Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms

Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades to University

Susan Roberta Katz, A. McEvoy Spero

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137471130
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university. Each model discusses the scope of the project, its rationale, students' response to the content and pedagogy, challenges or controversies that arose, and their resolution. Unique in integrating theory and practice and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, this book provides indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.

PART I

Overview of Human Rights Education

CHAPTER 1

Building a Human Rights Education Movement in the United States

Felisa Tibbitts

Introduction

The concept of human rights is widely recognized but perhaps poorly understood in the United States. Most people will recognize the term, but few are able to explain what “human rights” are, or what it means to them. This situation is troubling, suggesting that at the grassroots level human rights values are not being tapped to their full potential in promoting social change.

Teachers committed to both a humanistic approach and the power of education to promote individual agency and social transformation have begun to embrace human rights education (HRE). The international HRE movement itself began to gain steam in the 1990s and has continued to evolve and expand ever since. This chapter presents a brief overview of the history of the HRE movement, both internationally and in the United States, as an introduction for the case studies of this book.

The Human Rights System

The history of HRE is linked with the evolution of international human rights standards. In layperson’s terms, human rights can be defined as those basic standards essential for people to live in dignity as human beings. Human rights standards are legally codified in international treaties. Some treaties (also known as conventions or covenants) that may be familiar include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) (granting the rights to education, health, housing and a livable wage), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the Convention against Torture (1984). International treaties are developed by the United Nations Human Rights Council; once passed by the UN General Assembly, governments then have the option to voluntarily sign and ratify the treaty. The international human rights system is based on this simple principle: states sign human rights treaties, voluntarily commit themselves to uphold them, and are then held accountable through self-reporting to the United Nations and independent observation of watchdog agencies, their own citizens, and members of the international community.

Human rights are sometimes contested because of the historical circumstances under which the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)—the document that was to become the basis for the entire international human rights legal system—was written. In the late 1940s, the newly formed United Nations did not include many of the countries that exist today. Since that time, international human rights standards have evolved to reflect a more diverse understanding of human rights, reflecting the expansion of UN members and new ways of thinking over the past 60 years. Although the idea of “individual rights” remains central, “collective rights,” for example, has now entered into international legal standards, in part through the influence of indigenous peoples. The addition of new human rights standards—including the right to HRE—continues to be debated in the UN Human Rights Council, and such debates are more rigorous and authentic when they take into account more diverse perspectives.

International human rights standards are also resisted at times because of the claim that they are universal, a claim that can be accompanied by teaching human rights in a top-down and hegemonic manner with little knowledge or respect for local culture. Human rights educators have the very unique challenge to offer to learners the “power of human rights” through its legal standards and its widely accepted value system without imposing this framework. This is successfully achieved through methodologies that reflect the praxis of emancipatory, or transformative, learning as well as sensitivities to local context and culture.

The case studies presented in this book represent examples of both. In chapter 3, Blundell describes a primary school unit that links the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States with the history of Bay Area human rights activism as exemplified in the Black Panther Party. Delaney (chapter 6) as well as Fix and Kumar (chapter 8) have developed curriculum at the middle school and high school levels, respectively, that use the UDHR to help students develop a critical consciousness about human rights and oppression, drawing on the students’ own life experiences. These chapters illustrate the impact of HRE when brought down to the local level and when integrated with students’ daily realities.

The Right to Education and HRE

The right to education is a central human right and an end in itself: it ensures that humans can reach their full potential and claim their other rights, and it offers protection and structure in times of instability, aiding those most vulnerable, especially children, to enjoy their basic needs and build the best foundations for a better future. The right to HRE, and related potential content, is an aspect of this right to education.

States are duty bound, as stipulated in the UDHR, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and in other human rights instruments, to ensure that education is aimed at strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. HRE is an international movement to promote social change in accordance with the human rights values of freedom, equality, and justice through awareness about human rights and the procedures that exist for the redress of violations of these rights.

The United Nations defines HRE as,

all educational, training, information, awareness-raising and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and thus contributing, inter alia, to the prevention of human rights violations and abuses by providing persons with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behaviors, to empower them to contribute to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights. (United Nations General Assembly, 2011, Art. 2, para 1)

One of the outstanding outcomes of the efforts of human rights educators since the 1990s has been to reclaim the practice of human rights so that it is no longer the purview of only lawyers. This has come about through linking the message of human rights to social change efforts that are happening at the grassroots level in communities and through the socialization that takes place in schooling systems.

Beginning with the adoption of the UDHR in 1948, the United Nations and its specialized agencies formally recognized the right of citizens to be informed about the rights and freedoms contained in the documents ratified by their countries—the right to HRE itself. Since then, numerous policy documents developed by UN-affiliated agencies, international policymaking bodies, regional human rights bodies, and national human rights agencies have referenced HRE, proposing that human rights themes should be present in schooling.

Although in 1974 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a document explicitly supporting education for human rights (UNESCO, 1974), it took two more decades before interest in HRE would be revived in any serious manner within the United Nations. The World Conference on Human Rights, which took place in Vienna in 1993, is considered to be a landmark event for recognizing HRE and was followed by the establishment of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education 1995–2004 (United Nations General Assembly, 1994). In 2005, with the conclusion of the UN Decade for HRE, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights launched an ongoing and more focused World Programme with a Plan of Action for Human Rights Education, which aspires to elicit improved cooperation from governments, as well as cross-cutting support from UN bodies (United Nations General Assembly, 2005). The first phase of the UN World Programme for Human Rights Education asks governments to ensure that HRE is integrated within the schooling sector (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2005).

