Lesson: A Bill of Rights For Women in Afghanistan
Source: Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit
Created by: Heidi King, South Philadelphia High School
Subjects: Social Studies
Grade Levels: 10
View or download this Lesson Plan.
Overview: By reviewing articles and videos about women’s rights in Afghanistan, and reading the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, students will extend their evaluation of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution to evaluate global human rights violations and our collective human responsibility to severely oppressed members of another nation and culture. Questions of religious self-determination and human rights will be explored, as well as potential consequences of United States’ intervention in women’s rights Afghanistan. Students will draw upon previous journal reflections based reading and responding daily to essential questions and discussions of A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Objectives: Students will be able to craft and defend the contents of their team’s “Bill of Rights for Women in Afghanistan” based on team analysis of women’s lives as portrayed in Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns and nonfiction articles and current events about Afghanistan. This is intended to be a culminating assignment on constitutional rights and global human rights advocacy. Students will be able to analyze and evaluate each team’s “Bill of Rights for Women of Afghanistan” from the possible perspectives and points of view of Afghan citizens.
The Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit
This lesson is one of 29 lessons (K-12, all subjects) in the Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit. The goal of the Tool Kit is to help educators and their students develop a transnational analysis in their classrooms by using complex themes of world heritage as a framework to understand global regions across disciplines. These themes include shared architectural, cultural, economic, environmental, political, recreational, religious, and social heritage features. Real teachers created these lessons and based their work on “best practices” that reflect student collaboration and the broad goals of young people in ways that support care and understanding of others who may be very different in background and history.