By Ethaniel Reyes
Staff Writer
Roger Nash Baldwin, a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, once said that “silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.”
Summit Shasta follows this principle by allowing students to take an Expeditions course on Human Rights. Taught by Zoe Marinkovich, this course is about “first, understanding human rights on an international level, and then [diving] into how those human rights are applied in the United States.” These applications include the issues of immigration, homelessness, as well as police brutality.
The Human Rights course explores the use of different presentation strategies in the projects. Shasta freshman Harrison Le talked about the use of documentaries, films or “sometimes just [presenting] our work to the class.”
Ms. Marinkovich also said that a new course known as International Human Rights will be available to Summit students as another UC-approved Expeditions course. Ms. Marinkovich said that this course should be taken by students who are interested in things such as “women’s rights, LGBT rights, the environment, indigenous rights, or learning more about genocide.” This Expeditions course will be available to students in the new 2019-20 school year.
“I barely knew my human rights,” Shasta junior Samantha Matamoros said, regarding her knowledge before took the class. Right now, she feels that the class informs students about important issues that are happening today. “You’re just learning stuff that are so relevant right now in, like, the world … and I feel like that’s important for people at a young age to know what’s going on around them.”
See below for a video about the Human Rights courses at Shasta:
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