Human Rights Education and Educational Policies
Letter n°11, january 2004

 

For a good ten years a number of countries, particularly member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have been involved in a new round of reform of their educational systems. As part of this now recurring exercise, EIP continues to pressure countries to integrate human rights education within the general schema of their educational politics and training programmes. In doing this, we are pursuing one of the original objectives of EIP since its creation in 1967. However we also know from experience that this involves long and exacting work, which has not as yet produced all the hoped-for results.

Few governments, in fact, have followed up on the invitation given by us and by the UN, whose decade of human rights education came to an end this year. It seems that this type of education is not a priority from the perspective a nation-state, in any case from what we are forced to conclude for the moment.

One can regretfully understand that countries which are known for not respecting rights, or which even impose restrictions on their exercise by means of the tacit bias of their constitution, are not enthusiastic about the idea of promoting human rights education. One must continue to denounce their practices and to support the activists who, at times at risk to their physical security, continue to fight for democracy in their countries.

Yet even in countries which one would describe as democratic, rights education does not go through easily. Strictly speaking, there is not a very well established tradition in this area. The trend today leans more towards educational intervention aiming to regulate social relationships by means of a citizenship education in the rules, values and social behaviour that the educational establishment itself wishes to instil. One should not prejudge such an education a priori, appearing as it does to respond to the need for an education in living together in contexts where violence and anti-social behaviour in schools demand a response from all of us.

However there are in our opinion other reasons which have less to do with these circumstances and which can explain the fact that rights education in itself remains little present in education. A number of educational policies, for example, however well intentioned they might be with regard to improving the quality of teaching, fighting socio-educational inequalities or helping children in difficulty, are not conceived by the reformers in order to develop a political culture in the students. They aim firstly and above all at the mastery of a set of knowledge and skills that will allow the students later to become part of the workforce, to participate in the collective economic growth of the country, to behave like good citizens and knowledgeable consumers. This portrait, with its somewhat idyllic qualities, is the mission of a society defined by output, profit, conformity to rules and the power of acquisition. Yet, even within its own economy, at least in the way in which we understand it, human rights education invites an analysis of the position of rights in a given environment; the contradictions that can thus become obvious can call into question precisely those values that are dominant in our societies. In an age where neo-liberal values are celebrated, one can understand how delicate it can be for decision-makers to endorse an educational initiative that would invite a study of the negative effects of such a vision of the world on the rights of the majority deprived of the predicted jackpot.

Yet in as much as one continues to think that the School – in the broad sense of the term – remains to this day the most important lever of social transformation which we possess; in as much as one thinks equally that rights have been proclaimed by the international community as a means of effecting such a transformation, it is important to agree that educational politics, as the expression of the voice of a member state of this same community, should lead to human rights education. In any case that is in all logic what we must claim.

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