Question

9. The American novelist James Baldwin wrote, "Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply." Ask students to define the terms freedom, justice, and democracy. How did the students derive their own meaning for these words?

Answer 1

Freedom means right to choose from various alternatives. It include right to choose and practice religion as per one's own opinion, right to speech and expression, right to choose one's occupation , right to move anywhere and right to residents any part of nation. Freedom is a broader term that includes multiple basic right of citizens.

Justice means ensuring the social , economic and political rights of citizen. Ensuring the right to life , right to livelihood and right to vote and form opinion is part of justice. Ensuring just and fair action and behavior of all citizen is providing justice.

Democracy is a form of government where citizen form their opinion freely and exercise their political rights to elect the representative to form a governing body , say Parliament or Congress. In a democracy , people are the ultimate sovereign.

Students derive these definition by a combination of sources that includes textbooks , world leaders speech and their own analysis and reasoning.