Human Rights EE - US Juvenile Justice System

[Moira]

Hello!  I'm doing my EE over the research question: To what extent can practice changes in the US Juvenile Justice System be made in order to curtail human rights violations?"  This essay has been entered as a Human Rights EE.

 

I've begun writing my paper, and feel pretty good about my research.  I'm running into a few issues that I was hoping I might be able to get some help with!

 

My school doesn't offer a Human Rights course.  I go to a Catholic school, so I understand social justice, and basic human rights.  But, I know IB has some "nit-picky" things about subjects that they really want to see.

 

I've done some research, but I'm having a difficult time finding course material for Human Rights.  Could anyone possibly give me some tips for books/websites/sources that have some human rights info that I could use to get started with IB terms and concepts, please?!

 

Much love and appreciation for any and all suggestions!

 

Thank you! 

[Sandwich]

I've never personally heard of a school actually offering this course (if it is even a course), only of people trying to do their EE in it, so can't really offer any advice on that one. Other than that I personally wouldn't do an EE in a mystical subject like Human Rights where you've no idea what the nit-picky things are or where to find them! But that's not helpful ahah.

 

All I was going to do was suggest you re-word your EE question.

"To what extent can practice changes in the US Juvenile Justice System be made in order to curtail human rights violations?"

 

...do you really mean 'to what extent'? Or do you mean 'how'? If you're assessing to what extent practice changes can be made, then it sounds like you're making a feasibility study of the implementation of methods used to make the changes. Rather than actually looking at what might need changing.

Also it just doesn't read very well. I'm not criticising your topic, I've no idea whether it's a good or bad one on account of not knowing much about Human Rights EEs, just that you should probably re-word your title to make it a bit cleaner & less awkward to read before you hand it in! 

[Moira]

Thank you!  (I completely agree with you! I was planning to do an economics EE with the same topic, but my coordinator thought this fell more under human rights)

 

Just a follow up about your suggestion (which was great! thank you!): I put "to what extent" in the question because I was under the impression it needed one of the "key IB phrases."  Is that not required?  

 

Sorry, just a little confused! Thank you so much for your help! 

[Sandwich]

Thank you!  (I completely agree with you! I was planning to do an economics EE with the same topic, but my coordinator thought this fell more under human rights)

 

Just a follow up about your suggestion (which was great! thank you!): I put "to what extent" in the question because I was under the impression it needed one of the "key IB phrases."  Is that not required?  

 

Sorry, just a little confused! Thank you so much for your help! 

 

Hm it is generally also a bad idea to pick an EE topic before you pick a subject - a topic is unlikely to be a 'perfect fit' for a subject area by being randomly categorised. Although yours definitely does sound a lot more Human Rights than Economics so I would say you're getting away with it!

 

And the IB are fans of titles which make sense, there are no such things as key IB phrases. Whilst "to what extent" is a good way to approach a lot of essays, if you're not actually evaluating the extent of something... then it's not. History and English are generally pretty good for "to what extent" questions because you're genuinely evaluating the relative contributions of lots of different variables. To what extent was war X a failure? Allows you to evaluate all the positives and negatives and come to a weighed conclusion about the extent to which each contributed. When you really think about "to what extent" means, it implies you're going to be coming to a conclusion like "mostly"/"not at all"/something quantitative because you've set yourself the challenge of establishing an extent of something, and the extent is a quantity. Perhaps you are intending to do that in your essay, but if not then you'd actually lose marks for claiming to be evaluating the extent of something if you weren't. If that makes sense. There is no 'key phrase' requirement, you just want the title that best describes what you're trying to achieve in your essay.