More Than Education: Reflections on Student Teachers’ Understanding of Human Rights

Abstract

In the Dutch educational context, human rights are implicitly at stake. The Dutch educational context is presented, and its characteristic of ‘freedom of education’ as laid down in Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution. In addition, an overall picture is given of teacher training at Inholland University of Applied Sciences—a merger of a variety of universities of applied sciences in the western part of the Netherlands, called Randstad. The research explores human rights literacy of students of Inholland UAS Teacher Training College. For these students, coined as Generation Z, the plural society is a given. The focus in our contribution is on the priority these students give to the consequences of the plural society and its plural moralities regarding children’s rights since that is where their motivation and action is. Infusion of data has taken place by way of a focus group discussion. In our conclusion we recommend the introduction of an interdisciplinary subject ‘Normative Citizenship Education’, taking into account the difference between the human right of education and human rights education, and the reflexion thereof in the global and local context of the Netherlands.