In 2011, the General Assembly passed the strongest policy instrument yet—the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (DHRET). Although falling short of establishing a judiciable right to education, the DHRET says: “Everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms and should have access to human rights education and training” (United Nations General Assembly, 2011, Art. 2, para 1). The Declaration also reaffirms that states have the primary responsibility to promote and ensure HRE, though in practice it is civil society organizations that have engaged most enthusiastically in HRE. Advances in international HRE policy are in large part due to the establishment of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the mid-1990s and the launching of the Decade for Human Rights Education. These initiatives coincided with the strengthening of the human rights movement worldwide in the 1990s through a dramatic increase in the number of human rights organizations. Many of these nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) began to carry out human rights education and training, particularly in the immediate post-authoritarian environments of Central and Eastern Europe and South Africa. In the decade before in Latin America and the Philippines, grassroots organizations had been carrying out HRE in the nonformal education sector. These earlier experiences with popular education methodologies influenced international HRE practices, in particular through the writings of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

Key Features of HRE

Human rights education and training comprise all educational, training, information, awareness raising, and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. HRE is strategically viewed as contributing to the prevention of human rights violations and abuses by providing persons with knowledge, skills, and understanding and by developing their attitudes and behaviors to empower them to contribute to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights (United Nations General Assembly, 2011, Art. 2, para 1). This definition is not specific to the school sector and, in fact, the United Nations proposes HRE for all sectors of society as well as part of a “lifelong learning” process for individuals (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1997). This definition is quite broad, which can be seen as an asset, as human rights educators are then challenged to develop programming specifically suited for the learning environment where they are working.

This book illustrates such choices made by University of San Francisco graduate students working in educational settings from the primary school level to higher education. In chapter 5, Adamian demonstrates how the human rights lens can be brought into a seventh grade life science classroom by applying bioethics to core science concepts and using methodologies that reflect democratic practice. In chapter 10, Padilla presents the ways in which her community college sociology course adopts a human rights framework to engage students in service-learning activities with vulnerable populations. HRE encompasses education: (a) about human rights, which includes providing knowledge and understanding of human rights norms and principles, the values that underpin them and the mechanisms for their protection; (b) through human rights, which includes learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners; and (c) for human rights, which includes empowering persons to enjoy and exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others (United Nations General Assembly, 2011, Art. 2, para 2). These three aspects of HRE emphasize that the processes of and conditions for teaching and learning are of equal importance in supporting the “learning” of human rights and the internalization and application of the associated values.

HRE has both legal and normative dimensions. The legal dimension deals with content about international human rights standards as embodied in the UDHR and in treaties and covenants to which countries subscribe. These standards encompass civil and political rights, as well as social, economic, and cultural rights. In recent years, as mentioned earlier, collective and environmental rights have been added to this evolving framework. This law-oriented approach recognizes the importance of monitoring and accountability in ensuring that governments uphold the letter and spirit of human rights obligations.

The legal content can be introduced beginning in secondary school, although at the upper primary school level, children can be introduced to human rights in a developmentally appropriate manner: that they and all children have rights related to their human dignity that have been written into law in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989), that their government has “signed up” for this treaty, and that it involves everyone knowing about children’s rights and helping to promote them—including children in relation to their classmates and others in the school. In chapter 4, Brennan demonstrates how fiction and nonfiction readings carried out by young children can be used to foster discussion and understanding of basic needs and an adequate standard of living (UDHR, Article 25).

The normative content of HRE has to do with crosscutting principles that can be applied in the daily life of the school. Education should be provided in a way that is consistent with human rights, including equal respect for every child, opportunities for meaningful participation in decisions that affect their interests, freedom from all forms of violence, and respect for language, culture, and religion (UNICEF and UNESCO, 2011, p. 4). Schools and classrooms that embody HRE foster participation, self-expression, communication, cooperation and teamwork, and discipline processes that affirm the human dignity of students and educational personnel. The human rights principles of equality and nondiscrimination, participation and empowerment, as well as transparency and accountability, together constitute a value system that can be applied in daily practice in the classroom and in the policies and practices of the overall schooling system, as part of a rights-based approach.

HRE provides skills, knowledge, and motivation to individuals to transform their own lives and realities so that they reflect human rights norms and values. For this reason, interactive, learner-centered methods are widely promoted, consistent with the praxis of emancipatory and transformative education. The following pedagogies are representative of those promoted by HRE practitioners:

• Experiential and activity-centered: involving the solicitation of learners’ prior knowledge and offering activities that draw out learners’ experiences and knowledge

• Problem-posing: challenging the learners’ prior knowledge

• Participative: encouraging collective efforts in clarifying concepts, analyzing themes, and engaging in the activities

• Dialectical: requiring learners to compare their perspectives and v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I   Overview of Human Rights Education
• Part II   Pedagogical Tools
• Afterword: Will Human Rights Education Be Decolonizing?
• Notes on Contributors
• Index