One goal for this year's All-School Read was to use themes from Malala throughout the year. We partnered with George WAshington University's Global Women's Institute (the GWI) to pilot portions of their Malala curriculum (written for the college level) in high school, and this connection provided a perfect opportunity to connect Malala and our curriculum in Ethics.
In their curriculum, there is a unit on violence against women and girls, and I thought this could connect with our Ethics class's study of Cultural Relativism, or the view that says, roughly, that whatever a society says is morally right, really is morally right.
Would that imply, for example, that a society that believes it's alright to deny girls access to education is doing something permissible? Is is okay for Americans (or any others) to criticize the practices of other cultures with whom we disagree?
These and other questions framed the students' research into various kinds of violence against women and girls across the globe. Four different groups researched acid throwing, human trafficking, child marriage, and honor killings. Using resources provided by GWI, students presented as a group on their findings.
One hope is that they learned that there are some things happening in the world that -- relativist or not -- we ought to be working to eradicate.