Reasoning on what happens and what affects mankind is not mere mental or open debate. It should become, instead, a personal memento towards the respect of law as the paramount source of our survival and well-being.
The E.U has decided to add two more relevant principles i.e. ‘human rights’ and ‘rule of law’, absolutely interconnected as the first directly depends on the second. In fact the concept of law must have been born with the second human being as wherever there is a community, however small, habits coordinating people’s interaction are needed as the wider the society, the more complex its net of rules.
Human beings have been growing, acquiring and absorbing these concepts as they have been taught to accept the basic structure of our society, but when the ‘rule of law’ is not respected, there are bad consequences at various levels.
First of all a dangerous breech is made in the social contract, that allows civilization to stand still like a lighthouse. Moreover, all the strain and suffering of those who have worked to get to the present community is suddenly rubbed out and the words duty, and rights tend to reduce and lose their meanings.
The negative forces, that laws entrap and tie up, start leaking out with little restraint and substantial moral rules are disrupted, producing a scar on the neat surface of justice.
Little or no respect of human rights doesn’t always take place so far away from us, but it is absolutely more scattered where suffering is the result of exceptional events. The good forces intervening and helping are to be strongly and deeply convinced true believers of the rule of law. This sensibility, this moral strength ought to be formed since the very early stages of life, through examples within the family, the teachers’ competent guidance and, later on, the authorities’ sound actions.
Going backward in time we find that in our society some rules, although already stated, happen not to be applied and easily forgotten. As far as these two principles are concerned, we must reinforce the awareness of their importance. Promoting this way of looking at them can help our students understand their core and practice them, thus spreading out their ‘value’.
Let’s not forget that, although very different, we are all perfectible as we are able to learn, change and improve. Let us work, then, to reinforce our students’ belief that the respect of human rights is the key to human dignity and that it becomes a reality thanks to the respect of the rule of law.
