[hr-education] Re: Theoretical framework, legal bases and history of HRE

Dear all,

I find Ms. Ellie Keen's candid concerns very interesting and valid. She
has posed the central questions in HRE, and also the anguishing dilemmas
all of us in HRE field face, either in curriculum formulation or choosing
pedagogical methods or in any other aspect. The central objective for all
of us is to make learning lead to praxis. If so, the practitioners of HRE,
the teachers and students, getting involved in the political struggles of
the day at sometime or the other is unavoidable. The ultimate goal is the
dissolution of all systems of domination. Only in such a world, the true
realisation of human rights is possible. However, as Ms. Keen points out,
such an eventuality will bring the practitioners into head-on collision
with the powers and funders. So, how do we work through the sytem and
around the system, may be to subvert it from within?

I think we need to draw a line somewhere between HRE and activism, per se,
if at least for purposes of strategy. We also need to keep in mind the age
and level of our students. We, in India, are initially taking HRE to
children in the age group of 11-14. What is our purpose in taking HRE to
children in this age group? It is to raise future soldiers for human
rights battles, to sow the seeds that would someday come to fruition. The
hegemonic systems all over the world have mastered the art of ideological
control and do this very cleverly and very effectively. The powers of
global domination today, for instance, are virtually programming little
children in distant corners of India or Zambia or Cambodia and gradually
make them internalise the neo-liberal ideology and the world view of
imperialist domination. When these children grow up and take over reins of
govt in their respective countries, they would be pliable puppets turning
their sovereign countries into client states of imperialism. We, who are
opposed to such a world view and hegemonic practices, cannot afford
suicidal naivite.

We should, perhaps, start with providing the students with tools to
crtically understand, analyse, demystify systems of domination, not by
taking up distant and hence innocuous examples alone. The immediately
political need also to figure in the discourse. However, premature
plunging into activism especially in the case of children, perhaps, can be
avoided. The issues of rights violations and violence around them should
be subjected to intense discussion, without pushing them into immediate
action. Where the line is to be drawn at varying times can only be left to
the judgement of the teacher. I say this with great hesitation and ask
myself whether I am cloaking dishonesty and cowardice in fine words. I
feel we need to understand the role of the education sub-system in the
totality of the universe. Childhood and adolescence are the periods when
the society, by consensus, decides to release its children from immediate
life's obligations like work, to develop in them values, perspectives,
skills, commitments for adulthood.

In the same way, activists need to avoid the impatience to push children
to become our comrades in struggle. This is also because we the adults
cannot arrogate to ourselves the right and the authority to make their
life's choices for them. We cannot deprive them of their birth right to
make choices for their lives. If we do so, there will be no difference
between practitioners of hegemonic thought control and us, who stand for
freedom of the humen being as the ultimate, inalienable, non-negotiable
value. History has shown that revolutionary movements that come to power,
sometimes end up in authoritarian thought control, may be initially as
tactics to defend the revolution from fierce onslaughts of the enemies,
but ultimately do not know where to stop and end up devouring the children
of the revolution.

I am digressing. On the other hand, we cannot sweep reality, its inhuman
horrors under the carpet when we are involved in education, which is
nothing, if not the pursuit of knowledge. We also need to realise that our
students do not come to us as empty vessels into which ready made
knowledge is to be poured through classroom transactions. They come with
considerable cognitive and cultural capital. In the case of children
belonging to deprived groups, particularly, their early socialisation
takes place through observing and being objects of rights denials of the
most heartless kind. In the Indian situation I can say that 80% of our
children grow up suffering hunger, poverty, exploitation, watching the
daily struggles of their parents and communities for survival, the
ruthless arm of the state breaking into the privacy of the home to drag
away the father, mother, uncle true to the class character of the state,
in defence of the powerful. When reality is so brutish, and if it is not
discused and exposed in the classroom, the children are left with feeling
that reality has no place in the classroom. Because what is imparted in
the classroom is third hand knowledge, while what they experience is first
hand and naturally has primacy.

In the Institute of Human Rights in Education, from where I write, we have
been teaching HRE to Dalit (the former untouchables) and tribal children
in the age group of 11-14, in about 250 schools spread across an area
larger than Britain, for the past 3 years. During our evaluation process,
we have found the students saying that they like the human rights classes
much better than others, because "for the first time we learn about
ourselves." It is very important to make this linkage. When it is done,
the students will apply what they learn to their life's situations and
will draw the energy and the tools, with which to fight human rights
battles when they grow up and also the capability to forge solidarities
that are vital for these battles.

I am not sure I have succeeded in saying what I set out to answer. 

Vasanthi Devi, 
Chairperson
Institute of Human Rights Education
India.

 

On 10 October 2005, Ellie Keen wrote:

<snip>
>
>In general, I wanted to address some of Abraham's excellent thoughts
>about HRE as a 'network of political power', capable of influencing 
>politics on a day-to-day basis. I agree with him wholeheartedly, but 
>I was concerned that the remark did not provoke more debate (and 
>disagreement). I don't actually believe that most people engage in HRE in 
>this way: I think that we are hindered by politics for various pragmatic,
>strategic and sometimes ethical reasons, and that most HRE tries to avoid the
>important political questions. I strongly believe that we need to find a way 
>around this, and I have a small concern that 'mainstreaming' HRE can blind 
>us to certain problems that not only should not be ignored, but that 
>should actually be first and foremost in our minds.
>
<snip>

 

======== Global Human Rights Education listserv =======
Send mail intended for the list to <      >.
Archives of the list can be found at:
{http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-education/ }
**You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this
item, but please retain the original and listserv source.