Drawing the Line on Rights

Session Two

Introduce criteria for drawing the line on rights.

• Refer students to the Food continuum on which they situated one of the profiled young people and themselves. Ask students to suggest how the person's quality of life would change if she/he had more food; i.e., were situated more positively along the continuum. Invite students to suggest how their own quality of life might change if they had less food; i.e., were situated less positively along the continuum. Ask students if there is a point below which no human being should be expected to function. Suggest three criteria for deciding where that point might be:
• necessary for a young person's physical, emotional or mental well-being
• others have a responsibility to try to ensure its presence because it is central to a person's basic quality of life
• it is feasible for others to try to secure this level of need.

Write the criteria on a chart for future reference. Explain that if a need meets these criteria, we say that people have a human right to it. You may want to distinguish a human right, which is something that all people are owed or entitled to have, from a privilege, which may be offered to a person because we want to be nice to the individual but it is not something that the person can insist upon.

Introduce drawing the line on rights.

• Refer to the transparency or to the continuum drawn on the board. Ask students to work with a partner to agree on the point below which a person's right to adequate food would not be met. Remind students that they should apply the criteria; i.e., necessary for basic well-being, others have a responsibility to try to ensure its presence, is a feasible level to expect others to try to secure. Invite students to identify where they would draw the line and record each point on the continuum displayed on the board or on the transparency.

Prepare rights statement.

• Explain that the decision that a person is entitled to a minimum level of food can now be stated as a right. Provide this stem: "Every person has a right to ..." and invite students to suggest how the statement should be finished. A statement might be: "Every person has a right to regular access to all the nutrients needed to stay healthy and should not go hungry on any regular basis." Ask students to draft a rights statement reflecting their identified point along the Food continuum.

Justify drawing the line on rights.

• After recording the different rights statements on the board, invite students to consider how they might justify not drawing their line higher or lower. Remind students that thinking about direct and indirect consequences may provide reasons for an appropriate place to draw the line. Explain to students that, in thinking of reasons, they should consider the problems that might arise directly or indirectly if young people fell below the mark they have drawn. Also, they should consider direct and indirect consequences of requiring that others provide a higher level than indicated. Instruct students to work with a partner to generate reasons for not setting their level any higher or lower. When students have completed the assignment, invite them to share their ideas with the rest of the class. Try to reach class consensus on the statement describing people's right to food.