85“Peace and Human Rights Committee”
in the Special Religious Activities
Hiroyuki OkamotoThe Assumption Junior and Senior High School in Minoo city in Osaka is aCatholic missionary school for girls founded in Japan by the Religious of theAssumption, which has the Mother House in Paris, France. The Assumption
Junior and Senior High School is small, compared with the other private schools inJapan, with just two classes in each grade. Yet we engage in our daily education ina family-like atmosphere, under the motto, “joy, sincerity and neighborly love.”related to peace and human rights in a broad
sense, which allows for a wide variety of topics
to be chosen.
What is important is the wish “to know,”
to study the topic by one’s self, and to have
one’s own knowledge and views about it. After“knowing,” the students exchange and share
their views. By doing so, they are able to reflect
deeper into the issues, and form well thoughtout opinions on them.

Special Religious Activities
Our school has Special Religious Activities
every Friday after class, apart from other extracurricular activities. These include volunteeractivities, hand bell club, and the choir. Students
from first grade in the junior secondary level tothe third grade in senior secondary level, wishing to join any of the activities, can register andparticipate.
The “Peace and Human Rights Committee”
is one of those activities. There, the students
take the lead in studying a wide range of issues
involving peace and human rights.
As an advisor to this activity, I introduce toyou what we do.

Students’ activities
Taking the example of the students whojoined in 2002, I explain the actual activities
undertaken. In the 2002 academic year, about
ten third grade junior secondary students joined
the activities, until their graduation four years
later from the senior secondary level.

The “Peace and Human Rights Committee”
At the beginning of each academic year, thestudents and I as the advisor discuss what topics
we want to study on, and what sort of activities we will engage in. Sometimes we work ona single topic throughout the year, and there
are times when we decide on no particular
topic. The only requirement is that it has to be[1] We want to know more!
It seems that the students at first joined outof intellectual curiosity, wanting to “know”
more about what is happening in the society.
When I asked them, “What do you want85

86  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

to know about?” their answers were, “nuclearweapons” that they learned of in the social
studies subjects, and “North Korea” that theysaw on the news. My role as advisor was to givesuggestions, such as “Why don’t you look into…. under that topic?” or “What is happeningto …?”
Acting on the advice, the students decided
on the topics they wanted to know about, andstudied about them.
I am a social studies teacher myself, but inthe formal class, teaching tends to be a one-sided
transmission of knowledge, and I feel I have notbeen responding sufficiently to the students’demands, “I want to know more about what I
learned in the class,” or “I want to say something
on this issue.”In the Peace and Human Rights Committee, the students can act on their own curiosity,present their views based on what they studied,and receive questions and comments from theirpeers. The emphasis is on the process, in which
they are able to reflect deeper on the issues.

[2] What is happening in the world now
is material for learning too!
By the time each student had made her presentation at least once, the United States wasabout to start the Iraq War.
Using the daily news from television andnewspapers, we shared the experience of watching the “moment the war began.” We stated
our opinions for and against the war, based on
information from the internet and the newspapers, and formed our own opinions.
When the initial attack was considered completed, we found out that there were many facts
that had not been reported during the war, andrealized that the news on the television and thenewspapers did not cover everything.
The students seemed extremely interestedon this topic, and some continued to study
later on such topics as “the United States’ history of war,” and “victims of conflict after theIraq War.”

They were able to realize that war was not
something in the distant past, but was happening in this world today, and that it was
important to have the imagination to be able
to “see the human beings” on the other end of
the missile and other attacks.

[3] Seeing with your own eyes, hearing
with your own ears
Videos on “north-south” issues were shown
during these activities. This led to one of thestudents wanting to “see for herself,” and participating in a short-term study tour to visit oursister-school in the Philippines.
The student who went there did a presentation on “what I saw and heard in the Philippines,” about the reality of the gap between thewealthy and the poor that she saw, the traces ofcolonialism, the high awareness of the students
at the local school, etc.
She followed up on her interest after her
presentation, to examine “what can I do aboutit?” and chose the activities of UNICEF as her
next topic. She started to consider the global
subject of the “north-south” issue from theperspective of what she could do, about thesituation of children around the world and how
the donations were being used.

