Abstract

Employing a theoretical perspective from the critical sociology of education, this article identifies a curriculum problem in human rights education (HRE) in schools and suggests strategies to solve it. The main problem is HRE’s lack of an episteme—a disciplinary structure created in specialist communities—and, related to this, the flight of scholars from the field of curriculum practice, redefining it away from subject matter. A more robust HRE in schools will require not only advocacy but a curriculum, one that teachers can adapt to local needs, constraints, and students. Knowledge matters. If knowledge work of this sort is missing from HRE then it is difficult to claim that HRE has a social justice mission.

Highlights

  • While evidence suggests that human rights education (HRE) in some respects “has expanded dramatically over the last few decades” (Russell & Suarez, 2017, p. 39), its curriculum remains at best opaque and at worst so under-developed as to include only “mentions” of something called “human rights.” A deep conceptual understanding of subject matter goes well beyond this, as does the kind of curriculum development that facilitates it

  • The main problem is HRE’s lack of an episteme—a disciplinary structure created in specialist communities—and, related to this, the flight of scholars from the field of curriculum practice, redefining it away from subject matter

  • If knowledge work of this sort is missing from HRE it is difficult to claim that HRE has a social justice mission

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Summary

Introduction

While evidence suggests that human rights education (HRE) in some respects “has expanded dramatically over the last few decades” (Russell & Suarez, 2017, p. 39), its curriculum remains at best opaque and at worst so under-developed as to include only “mentions” of something called “human rights.” A deep conceptual understanding of subject matter goes well beyond this, as does the kind of curriculum development that facilitates it. The World Programme for Human Rights Education (United Nations, 2005), to take one prominent example, 1 calls for a curriculum of knowledge, skills, values, and action, but does not develop one. The result is that the HRE curriculum remains scattered, illdefined, and too variable to be robust. This problem becomes apparent when HRE is compared to curricula that are coherent and well-established—school curricula for algebra and biology, for example, or national history. Such a comparison may strike readers as unfair, like comparing an infant to adults, or novices to experts, but doing so points to factors that can help HRE succeed in schools

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