Critical Human Rights Education

This book engages with human rights and human rights education (HRE) in ways that offer opportunities for criticality and renewal. It takes up various ideas, from critical and decolonial theories to philosophers and intellectuals, to theorize the renewal of HRE as Critical Human Rights Education. The point of departure is that the acceptable “truths” of human rights are seldom critically examined, and productive interpretations for understanding and acting in a world that is soaked in the violations these rights try to address, cannot emerge. The book cultivates a critical view of human rights in education and beyond, and revisits receivable categories of human rights to advance social-justice-oriented educational praxes. It focuses on the ways that issues of human rights, philosophy, and education come together, and how a critical project of their entanglements creates openings for rethinking human rights education (HRE) both theoretically and in praxis. Given the persistence of issues of human rights worldwide, this book will be useful to researchers and educators across disciplines and in numerous parts of the world.

Human Rights Education for the Twenty-First Century is a comprehensive resource for training, education, and raising awareness in a wide variety of settings, both formal and informal. A diverse group of contributors—experienced activists, education experts, and representatives of several international governmental organizations—provides a rich potpourri of ideas and real-world approaches to initiating, planning, and implementing programs for teaching people about their human rights and fundamental freedoms. This volume has been developed for a global audience of educators, scholars in many disciplines, nongovernmental organizations, and foundation officers.

This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university. Each model discusses the scope of the project, its rationale, students' response to the content and pedagogy, challenges or controversies that arose, and their resolution. Unique in integrating theory and practice and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, this book provides indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.

This collection addresses human rights and development for researchers, policymakers and activists at a time of major challenges. ÔCritical issuesÕ in the title signifies both the urgency of the issues and the need for critical rethinking. After exploring the overarching issues of development and economic theory, gender, climate change and disability, the book focuses on issues of technology and trade, education and information, water and sanitation, and work, health, housing and food.

Cover -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Classroom Action - Human Rights, Critical Activism, and Community-Based Education -- 1 Access Interventions: Experiments in Critical Community Engagement -- 2 The Guelph Speaks! Anthology: Storytelling as Praxis in Community-Facing Pedagogy -- 3 In Action / Inaction: Political Theatre, Social Change, and Challenging Privilege -- 4 Is This Project "Skin Deep"? Looking Back at a Community-Facing Photo-Art Initiative -- 5 Reflections on Dialogic Theatre for Social Change: Co-creation of The Other End of the Line -- Coda: Sign Up Here -- Webography: Human Rights Education: Resources for Research and Teaching -- Works Cited -- Contributors -- Index

Critical Human Rights, Citizenship, and Democracy Education presents new scholarly research that views human rights, democracy and citizenship education as a critical project. Written by an international line-up of contributors including academics from Canada, Cyprus, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this book provides a cross-section of theoretical work as well as case studies on the challenges and possibilities of bringing together notions of human rights, democracy and citizenship in education. The contributors cultivate a critical view of human rights, democracy and citizenship and revisit these categories to advance socially just educational praxis and highlight ground-breaking case studies that redefine the purposes and approaches in education for a better alignment with the justice-oriented objectives of human rights, democracy and citizenship education. A critical response, reflecting on the issues raised throughout the book, provides a conclusion. This is essential reading for those researching these pedagogical forms and will be valuable to practitioners and activists in fields as diverse as education, law, sociology, health sciences and social work and international development. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Over the past seven decades, human rights education has blossomed into a global movement. A field of scholarship that utilizes teaching and learning processes, human rights education addresses basic rights and broadens the respect for the dignity and freedom of all peoples. Since the founding of the United Nations and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, human rights education has worked toward ensuring that schools and non-formal educational spaces become sites of promise and equity. Bringing together the voices of leaders and researchers deeply engaged in understanding the politics and possibilities of human rights education as a field of inquiry, Monisha Bajaj's Human Rights Education shapes our understanding of the practices and processes of the discipline and demonstrates the ways in which it has evolved into a meaningful constellation of scholarship, policy, curricular reform, and pedagogy. Contributions by pioneers in the field, as well as emerging scholars, constitute this foundational textbook, which charts the field's rise, outlines its conceptual frameworks and models, and offers case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. The volume analyzes how human rights education has been locally tailored to diverse contexts and looks at the tensions and triumphs of such efforts. Historicizing human rights education while offering concrete grounding for those who seek entry into this dynamic field of scholarship and practice, Human Rights Education is essential reading for students, educators, researchers, advocates, activists, practitioners, and policy makers. Contributors: Monisha Bajaj, Ben Cislaghi, Nancy Flowers, Melissa Leigh Gibson, Diane Gillespie, Carl A. Grant, Tracey Holland, Megan Jensen, Peter G. Kirchschlaeger, Gerald Mackie, J. Paul Martin, Sam Mejias, Chrissie Monaghan, Audrey Osler, Oren Pizmony-Levy, Susan Garnett Russell, Carol Anne Spreen, David Suárez, Felisa Tibbitts, Rachel Wahl, Chalank Yahya, Michalinos Zembylas.

Critical Human Rights, Citizenship, and Democracy Education presents new scholarly research that views human rights, democracy and citizenship education as a critical project. Written by an international line-up of contributors including academics from Canada, Cyprus, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this book provides a cross-section of theoretical work as well as case studies on the challenges and possibilities of bringing together notions of human rights, democracy and citizenship in education. The contributors cultivate a critical view of human rights, democracy and citizenship and revisit these categories to advance socially just educational praxis and highlight ground-breaking case studies that redefine the purposes and approaches in education for a better alignment with the justice-oriented objectives of human rights, democracy and citizenship education. A critical response, reflecting on the issues raised throughout the book, provides a conclusion. This is essential reading for those researching these pedagogical forms and will be valuable to practitioners and activists in fields as diverse as education, law, sociology, health sciences and social work and international development.