Human Rights Education


Challenges And Opportunities For Teaching In Today's Political Climate

Cynthia Tyson, The Ohio State University



Often I tell a September 11th story, now two years in passing, of four public school teachers who were victims of that day's attacks. They were passengers traveling with their students on the plane that was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. In addition teachers in the cataclysmic zone of what is now called Ground Zero in New York City walked up to 9,000 students across the Brooklyn Bridge to safety.

These teachers were people who for a moment in time embodied the sprit of what it means to be human rights educators. Some of them stayed with "their" students for up to 3 days while parents, caregivers, or social service agencies arrived to claim children. Some sang songs with preschoolers as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Some told stories they had read over and over again to children sleeping in their arms, hoping, in some cases against all odds, that parent(s) or caregivers would pick the children up.

While the horrific events of September 11th left an indelible mark on the minds, hearts, and memories of the world, this was especially apparent to me during the Human Rights Education Summit, held in New York City this summer. My thoughts about the challenges and opportunities for teaching in today's political climate were juxtaposed with my many colleagues who day in and day out embody one of the tenets of the Declaration of Human Rights for children—a right to education.

As the fourth speaker on the panel of esteemed colleagues, many of my words had already been spoken. My colleagues discussed the philosophical rationales of human rights education: national and global citizenship, social justice, and democracy. Each colleague also discussed how curricular infusion is a natural links to human rights education; particularly in history, the social studies, and multicultural education. For example, William Fernekes, a fellow panelist, discussed how school culture and the principles of human rights education could be linked by:

In this time of high stakes testing and standards, issues-related curriculum may take a back seat to the development of relevant and reflexive pedagogy as a part of agendas in today's classroom.

The Human Rights Education Summit invited to center stage an opportunity for intellectual discourse. Each session highlighted the many successful ways human rights education is emerging as an integral part of classroom teaching and teacher-education programs.

However, I was asked to think of ways human rights education could serve as a remedy for the challenges presented by this political climate. My answer to the question posed led me to a process of looking back to move forward. The question moved me to remember my grandmother's home remedies. Historically in the African American community, for example, were many home remedies. Many of us know that the burgeoning field of homeopathic medicine is often "rooted" (no pun intended) in these remedies. Today medical scientific research has validated that collard greens (a staple of the enslaved Africans in the South) and the "pot liquor" (the juice from cooking greens) are a rich source of Vitamin C. I remembered that peppermint leaves, when steeped in hot water, could help to reduce gastrointestinal discomforts. Now we often search out and find herbal teas found in restaurants and coffee shops.

It was in my juxtaposition of the past and present that I looked for gaps, reading in between the lines, hearing the silences. These silences acknowledged the lack of a focus on historical connections to current and significant decisions. A historical connection for example, that finds human rights education sometimes overlooking the historical fact that in these “united states,” not too long ago, there existed an institution of racism that was supported in American jurisprudence that denied the status of "human" to many of its residents. This historical connection reminds us of the ancestors who were enslaved, interpreted, and de-humanized. Many children in American classrooms today are descendants of the humans who experienced these events in particular and other human rights violations in general

It is my observation that until we create a bridge from the localized historical to prospective action in contemporary times, we will continue to have teachers and children in 21st century classrooms not relating to the many human right violations taking place internationally. The old African proverb states, "You are because I am" embodies that notion. Our fates are tied together, and none of us can stand idly by. As my colleagues continued to grapple with this and other issues over those two days, it became apparent to me that shoulder to shoulder those of us in the social studies and those who are working for the realization of human rights globally can be change agents and enact successful pedagogies and practice. I look forward to the continuing opportunities.

Over two days, high above the streets of New York City, 180 people drew together around a dialogue. We considered the nature of schooling in the era of No Child Left Behind, and it is fair to say that each participant at the Summit became more of an advocate for human rights education. As ideas where exchanged, perspectives explored, questions asked, resources discussed, and the next steps debated, our future work began. The educators, educator-activists, community representatives, academics, administrators, NGO representatives and politicians who came together considered the human right to education as a way to analyze our current challenges and configure possibilities. The opportunity to participate in the Summit challenged us to work better and harder. Perhaps most importantly, we are encouraged to work with a more complex understanding of the dilemmas people have created and the possibilities that people can create.

Social studies educators have an edge and a problem. We must begin at the heart of our matter, the rich content and complex history of human beings and our interactions with each other and our world. Here, at the heart of our content, are the rights of humans, and the ways in which we value—or disavow one another. Just as a test cannot assess the range of a child’s experiences, we cannot simplify the complexity of human existence—but rather, we would suggest, we must seek out ways to create dignity and ownership. Starting when children are very young, in the small places Eleanor Roosevelt asks us to consider, we must search out the complex relationships that exist between people and ask children to think about how we live together and commune.

But, we have a problem. With a focus on numeracy and literacy, as we find so often, teachers must be smart and perhaps subversive. They must create a space for the kinds of interactions that wise social studies practice creates. If, as Walter Parker so eloquently suggests, “democratic living is not given in nature, like gold or water. It is a social construct, like a skyscraper, school playground, or new idea,” we must look with new eyes for ways in which to use the tools we know about and can create. We must use our voices in new ways and speak in a language that seeks justice and places human rights at its center.

Ideally, we educators who hold the democratic ideal must “disrupt the discourse” of what has become preposterously ordinary in these times—to position our work in the possible.(i) Social studies educators must be right in the thick of the action. It’s where we belong. In closing, we would like to suggest that we must hold hope near, seeing its resource and power to foster positive change. As former Senator Paul Simon shared with us at the Summit, “The great division is between people who have hope and those that do not.”

What will our future look like? Karen Robison, HRE Program Director for Amnesty International, USA suggests that the future is dependent upon our will:

I hope, and after the summit I believe, that our future work will be more inclusive, will gain the attention of more people, will set very high goals and expectations, and will always remember that in the final analysis, our work is about the world and our future. It’s about the positive steps that we can take to transform the world into a place where human rights are universally understood and respected. It’s about our will to push these changes. And, in the end, it’s about a child. A child who is full of potential and deserves nothing less than to have that potential developed to the greatest possible level.

i) -- Lather, P. (2003, April). This IS Your Father's Paradigm: Government Intrusion and the Case of Qualitative Research in Education. Invited Guba Lecture at AERA Special Interest Group: Qualitative Research. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL. Retrieved online (in PDF format)