[hr-education] Re: Goals and objectives of HRE

Dear all

A response to some of the responses to my message – for which I am
grateful – and a few thoughts on motivation. Yes – I agree with Vasanthi
both that a great deal must be left to the discretion of the teacher, and
also that our aim should not be to get young people out onto the streets
today (though it probably is our aim that they should go out tomorrow!).

That, however, does not mean that we should avoid discussing issues which
might send them on to the street, nor that we should (necessarily) avoid
talking about those issues within a frame of reference that hasn't been
approved by the government. Others have already noted the problems
associated with the fact that young people are bombarded with 'approved'
values and 'approved' versions of events, most of which are highly
simplistic, and ignore any information deemed to be controversial. It
must, surely, be one of the aims of HRE that it presents a fuller picture
of human rights related issues than can be obtained through the mass
media.

Whether that will be enough to motivate is a quite another matter. I
rather suspect it won't, and for me that is by far the most troubling
question facing HRE. My experience is that both theorists and
practitioners tend to devote a great deal of attention to developing
awareness, concern or empathy for human rights victims, and in relative
terms, they devote very little to motivation. I think the balance needs to
shift.

If opinion polls are to be believed, a huge number of people do feel
concerned about human rights issues, and they do care for and empathise
with others. But a very small proportion of them are motivated to try to
influence a change; and an even smaller number are prepared to keep trying
to influence a change, if their first efforts are not rewarded. Yet it is
the second of these that increasingly counts, because politicians are
mostly, by now, wise to the fact that a single demonstration, or a single
letter is sufficient for the mass of the population to feel that their
conscience is salved and their anger dissipated; and wise to the fact that
neither a single demonstration nor a single letter is a real threat to
their position.

Here, too, it seems to me that we have something to learn from the
activists. Whether or not we see our HRE lessons leading out onto the
street, still we need to address the question (through those lessons) of
what it would take for concern to be translated into action.

I am hesitant again to mention an issue that perhaps my compatriots regard
as too 'political' to have a place here. I have to admit to being very
surprised that the Iraq war has not been an issue of discussion on this
list-serve, when it seems to me to be a matter of such deep shame, and
therefore a matter that should, almost before all others, be discussed by
human rights educators (at least in the aggressor countries). But perhaps
others on the list-serve either disagree with my interpretation, or regard
human rights education as a legitimate subject for discussion, but not
human rights.

Anyway: despite being hesitant about raising the subject, I shall
nonetheless raise it (again). Let those who would object, object – only
out loud, please.

Apparently the majority of the British population were against going to
war, and continued to oppose it even after it began. So they were
'concerned' (admittedly, their reasons for being concerned were often a
result of self-interest rather than empathy). But out of that concerned
majority, only a small minority were motivated to act once, or maybe
twice; and out of that small minority, an even smaller minority have been
motivated to continue to act. I would see that as a pretty poor result.
Indeed, had the entire British population been through a course of HRE (if
only!) then I would also see it as good evidence that that course had been
poorly designed or implemented. In other words, a failure of HRE. (Would
others see it as a failure, I wonder? Or is it only the responsibility of
HRE to raise concern? )

I won't address in detail the complex issue of motivation here - not
least, because I simply don't have answers. But I have found the following
two authors inspiring for the questions they raise about this issue. I
would be grateful for other people’s suggestions of different areas that
it might be worth exploring.

1. Very interesting work has been done by Chris Rose (formerly campaign
director at Greenpeace) on applying Maslow based research to identify
'motivational triggers' in different types of people. His question is a
campaigner's one: given that people are (at the moment) of such-and-such
types, what will motivate them to do such-and-such actions (now)? Quite
apart from the important consequences his work has for campaigners and
activists, it also raises a number of questions for the educationalist.
Firstly, it reminds us of the need to recognise different motivational
triggers in different audiences; and secondly, it suggests that we may be
able to (or need to) try to alter those very motivational triggers. I
won't go into more detail here, because he sets it out well in various
papers and those who are interested would do better to read the original.
I would suggest his paper 'A Tool for Motivation Based Communication
Strategy' for starters. (This can be found at
{http://www.campaignstrategy.org/maslow_campaign.pdf }.)

2. Less recent, but I think no less relevant, is the work of the
psychologist Stanley Milgram. I am sure many people are familiar with his
fascinating experiments on 'obedience', carried out in the 1960s, and the
astonishing results that they revealed. For those that are not familiar
with the experiments – approximately 70% of experimental subjects, taken
from random samples of the population, were prepared to inflict what they
believed to be severe electric shocks on other people. The experimental
subjects were well aware of the consequences of their actions, and there
were no threatening sanctions for simply refusing to inflict the electric
shocks. Milgram concluded that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs,
and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a
terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects
of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out
actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively
few people have the resources needed to resist authority."

For the purposes of HRE, this raises two interesting ideas: firstly, the
extent to which – perhaps - we should be educating for non-obedience. I
say that only partly in jest: think of 'obedience' as not just obedience
in actions, but as submission, compliance, denial of autonomy and
individuality.

The second idea concerns agency and responsibility. On the basis of
follow-up experiments, Milgram showed that an even greater proportion of
the sample were prepared to play an essential but subsidiary role in
inflicting pain on other human beings. In other words, where they did not
feel their own role to be the direct (or final) cause of the shock being
administered, they had even fewer qualms about carrying it out. Milgram
suggests that "there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one is
confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil
act. The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated."

I see that as a useful analogy for the concerned majority's refusal to put
themselves out and act against human wrongs, despite the fact that their
(our!) passivity is an essential – if subsidiary – link in the act of
inflicting pain on fellow human beings. As educators, we perhaps need to
highlight the complexity of these processes more, drawing attention to the
different mechanisms and links in the chain, and indicating the essential
role played by passive (and obedient) observers. (A shortened version of
Milgram’s conclusions can be found in his article "The Perils of
Obedience" which is at
{http://home.swbell.net/revscat/perilsOfObedience.html }.)

 
----------------------------------------------

Ellie Keen
London
UK

 

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