Education for human rights (textbook)
Many who have so far been involved only in teaching history may have doubts about whether historical teaching should be a teaching tool that puts human rights at its center. Combining the two fields makes it difficult not only for activists, teaching, but also for curriculum planners working at memorials. Education thematizing human rights as well as history education, and history education and Holocaust teaching in particular existed for a long time even quite side by side. Their merger became possible to some extent only by distinguishing between education about human rights, for human rights and education in the context of human rights.
We present here History and Human Rights. A Resource Manual, result of an attempt to combine history education with human rights education.
Download the Resource Manual here.
This distinction and the possibilities for connection are summarized by Monique Eckmann in her article Exploring the relevance of Holocaust education for human rights education (in Prospects (2010) 40: 7-16, July 05, 2010). Let us first cite briefly what these types of education themselves mean. Human rights education is primarily knowledge of human rights history, institutions, legislation, powers and opportunities for action and also awareness of human rights abuses and knowledge of how to oppose them.
Human rights education, on the other hand, primarily implies the development of competence for action. It places motivation, solidarity and responsibility for oneself and others at its center. Lastly, education in the context of human rights places special emphasis on the process and conditions of education. It assumes learning through experience, often even from one’s peers. Education should take place with an absolute recognition of human rights, at the same time, this means that workshops should not be a space disconnected from reality (where the activities during the workshop can be disconnected from the real views and positions of the participants). While this excludes an experimental space, it ensures sincerity and naturalness of behavior and respect for human rights.
How is the combination of history education with education oscillating around human rights taking into account the various aforementioned assumptions of the latter? In the case of teaching about human rights, knowledge is conveyed about the relationship between the entrenchment of human rights in law and history, the development of legislation and institutions upholding human rights in history and their impact on human rights violations using specific examples of social groups, as the Janusz Korczak Association does, for example. The difficulty that arises here is the necessity/compulsion to refer to the Holocaust, other tragedies of humanity tend to recede into the background.
Human rights education in conjunction with history refers to real human rights violations and very often allows one to test oneself in border situations that actually happened or could have happened. Activists at the intersection of these fields often refer to Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi’s concept of “head, heart and hand” [head, heart and hand], with the head referring to knowledge, the heart to empathy, understanding, and the hand to action. Some limitation here is always the political context, which conditions actions to a large extent. However, knowing the different possible moral attitudes (observer, resister, rescuer, perpetrator, victim) and practicing them can be the first step toward changing one’s own attitude.
Education in the context of human rights is mainly education by referring to one’s own experience. A very painful experience and a risky task, since very often there is a strong identification with the victims of the Holocaust. Learning about the experiences of individuals in doing so can, for example, deepen the victim’s already held trauma or reassert the importance of power to dominant individuals.
Even if it is difficult to tangibly succeed in teaching for human rights, and this combination, based on drawing lessons from history, is, as Monique Eckmann notes, often moralistic in nature, it seems the best approach of those currently developed. In doing so, let’s just try to guard against lecturing and ostracizing. Bad behaviors are not always unequivocally bad. They are often conditioned by a number of factors. The problem is also too much emphasis on human suffering, and forgetting the possibilities of resistance and such facts in the history of the Holocaust as well. Also, the compulsion to act on memorialization can arouse internal resistance.
Keep in mind that it would be necessary to know the target group well and try to predict what kind of reaction certain attempts will provoke, and if you can’t get to know the group beforehand, try to respond spontaneously to its needs during joint activities. The easiest way is to incorporate knowledge itself or to introduce teaching from peers or based on participants’ experiences, but both of these strategies have more downsides than the – perhaps idealistic – attempts to initiate action for human rights and change attitudes resulting from knowledge of history, especially the Holocaust.”