A Peaceful Pedagogy: Teaching Human Rights Across the Curriculum

Abstract

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child identify the essence of what it means to be human and provide a foundation through which schools can become peacebuilding learning communities. An examination of the publications of the United Nations enables the definition of a set of knowledges, values and skills that underpin the enactment of human rights through peace education. UNESCO argues that ‘human rights education implies the learning and practice of human rights … and that they are taught through both content transmission and experience’ (Statement of Values, 2000). The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights argues that ‘teaching about human rights is not enough. The teacher will want to begin, and never to finish, teaching for human rights.’ (UN, 2003:21). This paper considers how the knowledge, values and skills of human rights can become the core consideration for teachers’ curriculum planning and teaching to enable teachers and learners to engage in socially just action based on human rights within and beyond the school. A model of a human rights curriculum is developed from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In this model, the transmission of content, the epistemologies of human rights, can be seen as learning about the human rights, values and skills that enable peace. The experience of learning through ‘peaceful pedagogy’ can ideally be seen as learning through human rights. Enacting learning within the classroom, throughout the school or beyond the school can be seen as learning for human rights. This paper will demonstrate how a specific issue of the learners’ context becomes the catalyst for peaceful learning for both teacher and student through content transmission and experience.