promoting common values through schooling: can we ... · to revitalise education for social justice...
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Promoting common values through schooling: can we reconcile local, national and global citizenship?
Promoting Common Values through Education and Culture
EC Eastern Partnership conference
25 June 2019Tbilisi, Georgia
Audrey OslerUniversity of South-East Norway
University of Leeds, [email protected]
www.humanrer.org
Education for Global Citizenship: establishing a common framework for local, national and global learning
Human rights and common values in schooling
Ways forward: how are teachers and schools doing this work
Outline
1 Education for Global Citizenship: establishing a common framework
for local, national and global learning
In classrooms we have many students who are not citizens
Some don’t aspire to citizenship
Some are refugees, undocumented migrants, stateless persons
Others, although citizens, feel excluded and are ‘othered’
BUT ALL ARE HOLDERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The problem of traditional approaches to citizenship and
democracy in education
Global citizenship ‘doesn’t exisit’
Global citizenship is a cosmopolitan project, stressing our common humanity
BUT… schooling is generally a nationalist project
Some contradictions in teaching about global citizenship in schools
Schooling is generally part of a anational project
Connected to public policies which support the nation-state:
➢ national history
➢ national myths
➢ national symbols
➢ national literature
➢ national media
➢ national military
➢ sometimes a national religion (Kymlicka)
Local : most of us engage in everyday ‘acts of citizenship’ at the local level: in our community, church or mosque, among our neighbours, in a sports club, book club etc.
National: national governments generally stress national citizenship, voting and the role of elected representatives
European: EC and many European governments also stress European citizenship within education; notion of a common European identity
Global: In some context and among some groups there is a renewed focus on global action and global cooperation
Thinking about citizenship and citizenship education at different
scales
Youth protest and climate change
Adults + global citizenship: mixed response in Europe to migrants +
refugees fleeing economic crisis + conflict
The ‘endtimes’ of human rights?(Hopgood 2013)
Sergio Veiria de Mello –UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
2003
The culture of human rights must be a popular culture if it is to have strength to withstand the blows that will inevitably come. Human-rights culture must be a popular culture if it is truly to innovate and to be truly owned at the national and sub-national levels.
2 Human rights and common values in schooling
“
Education for cosmopolitan citizenship, based on human rights
STATUS
Citizenship (nationality): exclusive status
Human rights: inclusive
FEELING
Sense of belonging (physical, psychological and social security
PRACTICE
Engagement in community
Human rights as a framework for citizenship learning in a global age
human rights are ‘an expression of the human urge to resist oppression’
Then human rights education and global citizenship must necessarily be about supporting students to name inequality, challenge injustice, make a difference, develop solidarities at local, national and global levels
What are human rights?
1948 UDHR - central place to education -means of enabling rights
1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child confirms the right to education and also the right to human rights education
2011UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training: working definition of human rights education (HRE) as a minimal entitlement
Human rights, identities and education
1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;
The right to human rights education: Convention on the Rights of the Child: article 29
(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;
(e) The development of respect for the natural environment.
The right to human rights education: Convention on the Rights of the Child: article 29
Human rights education:
Learning about rights (knowledge);
Learning through rights (democratic upbringing and school practices e.g. student councils; learning to live together, recognition of difference);
Learning for rights: making a difference, critical patriotism (Banks et al., 2005; HRE as transformation, Osler & Starkey, 1996, 2010; Valen-Sendstad, 2010)
Learning about, through and for rights (UN Declaration on HRE and training, 2011)
Human rights depend on human solidarity across borders -national, ethnic, religious
In struggles for justice, an individual who experiences a violation of their rights cannot always depend on the immediate community or neighbours.
U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X argued for human rights, rather than civil rights:
since then ‘anybody, anywhere on this earth can become your ally’ (1965, in Clark, 1992: 175).
‘We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognised as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans’ (1964)
Human rights are necessarily cosmopolitan
Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York
Human rights as an ethical framework: a means of strengthening education for all
‘I treat them all as children, I don’t see differences…’
Ignores structural inequality, different learning needs, such as those of developing bilinguals
Ignores research on culturally responsive teaching (Geneva Gay, Gloria Ladson-Billings)
Fails to engage with family expectations of school…
Norwegian policy framework has tended to assume that language competence will realise genuine equality: failure to engage with minority perspectives (Osler and Lybæk, 2014)
Equality and sameness…
3 Ways forward: how are teachers and schools
doing this work?
