I wish people would be a little more careful when they start throwing accusations around. The original article contains a photo of the assignment:
Some things to point out:
1) this is an 8th grade assignment; 13 year olds are certainly still impressionable, but they aren't exactly clueless, either;
2) without any further context there is no way to support the conclusion that the UDHR is being upheld as a standard (which still begs the question, of course; "a standard for what");
3) NY is not "steeped" in the Common Core; NY schools and students are having a really hard time right now precisely because the Common Core has never been taught in NY before and the state, for many stupid reasons, has decided to fully implement Common Core standards in one fell swoop, without any time for teachers or students to become accustomed to the new standards;
4)
any set of educational standards brings with it the risks of being used as a tool for indoctrination; but just like gun control, what matters is the intent of the person using the standards - the tools - not the mere existence of the tool itself;
5) the assignment has nothing to do with, and makes no reference to, Article 22, which gets the author's undies in such a bunch; in fact, whether
Malala Yousafzai has been denied social security by Pakistan has utterly no bearing on whether her shooting by the Taliban was unjust under the UDHR, so I rather highly doubt if any but the most dunderheaded of students will refer to Art. 22 in completing the assignment; and
6) the assignment was made within the context of learning about the Holocaust, as to which the assignment states "a dark time in history in which many Jews were systematically killed," and is intended to "look a bit further into modern examples of injustice in society;" several subpoints:
(a) the context has to do with learning about the Holocaust, and about other foreign (i.e., non-US) injustices, to which the US Bill of Rights is not particularly germane,
(b) the assignment, and the underlying reading, appears to be truthful about what happened in the Holocaust,
(c) the assignment in fact focuses the students on the injustice committed by the Taliban - radical muslim extremists - when they attempted to assassinate a young girl - someone with whom the students could more easily identify than, say, Anne Frank - because of her outspokenness; I should think that some would applaud this focus inasmuch as it echoes the constant criticisms from conservatives about the systematic abuses committed by muslim extremists, and
(d) as I mentioned above, the students are much more likely to empathize with Malala and, therefore, to take a much harder view of the Taliban and their acts, than they might otherwise have taken, so I should think this assignment would be at least partially applauded, not lambasted the way it's being treated.