The Human Right To Education

12. Parental educational rights

Thousands of children from minority and disadvantaged groups will never cross the threshold of a classroom. What can human rights contribute to the struggle to ensure that every learner is able to access high quality education? This brilliant interdisciplinary collection explores how a human rights perspective offers new insights and tools into the current obstacles to education. It examines the role of private actors, the need to hold states to account for the quality of education, how to strike a balance between religion, culture and education, the innovative responses needed to guarantee girls’ right to education and the role of courts. This unique book draws together contributors who have been deeply involved in this field from both developing and developed countries which enriches the understanding and remedial approaches to tackle current obstacles to universal education.

This volume studies the implications of the right to inclusive education in human rights law for disability law, policy and practice.

This book discusses the relationship between human rights and education. Education as a human right and education for human rights are currently the topics of considerable debate worldwide. In addition to their traditional role of transmitting knowledge and values, education systems are being pressed to respond to a new range of aspirations and to a wide variety of economic, political, social and cultural developments whose roots lie outside the education system. Human rights education is much wider than just teaching about human rights; it should lead to an understanding of, and sympathy for, the concepts of democracy, justice, equality, freedom, solidarity, peace, dignity, rights and responsibilities. Young people are guaranteed their right to education, and education systems should equip them with the knowledge, skills and attitudes they will need if they are to take an active part in the operation of democratic institutions.

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 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.

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.

1. The human right to higher education -- 2. Theoretical approaches to higher education -- 3. Evaluating higher education policy and legislation -- 4. Practical approaches to higher education -- Appendix A. Signs and measures of a successful higher education system -- Appendix B. Evaluation of state higher education policy: by country -- Appendix C. Summary country comparison.