Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

OFFICE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMS
Home > English Language Programs Civic Education > Draft a Student Bill of Rights

Draft a Student Bill of Rights

The following exercise was adapted from a class exercise developed by Douglas E. Miller of Sunnyvale, California and published in The American Promise Teaching Guide.

Purpose of the Exercise:

Most people take rights for granted, until they are in a situation that calls for their exercise. This classroom workshop asks students to think and talk about creating for themselves a list rights they think they should have, compare those rights with the official documents of their own or other countries, and talk about why their own choices might differ from those of their governments.

Group your class into two. If you put them into groups of men and women, you might get the most dramatic results, since both groups will immediately be conscious, even self-conscious, as a group. But you might also think about other kinds of groupings, and you could even ask students to play a role: one group could represent the poor, while another could represent the wealthy; one group might represent the elderly while the other could represent the young; one group could represent the unemployed while the other the employed, and so on.

Ask each group to write a bill of rights for their group.

With each bill of rights written, ask each group to nominate a spokesperson to present each to the class. Post both lists.

Next, ask the students to discuss the two bills, particularly noticing the choices each group made in reference to the other. Which items are compatible; which ones are so dissimilar as to be contrary to one another?

Then ask the classroom to develop a single bill of rights for the entire group, taking special care to blend the two bills together. Ask the class to rank each item from most important to least important.

Post the list at the head of the class. Then ask students to examine your own nation's bill of rights, or the bill of rights of another country. The U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights is located on page 50 of Democracy is a Discussion. Another easily accessible Bill of Rights is that of New Zealand, established in 1990. You can find this Bill of Rights by clicking here: New Zealand Bill of Rights.

Ask the class to compare the two bills of rights, the official one, and the one the class wrote. What kinds of things did the class think important, and what kinds of things did they leave out. What kinds of things did they add?

This exercise can be expanded beyond the classroom: ask students to create a bill of rights for the college, the city, the nation, even the world.

In one sense, without such bills of rights civil society cannot flourish, since they establish the boundaries between individual and group freedom and governmental authority. For instance, the New Zealand Bill of Rights states that "Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person's consent." With this right, New Zealand's government is trying to establish the limits of what a government can do, and establish the sphere of freedom the individual enjoys.

VOCABULARY

Bill: A draft of a proposed law presented to a legislative body for approval; the law enacted from such a draft.

Nominate: to propose by name as a candidate, especially for election.

Legislative: of or relating to the enactment of laws.

Back to the top