[4] Students can learn from making
and listening to presentations
In the four years that these students took
part in our activities, they continued to decideon the topics by themselves; they studied, prepared and made presentations about them on
their own.
I believe that by the presentations, the othermembers who were listening were also able togain broad knowledge. The student doing thepresentation would, of course, have been able
to develop her thoughts further, hearing otherstudents’ views, and seeing the issue from perspectives she had not thought of.

“Peace and Human Rights Committee” in the Special Religious Activities  87

Students’ presentations
The following is the list of topics that the students selected, studied and presented by themselves during the four years of the activities.
3rd grade
Junior High School
2002

•
•
•
•

animals for experiments
UN World Summit for Childrenglobal nuclear arms
use of the school infirmary asplace of refuge• situation in North Korea

1st grade
Senior High School
2003• history of Korean peninsula• Diary of Anne Frank and theHolocaust• Berlin Wall
• World War II• situation in Afghanistan• war in Okinawa

2nd grade
Senior High School
2004• Philippine report• American modern history• Peace Village International inGermany• Chechen issue• global warming• Korean war

3rd grade
Senior High School2005• situation of children in the worldand UNICEF• Palestine issue• history textbook issue• history of Buraku issue• juvenile law

The topics included many current issues,
which were making the headlines in the news
(North Korean and Chechen issues) as well as
issues that the students had always wanted toknow more in detail (nuclear arms in the world,
World War II).
But some students took up less obvious
issues to study, such as the current situation inAfghanistan, which had been rarely reported
in the news since the war following the 9/11
attack, and the Peace Village International in
Germany, that even the teachers did not knowmuch about.

Reports of the past four years
In writing this article, I reread all the presentation reports written by the students.
At the beginning, many of the reports andpresentations focused mostly on explaining theterms and words, as if they had consulted onlydictionaries. Gradually, their studies gained
broader scope as they looked into the historicalbackgrounds and current situations. By the timethey were in the 4th year, their reports wereusually four to five pages long.
We had a rule that at the end of the presentation report, they had to write their own views.
Some of the students were writing page-longviews, and their ability to gain knowledge, tofind out about issues, and to formulate opinions
based on the knowledge gained, had grownsteadily.
Above all, I think they have developed abroader sense of vision, taking in the history
and culture in the background, when looking
at an incident.

Thoughts from the advisor

Presentation paper:
What happens to UNICEF donations?

From my experience as advisor for theCommittee, I have come to hold the following
four views.

88  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS[1] Is it true that “students today areless interested in what is happening inthe society?”
I would answer yes to this question at thetime when I was only teaching in the classrooms. After seeing the topics and how thestudents studied about them, however, andwatching their concern and the sharing of views
during the activities, I began to think that it was
not the case, and to wonder that, “perhaps Ihave been teaching in a way that did not allow
them to think.”[2] The need for media literacy
Television, newspapers, internet and othermedia are indispensable in the world today, inorder to find out about issues. I have taken careto have the students develop the ability to see
whether what is reported by the mass media isall correct, or if there are anything that is important, but is not reported. I think that havingsuch an ability is desirable for students growing
up in the contemporary world.

[3] The importance of having your own
opinion based on knowledge

I am sure that the objective of these activities
is for these children to grow up into adults withsolid opinion of their own. For that purpose, theprocess, in which they gain sound knowledge,
the ability to find out on their own, listen toother people’s views and form their own opinions, is important.
Through the work of the Peace and HumanRights Committee, I hope I can send as many“thinking adults” as possible into the society.

[4] It is the heart that is important
What is important is the purpose for which
the knowledge and the views are used. I expect
the students will grow into people who do notthink just about themselves, but can see thethings around them, the state of other countries, and the society as a whole. If they cando that, it is possible to create the peace andhuman rights.
These are my thoughts based on my experience.
These are small activities by a small school.
But our vision is wide, gazing at the world.
“Think Globally Act Locally.” We will continue
our activities emphasizing this spirit.