After three years of the ratification of CROC, "in 1993 World Conference on Human Rights also reaffirmed the importance of education, training and public information"14. Responding, to that, in 1994 “the General Assembly proclaimed the period from 1995 to 2004 the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education”15. During this
14 ABC: Teaching Human Rights 2003, p.6
15 Ibid,
period a special group of experts within the UN were working on the development of a practical guide for teachers on how to teach human rights to children of primary and secondary schools (ABC: Teaching Human Rights). The major principles to that guide became the ones declared in the UN16:
a) The strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms;
b) The full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity;
c) The promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups;
d) The enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society;
e) The furtherance of the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
These principles can be transformed into single goals for teacher to achieve when studying human rights. After the goals have been set, the next stage is to define the sphere of action. For this, an educator can choose among the following options:
• The incorporation of human rights education in national legislation regulating education in schools;
• The revision of curricula and textbooks;
• Pre-service and in-service training for teachers to include training on human rights and human rights education methodologies;
• The organization of extracurricular activities, both based on schools and reaching out to the family and the community;
• The development of educational materials;
• The establishment of support networks of teachers and other professionals (from human rights groups, teachers’ unions, non-governmental organizations or professional associations) and so on17.
16 United Nations document A/51/506/Add.1, appendix, para. 2
17 ABC: Teaching Human Rights 2003, p. 7
The authors of the UN book “ABC: Teaching Human Rights”
state that the ways of teaching human rights will hinge upon the countries, local systems of education, and teachers’ personalities. But teaching human rights can be naturally weaved into the fabric of any school curriculum:
Opportunities to do this may vary: human rights themes may be infused into
existing school subjects, such as history, civics, literature, art, geography, languages18 and scientific subjects, or may have a specific course allocated to them; [...]19.
As it was mentioned above, children’s rights take their origin from human rights and demonstrate a private case with specification on children as human beings under 18. Among other issues, Rights of the child is the core subject within the CP. Human rights education should proceed being attended by the rights of the child. The target group to scrutinize children’s rights as well as other child- related issues is pre-service teachers. And here we can pose a question: why do pre-pre-service teachers need CP issues in their curriculum?
Answering the question, we can find several reasons why CP issues should be included into curriculum of pedagogical universities.
First, understanding of the UN’s processes in CP brings comprehension and estimation of the situation “here and now” in a particular society. If we see, that after a large number of steps taken by the UN, children still face ethnic discrimination, illegal trade, sexual harassment, excessive physical violence, pornography, overfilled orphanages we can state about a lack of responsibility of the government and society.
Consideration of the CP issues will assist to strive for improvement of the situation “here and now” not only theoretically but practically.
Primarily when talking about CP issues we imply the following:
1. Organization of the United Nations;
2. Declarations of Human Rights;
3. Convention of the rights of the child;
4. Social activity in promoting children’s rights;
18 Bold is my
19 ABC: Teaching Human Rights 2003, p.8.
5. NGOs and their response to the UN and other organizations.
This knowledge should be compulsory for teachers as they are mediators between social surrounding and a child. Let us cite an example.
The living environment has become increasingly multicultural.
This is a result of the global political and economical changes.
Migrants, immigrants and refugees are those who move from one place to another for a number of reasons. When they start living in another environment, they may not be accepted by their surroundings, primarily due to cultural distinctions. In this situation, a very sensitive group to assimilation are children who suddenly find an absolutely different world around them. So, a teacher is a person who is supposed to help those children to overcome social deprivation and grow among others. The knowledge of CP prompts to understand the social processes and take responsibility for treating all children equally in spite of their ethical, national or cultural divergence.
In most cases, the notion of children’s rights as part of human rights has become the most significant aspect of CP which formation goes around the guiding principles of CROC (1989).
Pre-service teachers should know the rights of their students and be able to transmit the basic human rights awareness to them. For their part, children, will respond with tolerance, acceptance and respect towards other people. Pointing out all the substantiality of the CP for the pre-service teachers, further we shall answer the following question:
How to provide the teaching of CP issues successfully in practice?