Them and us: human rights heaven and hell (Okafor and Agbakwa, 2001): an ongoing process of
othering
Teachers consider human rights abuses in Norway as ‘peanuts’ (Vesterdal, 2016)
So they teach about human rights abuses elsewhere- linked to Nordic HR paradox) (NIHR)
unprecedented number of refugees and migrants - “super-diversity” (Vertovec, 2007):
public debates about diversity, integration, and multiculturalism, the role of education in promoting national identity without sufficient attention to human rights
the securitization of education policy, which has led to problematic educational initiatives addressing radicalization and the targeting of Europe’s Muslim populations
Three key challenges to human rights and social justice in European classrooms
The narrative imagination
Homi BhabhaPost-colonial theorist
‘The right to narrate’: Bhabha (2003)
Narrative as pedagogical tool
Successful (& on-going) struggles for rights
Students can tell own individual and collective stories
Narrative troubles the dominant national narrative
To protect the ‘right to narrate’ is to protect a range of democratic imperatives: it assumes there is an equitable access to those institutions – schools, universities, museums, libraries , theatres – that give you a sense of a collective history and the means to turn those materials into a narrative of your own
(Bhabha, 2003)
The right to narrate
Teachers and Human Rights Education
Osler and Starkey 2010
Trentham, IOE Press
HRE as transformative learning, underpinned by narrative
Human rights project is about our common humanity- a cosmopolitan project
The task is first to imagine (“I have a dream”) and then to work towards a better – a more just future
Remembering that greater justice can come out of conflict
Education for human rights: remembering the past and looking to
the future
Moral obligations and political obligations A just society is worth struggling for in a spirit of solidarity “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire, 1970) teaching has a political as well as a moral dimension. It is a
political act. “Teaching involves both intended and unintended lessons,
and it is often in the unintended hidden lessons that oppression finds life and reinforcement”(Kumashiro 2012).
the teacher’s self-awareness, is an essential step in avoiding the processes of “banking education” which Freire challenged
Re-thinking the role of the teacher
The culture of human rights must be a popular culture if it is to have strength to withstand the blows that will inevitably come...
‘Education’ is the word we use to describe this process, and it deserves more attention. We must work harder at communicating the human rights story through all available means, not least electronic media. Security will be advanced as we fill in the lacunae of ignorance, empower the dispossessed and enable them to recognize their rights.
Sergio Vieira de Mello
2003
Realizing a culture of rights
To revitalise education for social justice we need to re-imagine the nation as cosmopolitan and as multicultural
Involves reconceptualising the curriculum so it does not promote an exclusive national identity or encourage learners to see themselves as part of a nation whose interests are which is necessarily opposed to other nations/ regions/ religions
A form of education which equips students to challenge injustice in the here and now
Cosmopolitanism and human rights at home
What would a student who had experienced this kind of education – human rights-based, socially just, critical, cosmopolitan and culturally responsive, look like?
A curious, confident and enthusiastic learner with skills to go on learning
Feel part of a learning community Would believe that her teachers cared for and about her Open to new and different perspectives Would know there are always new things to learn Knowledgeable about arts, literature, history sciences and social
sciences bilingual, if not multilingual Caring Ready to struggle for justice
Such a student would be:
And what kind of teachers do we need? (What kind of teacher education does this imply?)
Two teachers whose practice has inspired me (1)
‘Veronica’, London
Osler, A. (2017). Citizenship education, inclusion and belonging in Europe: rhetoric and reality in England and Norway. In: J. A. Banks (Ed.), Global migration, structural inclusion, and citizenship education across nations. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
Two teachers whose practice has inspired me (2)
Mr OJIMA, Nara, Japan
Kitayama, Y., Osler, A. & Hashizaki, Y. (2017). Reimagining Japan and fighting extremism with the help of a superhero: A teacher’s tale. Race Equality Teaching, 32(2): 21-27.
Draw on theory and put it into practice (reflexive)
Know there are always new things to learn
Recognise and build on students multiple identities
Respect children’s rights
Prepare their students to participate in their local communities
Help students to understand and contribute to an interdependent nation and an interdependent world
Equip students with skills to be politically efficacious
Care for and about their students (Noddings, 2013)
Are ready to struggle for justice
Teachers educating for human rights: recognising political and moral
responsibilities to students
Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York, 2016
Thank you!