UNIT 8: Rights and freedom – My rights – your rights

Human rights could be generally defined as those rights which are inherent in our nature and without which we cannot thrive as human beings.

Human rights and fundamental freedoms allow us to develop fully and to use our human qualities, our intelligence, our talents and our conscience and they also allow us to satisfy our spiritual and other needs. They are based on humankind’s increasing demand for a life in which the inherent dignity and worth of each human being are respected and protected.

This unit provides basic information for primary school teachers who want to foster awareness and knowledge about the values of human rights, as well as the sense of reciprocity and universality upon which human rights standards are based. It is only a starting point, which should be supplemented by further research and study and/or by using national manuals and audio-visual materials that are already available. It will hopefully be used to initiate an ongoing process of adaptation and development at all levels of teaching within the world’s many and varied cultures.

The United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) defined human rights education as “training, dissemination, and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through the imparting of knowledge and skills and the moulding of attitudes which are directed to:

(a)  The strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms;

(b)  The full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity;

(c)  The promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups;

(d)  The enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society;

(e) The furtherance of the activities of the United Nations for the Maintenance of Peace. (Adapted from the Plan of Action of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), paragraph 2.)

This process will depend upon local educational systems, which differ widely, not least in the degree of discretion that teachers have to set their own teaching goals. However, the teacher will always be the key person in getting new initiatives to work and he or she therefore has a great deal of responsibility in communicating and promoting the principles of human rights in the classroom. Teaching about human rights is, however, not enough. These values should permeate the classroom alongside those of democratic decision making and action. Students will not only want to learn about human rights, but to learn in and through them.

The fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights³ has almost global validity and applicability is very important for teachers. By working with precepts that have been so widely endorsed for many years now, the teacher can honestly say that he or she is promoting a normative system that has been accepted by the international community and its governments. Education systems differ widely. When teaching for human rights, however, teachers have a second defence – that is, that they are teaching in such a way as to respect human rights in the classroom and the school environment itself.

This means avoiding any hypocrisy. At its simplest, hypocrisy refers to situations in which the subject that a teacher is teaching is clearly at odds with how he or she is teaching it. For example: “Today we are going to talk about freedom of expression – shut up in the back row!”. In this way, students will learn a lot about power, and considerably less about human rights and the respect for human dignity, which is at the core of human freedoms. As students spend a good deal of time studying teachers and can develop a good understanding of a teacher’s personal beliefs, such behaviour could make it difficult for a teacher to have any real positive effect. Because of a desire to please, for example, students may try to mirror a teacher’s personal views, without thinking for themselves. This may be one reason, at the beginning at least, why they don’t express their own ideas. At its most complex, hypocrisy raises profound questions about how to protect and promote the human dignity of both teachers and students in a classroom, as well as in a school and within society at large. This calls upon teachers to explore ways and means to involve other parties in the process of deciding what to do, how to do it, and why; this means not only involving students, school administrators, education authorities, and parents, but also, if appropriate, members of the community in which they live and work.