Universe of Obligation and Human Rights

About This Lesson

In preparation to learn about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is important to engage students in a conversation about how individuals and nations define their responsibilities toward other people. In this lesson, students will learn about universe of obligation, a term that sociologist Helen Fein coined to describe the circle of individuals and groups within a society “toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for amends.” ¹   

The activities invite students to think about the people for whom they feel responsible and help them analyze the ways that their society designates who is worthy of respect and caring and who is not.

Essential Questions

• What is a right? 
• What rights should belong to every human being on earth?

Guiding Questions

• What factors influence the extent to which we feel an obligation to help others? 
• How does the way we view others influence our feelings of responsibility toward them?

• 1Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide (New York: Free Press, 1979), 4.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Reflect on Group Membership and Belonging

• Ask students to respond in their journals to the following prompt: Think about a group you belong to. It might be your family, a team, a faith community, a club, a classroom, an online community, or some other type of group. 
  • How did you become a member of that group? Did you choose to be a member, or are you one automatically? 
  • What do you gain by belonging to that group? What, if anything, do you have to give up or hide about yourself to be a member?
• Debrief by asking students to share some of the things they gain by belonging to groups and some of the things they give up in order to belong. Honor student privacy and refrain from requiring all students to share their responses in detail.
• Pose the following questions for students to discuss in pairs and then as a class:
  • Why do humans so often divide themselves into groups? 
  • When is this a good thing? When is it harmful?

Activity 2: Introduce the Concept of Universe of Obligation

• Introduce the concept of universe of obligation by explaining that it is one way to consider the benefits of belonging to groups and the consequences of being excluded. An individual or group’s universe of obligation represents the extent to which they feel responsible for others. We often feel a greater sense of responsibility for those who belong to the same groups that we do.
• Hand out the reading Universe of Obligation and read it aloud. You may have taught specific annotation strategies that you want your students to use. Or you can have students do the following: 
  • Dra w a heart by moments in the text that resonate with you, perhaps because of who you are or your experiences in the world.
  • Add a question mark in places where you feel confused, perhaps because you don’t understand a vocabulary term or the author assumes you know something you don’t know.
  • Underline places in the text that help you understand the costs and benefits that can come with belonging to a group.
• Move students into small groups to discuss the connection questions. Assign each group one of the first four questions and have them present their ideas to the class. Then discuss the fifth question together.

Activity 3: Illustrate Individual Universes of Obligation

• Finally, ask students to illustrate their own universe of obligation using the handout Universe of Obligation Graphic Organizer. The concentric circles on this handout can help students visualize and draw what an individual, group, or country’s universe of obligation might look like. 
• Give students time to follow the instructions and complete the activity on the handout. It might be helpful to first quickly brainstorm a variety of types of individuals and groups that might appear on one’s graphic organizer, including family, friends, neighbors, classmates, strangers in one’s town, and others. You can also model by starting your own universe of obligation on the board. 
• Have students meet in groups of two or three to discuss their experience of trying to illustrate their universe of obligation. In their discussions, students should address some of the following questions:
  • What was the experience of drawing your universe of obligation like? 
  • What did you think about when deciding where to place certain groups in your universe of obligation? Which decisions were difficult? Which ones were easy?
  • Under what conditions might your universe of obligation change? What might cause you to move some groups to the center and others to the outside?
  • What is the difference between an individual’s universe of obligation and that of a school, community, or country?

Activity 4: Reflect on Universe of Obligation

The next lesson builds on a foundational understanding of universe of obligation. To gauge what, if anything, you need to reteach, have students complete a “How Many Bars?” exit ticket.

You can project the following prompt that students answer on notebook paper or create a handout that you collect at the end of the lesson. 

After today’s lesson on universe of obligation, I have . . .

_________ Full bars: I get it, loud and clear!

_________ Two bars: I’m in and out with this. I only get some of the information.

_________ No bars: No signal. Dropped call. 

Specifically, here is where I need better “coverage” in order to increase my bars . . .