Check out our webinar from Dec. 2 with Jerry Nussbaum and Irwin Elman for a discussion about Janusz Korczak’s contributions to children’s rights, the association in his name, and the proposed UBC Chair.
They also discussed the Janusz Korczak Association, which has the following goals:
– To foster the knowledge about Dr. Korczak’s work and ideas in order to better integrate it into contemporary legal, social and pedagogical theories and to make it the basis for cooperation among educators, child welfare workers, researchers, physicians, lawyers and children’s rights activists.
– To familiarize Canadians with his heroism during World War II, and his stout defence of children’s rights.
– To disseminate Korczak’s pedagogical ideas as well as their effect on children’s education.
Bios of speakers:
Jerry Nussbaum is the President at The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada.
Irwin Elman is a Global Strategic Advisor at Laidlaw Foundation. He was appointed as the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth to provide leadership to the Advocate’s Office – the first independent office of its kind in Ontario – to amplify the voices of children and youth in its mandate.
Learn more about Janusz Korczak:
Korczak is one of the first pedagogues to change adults’ perceptions toward children. He does so masterfully in his books: 1) When I am Little Again, where his protagonist, a disgruntled elementary school teacher, suddenly returns to his childhood, and is forced to remember what it felt like being a child, so he could be a better teacher; and 2) The Child’s Right to Respect, which became the foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Korczak upheld a child’s right to be respected and believed that adults should help children realize their goals rather than impose their own goals on them.
During WWII, Korczak was the director of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. Despite being offered sanctuary, he elected to remain alongside the children, who were first sent to the ghetto in Warsaw, then to Treblinka extermination camp, where they were all killed.