Human Rights Education in the Classroom

Elaine Watts, Policy Officer, BEMISAnne Kane, Curriculum Advisor, Oxfam

Diana Ellis, Global Education Worker, WoSDEC

Aims of workshop

• To consider how Human Rights Education and Global Citizenship fit with CfE

• To briefly explore a couple of classroom activities

• To inspire you to give it a go in your own classroom/with your own local authority!

What’s Global Citizenship all about?

Global Citizenship is: ?o Asking questions,

developing critical thinkingo Equipping young people

with skills, values and knowledge to participate

o Acknowledging complexity of issues

o Revealing the global as part of the local

o Understanding how we relate to our environment and other humans

Global Citizenship isn’t: ?o Too difficult for small

children

o Mostly about other places and people

o Telling people what to do and think

o Providing simple answers to complex problems

o An extra subject to cram into a crowded curriculum

o Raising money for charity

Rationale

• UDHR 1948• UNCRC 1989/1991• CfE• UN Decade for ESD – 2005 -2014• UN World Programme HRE – second phase-

2010 -2014 • Rights of Children and Young People Bill 2011

Links with Experiences and Outcomes

• Outcome Statement - To help me develop an informed view, I can distinguish fact from opinion, and I am learning to recognize when my sources try to influence me and how useful these are.

LIT 2-08a Responsibility of all

• Curriculum Area Literacy Listening and talking Understanding, Analysing and Evaluating

• Human Rights Link UNCRC Articles 12, 13, 17

Example activities...• Wants and needs

• Issue Tree

CONFIDENT IN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF...?

• The UK’s role in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq?• Why nuclear power stations are built in earthquake

zones?• Why 10.9 million children worldwide die each year

before the age of 5?• Why 30% of UK children live in poverty when in 1979

the figure was 10%?• Why biodiversity loss has an economic impact?• Why the UK public sector is paying for the failure of

the banks?

“While education is too often the ingestion of lifeless subject matter through narrowly prescribed procedures, true learning is an organic, vibrant process through which we develop our human identities and social capacities. It cannot be bestowed. It must be generated. Human rights learning is a generative process. Education may plant seeds, but it is learning that cultivates the fruit of human and social potential. Learning is as essential to becoming fully human as breathing is to being alive. It is as essential as clean water and adequate food to a healthy society.”

Readon, B. ‘Human Rights Learning: Pedagogies and Politics of Peace’ (2009 P 23)