Commonwealth Record of Achievement in Human Rights Education

Commonwealth Record of Achievement in Human Rights Education

Contents

Introduction

The Commonwealth Human Rights Record of Achievement

This module of work has been designed and written specifically for teachers of 11 – 18 year old students in Commonwealth countries. It sets out a scheme of work that students can follow. It is hoped that subsequently students will receive a certificate of achievement endorsed by the Commonwealth. However, there is no formal assessment.

Its purpose is to

• introduce students to key concepts in human rights;
• develop understanding of their own rights and responsibilities whilst sensitising them to the rights of others;
• broaden their understanding and appreciate the dilemmas intrinsic to human rights issues;
• challenge their assumptions; and
• encourage them to take appropriate action to challenge abuses of human rights and safeguard the rights of others at all levels.

How to use the pack

The first section of the pack is for teachers and explains the focus of human rights thinking and the principles of human rights education. It gives some background information about human rights, what they are and how they came about, to help teachers who will be guiding their own students through these modules. This part of the section has been written so that it can also be used by students. We also explain something about the methodology of teaching about human rights which in itself needs to reflect basic human rights principles.

The second section is made up of modules of work with activities that teachers can undertake with their students. There is nothing prescriptive about how these modules should be taught and they are designed to be stand alone units or as part of the more extensive course on human rights. Teachers should use these modules to suit their own situation and objectives.

Human Rights and Teaching Human Rights

About human rights

Teachers are free to copy these sections for use with their students.

Human rights are about ordinary people and everyday events

For many people human rights can seem complex and distant, problems that happen in other countries and when some people talk about human rights it is in difficult, legal jargon. However, in reality, human rights are very straightforward. They are straightforward because human rights are about real people, including ourselves, and the difficulties and struggles that we all face each and every day.

Human rights apply to everybody

Human rights are about treating all people with the equal dignity that they are entitled to as human beings. Every person in the world, no matter what their ethnic origin, colour of skin, sex, beliefs or age, must be recognised as having the same worth and dignity. Human rights affect people living everywhere, whether they are in Australia, Canada, Kenya, or Jamaica. What this principle means for our time in terms of individual entitlements and needs, and how this has been established at a universal level has arguably been the most important moral advance in the last century.

Human rights occur at every level and at every scale

Although human rights issues are global issues they also occur in the microcosms of society, in families, in schools, amongst friends and in the workplace. The human rights issues involved in horrific world events such as genocide and refugees are obvious to us all but bullying in schools, who does what chores at home are also about human rights.

Human rights are abused all the time

Unfortunately the rules are often broken and human rights are violated and abused. Sometimes this is done by individuals or groups of people but often by governments. There is no single reason why people treat each other badly. It may be because they are greedy and want to gain power or money; some actually like causing unhappiness; some are ignorant and do not understand the consequences of their actions. But the fact remains that rights are abused every day and everywhere. Even in countries that pride themselves on a good human rights record abuses still happen. People are denied access to jobs because of their colour, or their sex or their disability. People are abused and attacked because of the way they look or speak.

Human rights must be upheld

Many men and women have fought and struggled for their own rights and the rights of others, sometimes at great cost to themselves. Think of people like Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned for 27 years because of his stand to protect the rights of black people in South Africa, or Aung San Suu Kyi who has led the struggle for democracy and against human rights abuses in Burma and has been held in detention since 1988. We may not all be able to take such a stand but we can all work to make a contribution to human rights every day in the way we treat and respect each other and work towards ensuring that everyone’s human rights are upheld all the time.

Types of rights

People have different ideas about of human rights

Although human rights are universal not everyone agrees on their interpretation, how they should be prioritised or how they should be upheld. There are often differences of opinion around political rights and basic economic rights for instance. Since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Western democracies have stressed the universality of civil and political rights, while the Communist bloc favoured economic and social rights. In the 1990s several prominent East Asian leaders argued that there were clear and often sharp differences between the values and traditions between the West and the East. Asians, for example, tend to value community, order and harmony whilst Westerners value the individual and personal freedom. They also argued that since not all Asian nations are as economically developed as Western nations, it is not fair to expect them to uphold all of the rights listed in the UDHR. Nations such as China and Pakistan have claimed that they may have to sacrifice some political and civil freedoms in order to protect the economic security of their people and the stability of their societies.

