Civil Rights in the 21st Century

One of the things that this new technology does is allow anyone with a blog or website to check out who is taking an interest in their blog, site or, in this case, campaign and while browsing the log of site visitors recently I noticed we had interest from New York that resolved back to a Columbia University IP. Looking further I saw that the referring page was a lesson plan for Teaching matters which used this blog as an example of a citizen media campaign.

Teaching matters is a non-profit professional development organization that partners with educators to improve public schools, it is involved with over 600, and uses technology in the classroom to prepare teachers and their students for 21st century learning and achievement.Check out Teaching Matters Voices and Choices : Civil Rights,



the third unit of the Voices & Choices series , Social Studies for our 21st Century Democracy

I thought long and hard about whether to mention this as the 'us studying you studying us' thing may well weird some people out but then reasoned that two of the things that the Teaching Matters staff are clearly trying to instill into 8th grade students ( I hope I have the grades right here ) are that:

1.) how this technology works and can be used by just about anyone needs to be properly understood including the fact , flagged up by the Director of Teaching Matters below, that online learning materials are living documents

and , 2) the whole business of civil rights is a complex and ongoing set of relationships and questions not a passive dead academic subject like Latin ( apologies for anyone learning Latin ) but something very much alive and abroad in the world that, whether students realise it now or not, will almost certainly touch upon their own lives and life opportunities at some point.

As one of the people who has felt passionate enough about the issues campaigned about on this blog to keep posting away pushing for change ( yes , I often question why we bother to as well ) all I can objectively say to help anyone reading this blog develop their own ideas about civil rights is that often issues are not as clear cut as we think they are and that we really need to look at problems in the world - and there is no shortage of them - from as many different perspectives as we possibly can to try to figure out what is right and wrong and always be prepared to take on board new ideas and what the other guy says.

What other people think and have to say is really important , even if they totally disagree with us and we think that they are the problem as they are the people we need to convince and get onside if we think we have a solution on how to put right an injustice or to help uphold a group or individuals civil or human rights and we want them to understand and help us solve the problem.

The last word though goes to an old teacher who, although very meek in personality herself, took a passionate interest in teaching her students about making up their own minds . She had two words of advice for them. ' Question Authority'.

I'll let people figure out for themselves why she thought that her students should get into the habit of doing this and whether it is a good idea to or not.

And to all the guys from New York, good luck with your studies and lives.