Education for Empowerment
Human Rights Education
Let us be honest. Human rights education in most of the colleges and universities is reduced merely to obtaining a degree or diploma; it does not seem to aim at sensitising students and youth about the burning issues and concerns of human rights violations. ...changes in attitude can not be brought about without challenging certain inherent dynamics of society.
Perhaps, debates on the changing nature of conflict both between state
and civil society and within social groups in society on regular
intervals is necessary to understand the ground reality of human
rights. One way to attain this objective is to free human rights
education from a formal classroom exercise; our students and faculties
must expose themselves to the ground realities.
- University Curriculum on Human Rights, Somen Chakraborty and
R.M.Pal, Social Action, 01/10/2000, [J.ELDOC.N00.01oct00SOA6.pdf]
From the human rights perspectives, the educational content also need closer scrutiny and reappraisals from various groups and agencies; official as well as non-official, including the NGOs and People's Organisations working with downtrodden classes in the urban areas and in the countryside. As Rajni Kothari has aptly summed up, there are two divergent and opposite standpoints concerning links between the human rights ideas and formal educational system [Kothari: 1994]. According to him, the first approach consists in utilising this as a pedagogy in which education is considered as an 'extension activity, 'trickling down from established institutions of learning and reacting out to the communities, the people and the individual recipient'. Far more significant and relevant to India's needs is a second approach which contains 'a pedagogy that draws upon what is going on among the people - their struggles against hegemony and for due regard and dignity - and to structure the research, the teaching and even the training in the light of such education from the bottom up'. What are to be practiced are the second, and not the first.
- Education and Human Rights, S.
P. Punalekar, Vikalp, 01/01/2003, [J.ELDOC.N00.01jan03VKP2.pdf]
Can Our Education System Develop a Democratic Mindset?
A democratic mindset is supposed to be the foundation of a free,
modern democratic society. A democratic mindset is a character syndrome
that includes certain beliefs, values, attitudes, and skills.
A
genuine belief in the equality of every person; a belief in the
inalienable right of every person to hold self-chosen beliefs and
values and the
freedom to express them in any form (with the implicit limitation of
not
offending similar rights of others); a belief in the rule of law and
fairness and objectivity in all public or social matters irrespective
of
the affiliation or status of persons; a duty to listen, respect, and
understand all sheds of opinions even if these happen to be contrary
to
one's own dearly held views, and the corresponding right of the other
to express these; to settle every difference and conflict through
dialogue
(failing which through lawful arbitration); to be always based on
reason
and evidence in making social decisions; to respect conventions,
symbols,
customs and practices of others; to make and change institutions, laws,
rules and procedures of governance only through open and honest
dialogue.
- - Pedagogy and Authoritarianism:
Consequences of Educational
Practices
for Individual Emancipation and Democratic Polity, Pradeep
Barthakur,
Social
Action, 01/10/2002, [J.ELDOC.N00.01oct02SOA.pdf]
Introducing ideas on poverty,
exploitation, rights, as part of school
'lessons'. The VGKK social workers (some of whom are
young Soliga adults who are ex-students of the school) spend
time in the classes (from Standard V onwards) as part of the
timetable, where they introduce and discuss issues of poverty,
exploitation (of the tribal, their natural resources) as it occurs in their lives. In the higher classes, the social workers
and students analyse some of the problems faced in the
hamlets. They discuss the need and efficacy of community
mobilisation to counter these problems. Therefore, consciousness
about their life situation is developed gradually
and naturally.
- - Education for a lifetime, MEENA MENON., Hindu,
13/01/2002, [C.ELDOC.N30.education_for_lifetime.html
]
Reports:
1. Knowing Her Rights - Case Study from India, Monga, Nivedita, ASPBAE, 01/01/2000,[ R.N30.26]
2 Human Rights Education in Schools and Colleges, Castelino, Herman, Gujarat Sahitya Prakashan, 2001, [R.N20.15]