Human Rights Education
What it means to have a “school-based approach to human rights
education” and a “human rights-based approach to schooling”
By Felisa Tibbitts
There are two articles in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that mention education directly. Article 28 defines education as a right and Article 29 comments that education should assist the child in developing her or his “personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.” Another purpose of schools, according to the convention, is to develop respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. We know one thing: to truly understand and promote human rights, one has to live them out in relation to others.
The School for Human Rights in Brooklyn has been open for a year, so the full answer to the question “what does it mean to be a school for human rights” can’t be fully answered yet. What we can share are the efforts and aspirations of the members of the school community from the first year about how human rights values are already alive in the school environment.
The core values of the school “dignity, respect and responsibility” are the driving force behind the school. In leadership team who founded the school were quite clear that these principles did not mean ONLY exposing students to human rights values and content in the classroom. The human rights framework was intended to create a child-centered school where these values informed how students learned, how they were treated by their teachers, how they treated one another, and how they would take their rightful place in the world, with a special sense of mission for promoting social justice. A tall order, no doubt, but one that has placed human rights front and center in the school.
The articles by teachers in this issue will illustrate in detail how they are bringing human rights alive in their classrooms – through examples they use, questions they raise, through active discussion, critical thinking and reflection, project-based work and enriching field trips. Teachers have told me that the challenge for them has not been learning about human rights content itself but in figuring out how to present human rights in a way that is meaningful and empowering for their students. We human rights educators know that one of the key challenges is not only helping to make human rights less abstract but also having students fall in love with the idea of human rights.
The principal and teachers at The School for Human Rights believe that human rights should come alive explicitly in organized learning experiences but these experiences include access to education itself. The staff is personally committed to the right to education. This means doing what it takes to help students learn and achieve, and enjoy the benefits of their right to education.
The rights-based approach to schooling that the school aspires to includes the following characteristics, which you might identify as being core to school-based approaches to human rights in general. These are taken from a framework developed by UNICEF. (1)
- Recognizes of the rights of every child.
- Sees the whole child in a broad context. The staff is concerned about what happens to children before they enter the school system (in terms of health, for example) and once they are back home.
- Is child-centered, meaning that there is an emphasis on the psycho-social well being of the child.
- Is gender sensitive and girl-friendly. Staff is focused on reducing constraints to gender equity, eliminating gender stereotypes and promoting achievement of both girls and boys.
- Promotes quality learning outcomes. Students are encouraged to think critically, ask questions, express their opinions, and master basic skills.
- Provides education based on the reality of children’s lives. The students have unique identities and prior experiences in the school system, their community and families, which can be taken into account by teachers in order to promote student learning and development.
- Acts to ensure inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity for all children. Stereotyping, exclusion and discrimination are not tolerated.
- Promotes student rights and responsibilities within the school environment as well as activism within their community at large.
- Enhances teacher capacity, morale, commitment and status by ensuring that the teachers have sufficient training, recognition and compensation.
- Is family focused. The staff attempt to work with and strengthen families, helping children, parents and teachers to establish collaborative partnerships.
These are abstractions, but they are an organizing framework that the educator can apply to her or his own school and to the many examples that you will read about in this issue of Article 26. These principles can also be questions that we can use in evaluating a particular practice in the school. Is our discipline policy child-centered? Does it enhance student rights and responsibilities? Are there sufficient opportunities for student participation in the school? Is this participation meaningful and student-led?
I hope that we will begin to recognize that human rights in schools is not merely about education in the classroom, but a way of life in the school. This is not something created out of the good will of a few teachers. It is a commitment from leadership and a critical mass of teachers in the schools and, thus, is rather rare. Although one cannot expect that every school or even a large number of schools will be able to commit themselves to incorporating human rights values to the degree we see at The School for Human Rights, we will learn a lot from this school in Brooklyn. I believe that this school and its staff will show us new ways for human rights values to be creatively infused in the classroom and culture of the school.
These are examples that can be shared among human rights educators but can also speak to policy-makers who are naturally interested in promoting access, quality and success in education. The School for Human Rights will help to demonstrate that a commitment to the dignity and welfare of each child through a human rights framework will take us deeper and further in being able to provide a quality education for children. My hope is that the first graduating class of 2008 will demonstrate a high proportion of academic achievement AS WELL AS a class of young people who have a critical human rights consciousness about their world and a sense of personal responsibility in promoting social justice. Check in with us in three years.
(1) Programme Division/Education, UNICEF. A Framework for Rights-Based, Child-Friendly Schools. Accessed on July 10th, 2005.