Human Rights Education
Who “builds” and cares for them?
In Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Walter Parker wrote:
Democratic living is not given in nature, like gold or water. It is a social construct, like a skyscraper, school playground, or new idea. Accordingly, there can be no democracy without its builders, caretakers, and change agents: democratic citizens. These citizens are constructs, too. Who “builds” and cares for them? (i)
I teach and care for citizens and the teachers of future citizens, and I think seriously about my work. Walter Parker’s question framed my presentation for the panel, “Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching in Today’s Political Climate.” My work as a teacher and now as a teacher educator has led me to think about how teachers choose to approach their teaching. What kinds of pedagogy does a teacher imagine as possible? How does a teacher change and grow?
In the end, my interest lies in understanding and building the most complex, rich and possible experiences for children in our schools. In order to understand the experiences that children have in school, my colleagues and I have begun to conceptualize how the lives of social studies teachers are filled with boundaries, expectations, challenges and possibilities. My remarks at the Summit focused on the boundaries we have identified to ideal experiences for our pre-service teachers and the in-service teachers with whom we work. Ultimately, we are concerned because of the inequitable learning experiences we see for children and the limiting of possibilities we see for teachers who are tightly bound to state and school policy. We find disturbing and limiting boundaries rooted in the context of public-education, and in the experiences our teacher-education students have in ethnically, socio-economically, linguistically, and culturally diverse urban classrooms in Texas.
Boundary 1: Current experiences and practices in Texas schools are shaped, in many cases, by the legislation of No Child Left Behind and its historical roots in Texas. (ii) We have the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), developed in 1995, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), which is now history, replaced by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). In 2003, the state’s first administration of the high-stakes TAKS exam, necessary for a high school diploma, predictions for student failure ran as high as 30%-50%.
Boundary 2: There is often a focus on numeracy and literacy. Social studies teaching, learning experiences, and materials are often absent or limited. This is particularly evident in the primary grades and in some of the economically, linguistically, and ethnically diverse urban schools where many of our students are placed in pre-service experiences. These are in the classrooms where many of our students begin (and often shortly end) their teaching careers.
Boundary 3: Texas has a problem with school completion. In other words, children become lost in the system. Numerically, 146,714 students disappeared from public high school enrollment during the period of 1996-97 to 1999-00 as compared to 86,272 during the period of 1982-83 to 1985-86. Hispanic students and Black students have had considerably higher attrition rates than White students. Hispanic students are lost from enrollment at even higher rates than either White students or Black students.(iii) Currently, in the midst of heated controversy, the Texas Education Agency is working to clarify the codes used to distinguish what happens to all of the many students who do not finish high school. Too many children are disserved by the system.
Boundary 4: The political and educational climate creates limitations on teaching and learning opportunities. Simply, our students do not wish to teach, or feel compelled or prepared to teach under these limitiations—nor do cooperating teachers wish to support interns and novices—in a grade level where TAKS is administered. Thus, teaching opportunities become limited.
We find that teacher’s ability to be creative and to teach rich and complex content to the needs and interests of their students is also limited. This is a grave concern. Writing in “Democracy in Education” in the volume Education Today, John Dewey wrote:
The system which makes no great demands on originality, upon invention, upon the continuous expression of individuality, works automatically to put and keep the more incompetent teachers in the school. It puts them there because, by a natural law of spiritual gravitation, the best minds are drawn to the places where they can work most effectively. The best minds are not especially likely to be drawn where there is danger that they may submit to conditions which no self-respecting intelligence likes to put up with; and where their time and energy are likely to be so occupied with details of external conformity that they have no opportunity for free and full play of their own vigor (1940, 67) (iv)
Looking at these boundaries and seeing their multiple limitations, using the lens of a human rights educator, I become deeply disturbed. In the best interests of our students and with the human right to education in mind, we should choose to become more politically active in removing the boundaries around quality educational opportunities for children and teachers. What if we began asking an elemental question, and one suggested as a focus of Amnesty International’s Rights in Sight educational materials: Who can define dignity? Are the children in America’s schools treated with dignity? (v) As human rights educators suggest, we can use human rights education as both a lens through which to observe the world and a methodology for teaching and leading others.
At the Summit, as I listened to speakers and looked out at a clear New York sky, I began to think even more about where teachers, children, and citizens are located as they learn and live. These thoughts transferred to my thinking about cultural and geographic aspects of social studies. I thought about the context of our times, and how this context locates us, ideologically, politically, and pedagogically. How an educator becomes politically active is dependent on her situatedness. But, it is clear. We must start where we are, and for those of us working at the university level, our work begins with future and in-service teachers. We must help teachers working now to know that the problems they face in classrooms are recognized and valued. We must help teachers entering the profession at this time to recognize the disparities and the ethical and moral quandaries that will surround their work, but also we must provide them with the means to hold hope and find possibility. Through these teachers we can and must reach out to the children in America’s classrooms.
i) -- Walter Parker. Teaching democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003).
ii) -- Angela Valenzuela. Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999).
iii) -- Statistics for attrition rates in Texas by year, county, and ethnicity. http://www.idra.org/Research/dout2001.htm
iv) -- John Dewey. Education today. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1940).
v) -- RIGHTS in SIGHT: A Focus on Human Rights in Education, Amnesty International, USA, Human Rights Education New York, NY http://www.amnestyusa.org/education/projects/rightsinsight/