Human Rights Education – Some Difficult Questions

By Dr Bill Robb

Human rights education, as I’ve explained in another article, has a major difficulty, in that what it is and what it is aiming to achieve are not clearly explained. How can you promote something or evaluate it if you are not sure what it is you are promoting or measuring. 

Even though we are awaiting a clear definition of human rights education it is still possible to examine what people say are human rights and ask questions that these rights raise for human rights education.

Here the first major obstacle arises – who decides what is a human right? For purposes of this article I’ll take the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on December 10, 1948. I can imagine a series of workshops on human rights education where each right is taken in turn and discussed in detail. 

Once I started to examine the list, I found that many of the so-called rights were meaningless and vague. Some rights were meaningless because they were couched in terms that themselves were not explained and vague because I kept wondering what any individual was supposed to do about the right. This lack of clarity is an opportunity to learn and to develop our thinking about human rights education. I have listed the rights in bold type and given my questions below it in ordinary text. 

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms can be fully realized.

What can any individual do about the social and international order? What if that order is not there and there is war – what does it mean practically? 

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Is this not an inane and woolly statement? Of course, if someone wants to paint, dance, act or write they shouldn’t be prevented from doing so. But what if the artists want to use art as a weapon to undermine and hurt others? An interesting scenario to use in a human rights education class is this:  say there is only one ballet company, one drama company, one orchestra and one art gallery in town and all these artists earn their living this way. The tickets are expensive and I can’t afford them - how do I exercise the right to enjoy the arts? 

Everyone has the right to the protection of the material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

A great discussion in a human rights education class would be this: what would happen if a scientist worked hard for many years and applied all his skills to develop a new drug that can cure a serious disease. He decides he doesn’t want the drug manufactured and refuses to sell the rights. Does it mean that the people who could have been saved must die because his rights means we can’t take away his scientific material? 

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.

I can imagine a human rights education session discussing what is education? Unless you do this to start with, this right is meaningless. I can attend an educational institution and still not be educated. Say, all teachers decided to become self-employed and charge parents of pupils directly for their services. And say there were many people who could not afford the teachers’ fees. Human rights education would have to explain how this right would be exercised. If elementary education is compulsory does this not infringe the human rights of parents who want their children educated in the factory, the mine or the fields – and depend on this income for the well-being of the family? 

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Is this right not being ignored everyday, when teachers must belong to a General Teaching Council in order to teach and lawyers and doctors have to be members of their societies in order to practice? If these professionals were not compelled to belong to an association, how would patients’ interests be protected? 

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family and marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

A number of interesting questions arise for human rights education. Do a brother and sister or mother and son have the right to marry? What about breaking the law and having children who may be deformed? Who determines “full age”? If I am sixteen and want to get married but the laws of my country say I can’t until I’m 21, is that infringing my human rights? If two deaf people wanted to have a child and ask for genetic selection to ensure the child would be born deaf, should their right to have children be protected? What about the rights of the future child? If my religion says it is okay to marry my daughter off to a man she does not want to marry, would that be infringing my religious freedom? 

You can see from the number of questions arising from just four of the rights that human rights education has a lot of explaining to do. It seems that many of the issues would be adequately covered in other educations. Have a look at the article, A Values Approach to Human Rights in the values education articles section. 

There is tremendous scope for research projects in human rights education.  Dr Bill would be delighted to advise postgraduate students (with the agreement of their university or college) interested in this fascinating field. Contact him on bill@valueseducation.co.uk

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