[hr-education] Re: Human rights-based approaches to education

Dear Friends,
 
Indeed it is difficult to participate in all the discussions that re going
on. I often write a direct reponse as the one to Clare Magil about
changing the "rights approach" to the "human rights approach" and changes
were made.
 
It is our responsibility to take this very important burden we all
undertook to become human rights educators and never beleive that we have
the answer.. but many questions and often some insight (I still say that
we do not know in depth what human rights education and learning is all
about.. hoping for such investigation and research to start soon.)
 
Some of you wrote about poor and needy people .. and how we do HRE in such
situations -- is this what we need to do? -- Indeed when you have to lift
a person from a flood or feed people when there is a draught ...-this
comes first- but what if people knew that they are not getting charity but
what is coming them as a human rights birthright and recognized as
such...-- the world will be different.
 
Yes! As we are now trying to develop clinics for such poor people to bring
forth human rights literacy and legal empowerment.
 
In PDHRE's human rights cities we did see how very poor women were able to
overturn discriminatory health policies -- and one empowerment leads to
another,
 
Allow me to add to the discussion with a paragraph I have sent a while ago
but take the liberty to sedn it again:
 
A human rights educator is a person, a women and a men, who is capable of
evoking critical thinking and systemic analysis with a gender perspective
about political, economic , social cultural and civil concern within a
human rights framework that leads to action.
 
You may say this is too complicated for teachers and/or children .. too
overwhelming.
 
I have worked with children all over the world, whom I met in the
communities I have vested .. and learned how to de compartmentalized human
rights which they understood it as a way of life...-- and have been able
to analyze their concerns within a human rights framework..and planned
action to make their school a human rights school..
 
Human rights is the way we have to be in the world with one another and
with our authorities and they with us.. there is no other option.
 
If this is correct it our responsibility to know and our humility to guide
us that both chidden and teachers know and understand when injustice is
present and justice must be pursued. (Issues such as poverty, patriarchy
-- as complicated as it is, but of which we all, women and men alike are
oppressed by.)
 
Yes the teacher has to understand that human rights is a political
"ideology" in the sense that it is informing our being in the world in
dignity with others. The word political needs to be discussed .. the word
democracy needs to be considered in the context as a delivery system of
human rights. and of course "citizenship" as one that have each one of us
implement respect and claim human rights.
 
Teachers also have to undreamt that their main responsibility is to evoke
thinking, which evokes analysis..all children are capable of it before
they are discourages.. but can the teachers??
 
I have so with my own grandchildren at 8 and 7 in their classrooms who
interpreted the word dignity to me beyond the "Me Me" syndrome in a most
sophisticated way .. and they are NOT "geniuses".
 
Every part of the life of the children who are learning human rights is
about human rights.. and so is the lives of the teachers.. Thus the
holistic vision and mission of human rights must underlie the teaching of
human rights and be presented as such .. but first teachers must
understand what human rights is -its moral genesis and conceptually- and
what human rights are politically...
 
If we have such a discussion, of what is the holistic vision of human
rights.. which I believe we all know but must internalize we will be
better human rights teachers.
 
And last but not least.. you must love the chidden you teach and also
learn from them,.. you must RESPECT and TRUST them if they are to take
human rights seriously and not just as another subject in which they excel
or fail. (The Children's Convention asserts that "love" is a human right.)
 
So as some of you have said so well, we must stop being technical and
merely informative. Children know if we really mean it -- even if we share
with them the most lofty ideas. Indeed as was said: it is the body
language and feeling that we project .. and the way we treat the children
if they are to underrating that human rights give us moral and political
guidance which is protected by international law.
 
Thank you to all for paying attention to my many words,
 
--with a smile,
 
Shula

Shulamith Koenig
PDHRE
People's Movement for Human Rights Learning
526 West 111th St. Suite 4E, 
New York, NY 10025, USA
Tel: 1-212-749-3156 * Fax 1-212-666-6325
E mail : pdhre@igc.org {mailto:pdhre@igc.org} 

 

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