However not all agree that these differences exist or if they do that they are important. The former president of Singapore, Devan Nair stated “Human rights and values are universal by any standard and their violation anywhere is a grievous offence to men and women everywhere.”

Teaching Human Rights

Teaching human rights and the Commonwealth

Human Rights education takes place in most schools in Commonwealth countries but under different guises. There is not an agreed syllabus that would cover human rights as perceived in all member states of the Commonwealth. A Commonwealth report on human rights teaching in 25 countries found that it was included within a great variety of subjects: the constitution (Pakistan), social studies (Jamaica), moral education (Malaysia), religious education (Uganda), personal and social education (Canada) and history (India). In England it is now part of Citizenship Education, in South Africa human rights education has been strengthened in Education for Living and in Cyprus there is a strict focus on human rights as laid down in the UN Declaration.

In 1995 the Commonwealth Values in Education project identified a conceptual map for human rights education with seven dimensions covering the main areas of human rights which a student might be expected to understand and interpret, whatever the nature of a country’s syllabus. These are:

• law and the administration of justice;
• equality of opportunity;
• history;
• civic and social rights and responsibilities;
• consumer rights;
• violence; and
• a person’s identity.

These concepts underpin the modules in section two of this pack.

From the seven dimensions we can identify a number of aims we would intend for human rights education. Our aims are that it:

• fosters the attitudes of tolerance, respect and solidarity inherent in human rights
• provides knowledge about human rights, in both their national and international dimensions and the institutions established for their implementation
• develops the individual’s awareness of the ways and means by which human rights can be translated into social and political reality at both the national and international levels.

Methodology

How you teach is what you teach – it is difficult to engage students in examining issues about rights and justice if the style of teaching and learning itself does not demonstrate respect for justice and human dignity. Students should be able to participate and arrive at positions that may be different from those of the teacher. This can be achieved by using small group work, encouraging debate and discussion, allowing students to speak their mind and ensuring that all views are heard and respected, even when they are challenged.

Teaching controversial issues

A common feature of human rights education is its concern with controversial issues. We cannot provide concrete answers to moral dilemmas – it cannot be just about teaching ‘right and wrong’ – indeed the most important lesson to learn is that there usually is no right or wrong answer. Whilst Human Rights conventions do provide a framework in which such dilemmas can be discussed, in the classroom it is important to balance the rights of one versus the other, or the individual versus social obligation and to show students the dilemmas that human rights issues often throw up. This does not mean that human rights education is value free but it rests on a set of assumptions and values which are almost non-contestable and include the belief that people ought to participate in society, that they have responsibilities to defend the rights of others, that we should want to resolve conflict, that we want to preserve the environment and the quality of life of others now and in the future and so on.

The record of achievement

It is the intention that having followed the scheme of work set out in this pack students will then be awarded a certificate of achievement. The main criteria is that students have undertaken the course of study, however teachers may want to encourage students to put together a portfolio of their work. There may be a student and teacher statement to accompany this. The main issue is that the course is adapted and is relevant to the students’ own lives and the context within which they live.

This pack provides the schemes of work and an outline of the intended learning outcomes. It is school based and should be seen as a tool for individual schools to use as they see fit and to award the certificates accordingly. To achieve the Record of Achievement students should have

• completed all the modules
• completed an action plan
• recorded their achievements and reviewed their progress with their teacher and
• presented a portfolio of evidence

Similarly there is no set time for completing the modules and it can be integrated into other curriculum areas and taught over a long period of time, taught as one off units from time to time or delivered exactly as it is set out in the document.

Outline of broad learning outcomes:

Schools and individual teachers may wish to use the following learning outcomes as the basis or checklist for learning.

[see separate sheet which can be used by students to fill in and record their own evidence of having achieved this learning outcome]

Checklist of Learning Objectives

Section 2The Modules

Each module will present opportunities to explore issues at an individual, local, national and global level

Summary of modules

Module 1 Human Rights and Me

Activity 1.1: A better future

Starting with this activity will focus students thinking on human rights as a means of improving the quality of life for everyone.

Read this short speech by Martin Luther King to the students:

Ask the students to think forward 10 years and to imagine the world as a better place. What kind of questions might young people ask then? Students could write their own up-dated version of Martin Luther King’s speech.

Then ask students to think how the world will have changed so that life is better for specific groups of people. For example: