[hr-education] Re: Human rights-based approach to schooling

Dear Felisa, dear Jessamyn:

I have read with much admiration, inspiration and motivation about the
School for Human Rights in New York. It looks to me not only an
interesting experience but also a challenging one. We as human rights
educators can learn from this experience a lot. We can learn how human
rights can be infused in the total curriculum, in the overt and hidden
curriculum; we can learn how to transfer human rights knowledge from the
abstract into the concrete, from theory into practice; we can learn how to
be consistent between the human rights discourses and its application in
day to day life.

I would like, if you allow me, to formulate some questions:

1. How do you prepare the students to face their cultural, social,
economical and political context, that shows that human rights are
violated? In other words how do they face the contradiction between what
is happening in the school and what is happening in their near and broad
world and society ?

2. Are the the teachers prepared?

3. Why the experience is developed in a poor setting? Is human rights only
violated in the poor communities? What about the afluent communities?

Again I want to congratulate for such challenging experience.

With love

Abraham Magendzo


 

On Monday, 13 March 2006, Felisa Tibbitts wrote:

I would like to elaborate on the contribution last week from my colleague
Jessamyn Waldman about The School for Human Rights in New York. Forgive me
if this message is a bit long, but I would like to use the opportunity to
expand upon the importance of a human rights-based approach to schooling
as we are trying to carry it out in the school.

As Jessamyn wrote, the mission of the school is to develop the academic
and social capacity of all students, regardless of identity and ability. A
combined middle and high school, The School for Human Rights offers an
integrated academic and social skills-based curriculum to challenge its
students to think critically and become compassionate, socially engaged
young adults committed to the practice of equity, dignity and social
consciousness.

The school is funded in part by a grant from New Visions for Public
Schools, an education reform organization dedicated to improving the
quality of education in New York City's public schools. HREA is The School
for Human Rights' lead partner and supports teachers and other staff with
resources and professional development.

What do a "school-based approach to human rights education" and a "human
rights-based approach to schooling" mean? The School for Human Rights in
Brooklyn has been open for a 1½ year, so we don't yet have the full
answer. What we can share are the efforts and aspirations of the members
of the school community so far about how human rights values are already
alive in the school environment.

The core values of the school "dignity, respect and responsibility" are
the driving force behind the school. The leadership team who founded the
school were quite clear that these principles did not mean ONLY exposing
students to human rights values and content in the classroom. The human
rights framework was intended to create a child-centered school where
these values informed how students learned, how they were treated by their
teachers, how they treated one another, and how they would take their
rightful place in the world, with a special sense of mission for promoting
social justice.

Teachers are bringing human rights alive in their classrooms ­ through
examples they use, questions they raise, through active discussion,
critical thinking and reflection, project-based work and enriching field
trips. Teachers have told me that the challenge for them has not been
learning about human rights content itself but in figuring out how to
present human rights in a way that is meaningful and empowering for their
students. We human rights educators know that one of the key challenges is
not only helping to make human rights less abstract but also having
students fall in love with the idea of human rights.

Principal Kevin Dotson and teachers at The School for Human Rights believe
that human rights should come alive explicitly in organized learning
experiences but these experiences include access to education itself. The
staff is personally committed to the right to education. This means doing
what it takes to help students learn and achieve, and enjoy the benefits
of their right to education.

The human rights-based approach to schooling that the school aspires to
includes the following characteristics, which you might identify as being
central to school-based approaches to human rights in general. The
principles are taken from a framework developed by UNICEF ("A Framework
for Rights-Based, Child-Friendly Schools",
http://www.unicef.org/french/lifeskills/index_7260.html ).

Human rights-based schools:

- recognize the rights of every child;
- see the whole child in a broad context. The staff is concerned about
what happens to children before they enter the school system (in terms of
health, for example) and once they are back home;
- are child-centered, meaning that there is an emphasis on the
psycho-social well being of the child;
- are gender sensitive and girl-friendly. Staff is focused on reducing
constraints to gender equity, eliminating gender stereotypes and promoting
achievement of both girls and boys;
- promote quality learning outcomes. Students are encouraged to think
critically, ask questions, express their opinions, and master basic
skills;
- provide education based on the reality of children's lives. The students
have unique identities and prior experiences in the school system, their
community and families, which can be taken into account by teachers in
order to promote student learning and development;
- act to ensure inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity for all
children. Stereotyping, exclusion and discrimination are not tolerated;
- promote student rights and responsibilities within the school
environment as well as activism within their community at large;
- enhance teacher capacity, morale, commitment and status by ensuring that
the teachers have sufficient training, recognition and compensation;
- are family focused. The staff attempt to work with and strengthen
families, helping children, parents and teachers to establish
collaborative partnerships.

These are abstractions, but they are an organizing framework that the
educator can apply to her or his own school. These principles can also be
questions that we can use in evaluating a particular practice in the
school. Is our discipline policy child-centered? Does it enhance student
rights and responsibilities? Are there sufficient opportunities for
student participation in the school? Is this participation meaningful and
student-led?

I hope that we will begin to recognize that human rights in schools is not
merely about education in the classroom, but a way of life in the school.
This is not something created out of the good will of a few teachers. It
is a commitment from leadership and a critical mass of teachers in the
schools and, thus, is rather rare. Although one cannot expect that every
school or even a large number of schools will be able to commit themselves
to incorporating human rights values to the degree we see at The School
for Human Rights, we will learn a lot from this school in Brooklyn. I
believe that this school and its staff will show us new ways for human
rights values to be creatively infused in the classroom and culture of the
school.

The school was featured by CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times last
Friday. The article provides more examples of what the curriculum and a
"typical" day at the school look like:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/03/10/human.rights.school.ap/index.htm

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5675645,00.html

In hope that we will have many more schools like this in the future,

 

 

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