alexandre, je t’aime Sam.

 

The Gaza I want to remember

paulmcadams
A young boy was killed in Gaza the day before my scheduled trip to Gaza City last week. That morning as I packed my luggage from my hotel in Jordan I saw the news ticker on CNN announcing his death and selfishly thought of the escalating tensions that would likely make my trip more dangerous – or at least more unexpected – than previously planned.


A couple of hours after arriving in Gaza City Friday November 9, my friend asks me if I want to go out for dinner. “It’s just a few minutes walk,” he says. During my last trip in June 2011, I was strictly forbidden to leave the UN compound or the hotel without hopping into a bulletproof Land Cruiser. He senses my hesitation at his offer.

“If you don’t feel comfortable, we’ll just head back and stay here at the hotel,” he assures me.

“Let’s go,” I say, and we’re off.

We exit the hotel. My friend quietly says to me, “You see, the hotel is protected. On your left and your right. Those are Hamas officers both in uniform and in plainclothes.” He points to four men on the left and one on the right. “We’re protected.” Sure. In the hotel.

Walking through the streets of Gaza I think, This isn’t so bad. There are few people on the main street, all men and boys. They sit idly and talk to each other in front of dirty shops filled with second-rate Egyptian goods smuggled through tunnels. Every other street corner has a Hamas officer sitting on a half-broken chair.  There are large, rusted garbage bins every so often filled with rot. By the looks of them their contents are likely burned on the spot rather than collected. Looking at the filth swirling around the streets you could tell that people are used to throwing their trash out anywhere, anytime.

It wasn’t so bad, in the sense that I felt safe. After a wonderful dinner we return back to the hotel and hear preparations under way for a wedding. The festivities were so loud it was impossible to get any sleep until well past midnight. “This is the only way hotels stay in business,” my friend tells me at breakfast the next morning. “There are no tourists so they rely on weddings.” There was another wedding the next night.

It wasn’t so bad, in the sense that people did what they could to live in dignity despite their living conditions. The water’s undrinkable, the food if you can find enough to eat isn’t healthy, you don’t know when you’ll have electricity and when you won’t, you can’t find the medicine you need if you get sick, you can’t get a job, you can’t take care of your family, you can’t even go for a walk on the beach because it’s full of garbage and shit and broken boats and ripped tires and everything else you want to get rid of but there’s nowhere to put any of it so you just live with it every day.

It’s impossible to fully understand the depravity of people living in conditions that are deliberately meant to dehumanize them. I feel sorrow, empathy, anger, but I will never know what it’s really like to live like that all the time. I’m passing through, a two-day temporary glimpse into a world that shouldn’t exist.

I question, as I often have, the impact of my work under such circumstances. My job this time around was to present to and get feedback from primary school teachers on a toolkit I developed for teaching human rights. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing innovative, it’s just common sense. The toolkit builds a lot on international human rights practices to introduce children to human rights. All I’ve done was to package it by contextualizing the toolkit for Palestinian teachers. I’ve focused the toolkit on specific human rights themes that Palestinian teachers told me were important: children’s participation, respect, building links with the community, and learning about equality, among others.

When I walk into the workshop room on Saturday November 10, I’m greeted by smiles from everyone. Within a few minutes our discussion leads us straight to asking ourselves what human rights are.

“Human rights are the basic things that all of us have, like the right to education, the right to live in a nice house, and the right to be healthy,” says a young woman.

“It means we respect each other,” adds the woman next to her.

Both of them speak as though these are truths. They aren’t naïve, they are hopeful. In their place I don’t know how I could possibly share their enthusiasm. I’d find it hard to fake a smile in front of students and tell them everyone has the right to live in security. When a student plays football in the field under the threat of bombs ripping his body to shreds, I think it would be easy for a student to say to a teacher, “We are never safe.”

Teachers in Gaza learning about human rights.

As the two women speak, the other participants nod and join in with similar things to say. It’s the kind of environment where I feel, as a facilitator, revitalized by the energy, thoughtfulness, and professionalism of educators who work in arguably one of the most dangerous environments around. They never admit that human rights are only what other people have; they speak of rights as entitlements everyone must have.


One in the afternoon on Sunday and the workshop is already over. Our scheduled departure for 1:30 is delayed due to mortar and rocket fire at the border. By 2:15 we’re told by security to get in a vehicle and leave the UN compound.  The first rains of the season quickly flood all the streets and bring traffic to a standstill. A normally fifteen-minute ride to the border is delayed the moment the compound gates close behind us. After half an hour wading through water at least a quarter meter thick, the driver receives the call from security to turn back because of new border attacks. We stop, wait in silence on a side street, then get another call told to forge ahead. The mortar and rockets stopped, at least for the moment. Our surroundings change as we near the border: a barren and pitted landscape even more desolate than the misery of the city looks like the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Half a dozen young boys play football by the side of the road next to a couple of pathetic shacks surrounded by garbage. I try to reassure myself that things can’t be that bad if they’re out playing.

Things weren’t bad, at least for the few minutes required to cross between borders. The situation was labeled as “calm but tense” by one UN official and that sums up the attitude most people had up to that point. But I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder what an easy target I was as we left the safety of a bulletproof vehicle and made our way in a Turkish government-donated golf cart down the kilometer-long concrete passageway leading up to the Israeli wall. I was not eager for my fate to be ignominiously sealed while riding in a golf cart in a war zone.

Leaving Gaza, I knew the situation would deteriorate, and do so quickly. I leave with an overpowering sense of abandonment. The teachers I met will still teach, and I wonder if what children learn about human rights will give them any greater sense of comfort amidst the violence that imbues their lives.

The Gaza I want to keep in my memory is that of teachers eager to learn and teach about human rights; I want to remember walking freely through the streets, even if only for a few minutes; I want to remember the unrelenting music, laughter and screams of joy at the weddings I heard from my hotel room; I want to remember the handshakes, the smiles, and the kindness of friends and strangers alike; I want to remember the young man at the hotel reception saying, “See you next time,” with a genuine smile. I know the reality is anything but this at the moment. Like the teachers who spoke at the workshop, I’m not naïve, I’m hopeful. There must be better days ahead.