Candle USC

Teaching two classes at the USC Rossier School of Education and an institute with Dr. Christina Kundrak at CANDLE made for a busy summer, but working with dedicated, empathetic and committed students like these give me a lot of hope for the future of education.  

Proud to have been a part of this. Good news from the UN Human Rights Council: The Human Rights Council approved a resolution that formally launches a working group to develop new international law on the right to education. Specifically, the resolution does two crucial things:   “Decides to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group of the Human Rights Council with the mandate of exploring the possibility of, elaborating, and submitting to the Human Rights Council a draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child with the aim to: (a) Explicitly recognize that the right to education includes early childhood care and education; (b) Explicitly state that, with a view to achieving the right to education, States shall: (i) Make public pre-primary education available free to all, beginning with at least one year; [and] (ii) Make public secondary education available free to all;” “Requests the working group to ensure the meaningful participation of children, in an ethical, safe and age-appropriate inclusive manner, and in particular to give children the opportunity to express their views on the topic and substance of the proposed optional protocol, to facilitate their expression, including through child-friendly information, to listen to children’s views and to act upon them, as appropriate;” and further “Requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to ensure appropriate resources to support the participation of children, from all five regional groups, ensuring that they have easy access to relevant premises, and to make the discussions fully accessible to children and to persons with disabilities.”   This is the first time that children’s participation has been expressly built into the process for developing new international law.

Looking forward to today's live Q&A with John Warner. The keynotes are available. https://lnkd.in/gbCHUr3h

Please join us for our annual Summer Institute with our colleagues at Learning and the Brain starting July 29th. We will be exploring CANDLE's (https://candle.usc.edu/) new research on transcendent thinking and so much more. Only a few seats still available. https://lnkd.in/gSqr637w

I am looking forward to being one of the keynotes at the Conference to Restore Humanity 2024. There is still time to register if you have not yet done so. https://lnkd.in/gbCHUr3h