Everyone is in agreement in saying that knowledge of the legal foundations of education and instruction in human rights seems absolutely indispensable and necessary for understanding and incorporating the law in education.  This has been quite rightly stated and affirmed by numerous educators and teachers of the social sciences and the humanities.  We will not re-enter into this now.  On the other hand, it will be convenient to examine other, complementary foundations of the legal issues of the question, but more with regard to the processes of apprenticeship and the social dimensions of the education.  We will therefore take a look at the entirety of the scientific, curricular, socio-educational and political foundations of human rights education (HRE). 

 

Is there a scientific approach to HRE?  In order to try to answer this question, we need to pose some other questions which are related to it.  Thus, what do the educational sciences teach us in this regard?  It should be stated from the beginning that the educational “sciences” group together knowledge that is the product of scientific procedures, but also a certain number of beliefs or doctrines which, however legitimate they might be in certain cases, nevertheless do not make them less dependent on the opinion that we have concerning what constitutes a “good education”.   However little one can speak of scientific education in human rights, perhaps we ought firstly to borrow from the sciences one of its characteristic attitudes, which is to use precise language and to favour a procedure based on the resolution of a problem and an investigation.  In the end, it is essential to be concerned with this.  The rest is a matter of good pedagogy. 

 

The curriculum is a structured and coherent collection of the various elements involved in education.  It covers a large spectrum going from the objectives of the programmes to the system of values undertaken by the educational establishment.  Here it concerns seeing how, in the everyday reality of the school, education and instruction in human rights can be integrated in the educational programmes and in the educational project of the school as well as in all other educational activities, including extracurricular ones. There is certainly here a question of political will which is involved to the extent that governments are concerned with HRE because it is they who must approve of objectives and contents.  Following the United Nations Decade on HRE and the Action Plan which prolonged it, can one say at this time that States have integrated HRE into their curricula?  In reply, certain ones indicate a more or less vague intention to do this.  Their action plans show this.  Manifestly however there is a deficit of intentions in this issue and it is important to examine the most promising avenues for intervention in order to strongly encourage states to follow up on their engagement. 

As a social project, HRE should associate like-minded communities and the principle actors to promote and apply it.  In such a context, how to unite their experiences, abilities, and knowledge through the creation of a strengthened and coherent network?  The weight of numbers, the wealth of experience and the meeting of ideas are potentially capable of creating a critical mass necessary for the development of HRE.  The most successful apprenticeship activities are often those which involved in some way or another NGO’s and other active members of the community.

 

HRE should equally be defined as an act by which one learns to become an enlightened and responsible citizen and to develop an awareness of the political organisation of life and society.  However on the facts, this intention continues to bring forth fears as it suggests in the eyes of some not that what it brings in itself is noble – the art and practice of the governing of human societies – but rather what some wrongly believe; that it resembles the partisan politicization of kindred spirits.  In this order of ideas, political analysis of education and instruction in human rights invites a break with a distorted depiction of politics:  it also calls educators and instructors to an in-depth debate about the notions of public interest and the defence of the common good by the effective application of human rights.