[hre-asiapacific] Re: Theoretical framework, legal bases and history of HRE

Dear colleagues in HRE,

I am Vasanthi Devi, Chairperson, Institute for Human Rights Education,
head-quartered in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, presently involved in
introducing human rights education in schools in 10 states across the
country. I joined this position about a month ago. I am an educationist,
was Vice-Chancellor of an University in the state of Tamil Nadu, India for
6 years; subsequently I was the Chair of the State Commission for Women in
my state in India.

I join the discussion on the first question, specifically on the rationale
for offering HRE. In this mail I dwell on the ills of the present
education system that provides the imperative for bringing HRE into
schools. I propose to deal with other aspects of the same question in
subsequent mails. I am aware that what I say is nothing original.

All education, including technical and professional education, ought to be
Human Rights Education in one way or the other. Education should, directly
or indirectly, serve the interest of furthering human rights, not of
select or privileged sections, but of every human being, irrespective of
her nationality, class, caste, gender, race, ethnicity, religious or
sexual orientation or physical or mental disability.  Albert Einstein, the
great scientist, once said, "The concern for Man and his destiny is the
prime objective of all scientific and technical efforts. Never forget it
in the midst of your diagrams and equations." The purpose of all education
is to sensitise, to humanize, to take humanity to higher levels of
knowledge, awareness, freedom and social responsibility. While the first,
pursuit of knowledge is recognized as the purpose of education, the other
three, awareness, freedom and social responsibility are not considered
inherent to Project Education. If we lose the meaning of education in its
wholesomeness, we will end up creating a world without human values or
justice and ultimately, without progress, too.

While we define education thus, we are all painfully aware that it is a
distant vision. Education has never been the engine for furthering the
human rights of every human being at any time in history. It has been a
potent class instrument to discriminate, to deny, to dominate. Till recent
times it had been the monopoly of the ruling, dominant classes and
sections in society. In a country like India, from where I write, this
monopoly had been strictly guarded by the inviolable iron frame of the
caste system. Our Dharma ordained that education was the preserve of the
twice-born. Our mythology has tales of ruthless punishment and brutal
mutilation of the persons who dared transgress the 'divine order'. Other
societies across the world had their own systems of monopoly of knowledge.
Tolstoy once said "Education is a matter of enlightenment and no monarch
in his senses would like to allow it." True education is a threat to power
and privilege.

While the modern society has moved far from traditional exclusions, it
still practices subtle and none the less potent strategies for denying
empowering, equalizing knowledge to vast sections of its citizenry. That
is why Ivan Illyich had to call for a 'De-Schooling Society' and Paulo
Freire had to seek an alternate education through a 'Pedagogy of the
Oppressed'. The content of education and pedagogy have been designed, in
most countries, to exclude, to mystify large sections of their populace
and to co-opt the dissenters into the hierarchical systems.

Education is, with exceptions, an alienating process. It alienates the
student from the world around, from the society that gave birth to her and
nurtured her. It alienates her from relating to and understanding the
denials, deprivations, the struggles of large sections of community. Our
schools, colleges, and our centers of research have raised high walls
around them that cut them away from the community. There are no windows to
let in invigorating, life giving winds from the world around.

The education that alienates not only fails to further human rights,
justice and equity. It also miserably fails in its ostentious pursuit of
knowledge. With blinkers secured on his eyes to shut out the immediate
world, the student sees only a fragmented reality. To know is to relate.
If you do not relate to the harsh realities of your community, its right
denials, the horrors of its wretched poverty, inhuman deprivation,
heartless exploitation and discrimination then, the knowledge that you
acquire is a partial knowledge, often distorted knowledge. No wonder, the
rishis of ancient India who withdrew into dense forests or snow-clad peaks
of the Himalayas to meditate and attain ultimate wisdom, ended up
conjuring up imaginary worlds and preached that the world is Maya, an
illusion.

In the present age the alienating character of education has assumed
grotesque proportions, in spite of the democratic pretensions of the
modern state. Education today is an instrument for domination, for thought
control, for dangerous manipulations, for what Walter Lippman once called
' the manufacturing of consent'. A powerful process of social engineering
is operating through our education system to rationalize, justify and
perpetuate the horrendous inequities, right denials, violations of the
very right to life and dignity of millions of people across the world. Our
schools and colleges, in developed as well as developing countries, are
the recruiting grounds for soldiers to defend the imperialist system of
global domination. The neo-liberal ideology that rules the world today is
a product of our ivory towers, our celebrated centers of intellectual
excellence.

The Internet is, perhaps, the symbol par excellence of the era of global
domination. (This is not to deny that the same Internet is also being used
to build global solidarities to challenge hegemonistic systems.)  What is
happening to our students today?  They are getting hooked on to the
internet and float in cyberspace, relating to worlds and creatures, who
could as well be from outer space. When our student is logged on, he gets
logged off his immediate world, the world in flesh and blood that is
around him, the world that brought him into existence and nurtured him.
The virtual world is shutting out the real world. He becomes an
apolitical, asocial being. The individual, fiercely alone is the ideal.
The aggressive, fiercely competing, self-aggrandising student is the
marketed model today.  These are the virtues the management gurus glorify,
the global corporations with their huge enticements look for in their on
campus or off campus recruitment drives. Our campuses are depoli ticised
today. There is nothing that neo-liberal globalisation fears as much as
solidarities, collectivities.

In such a dismal educational scenario today, the rationale for bringing
human rights education into our schools is almost self-evident. It is to
radicalize education as a whole, to make it truly an instrument for
liberation, to break a million bondages. It is an antidote to the ills of
the contemporary education system. It is the fruition of the search for
alternate, liberating education that has been pursued for a long time by
reformers, radicals, nation builders, dreamers.

V.Vasanthi Devi,
Chair, Institute for Human Rights Education,
Tamil Nadu, India



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