The Importance of Human Rights Education in Africa
Gus John discusses the importance of human rights education in Africa.
Gus John: It's a privilege to be part of this project and I can't emphasise enough how important this competition is.
My work with the African teachers’ unions, first in relation to the Millennium Development Goals and more recently the Sustainable Development Goals, has taken me to a number of member states in West, South, Central and North Africa.
I want to make two points about human rights education. One is that teachers face challenges when they try to provide education and schooling to students within the framework of the United Nations Convention, and secondly when they try to introduce human rights into the curriculum, in relation to the human rights culture and climate within their own countries they face further challenges.
We need to examine how individual nation states determine what the function and purpose of education is, because in many instances what one finds is that the ruling government, the state, fashions education according to its overall political agenda. Sometimes that agenda itself is not particularly favourable to human rights.
Teachers have a major task in ensuring that the convention itself is observed, that children are respected, that their rights are respected as learners, and that they have the capacity to comment upon and work towards the building of a new social order through schooling and education.
There are many complexities within all of that, one is the business of increasing access to schooling particularly for girls, and the challenges therein. In situations where girls are structurally seen as contributing to the generation of household incomes, the question of patriarchy, and how young girls particularly are seen within communities. Whether it be in relation to early marriage, or domesticity, or whatever else, there is an attack upon those girls’ human rights. Therefore the policy context, the schooling environment, and schooling practise in those situations, become very complex, and can expose teachers to a lot of harassment, and in some cases very real physical danger because of what it is they seeking to impart to students, and their respect for the integrity of the student population, and for the rights and entitlements of all learners.
I believe that this competition will help to focus on those issues in all their complexity, and provides an opportunity for young people to use their voices in articulating some of those concerns. Particularly at this time, given what is going on globally, the pandemic and its impact upon communities, their access to medicines, access to water, access to decision making, and so on.
One of the things that is particularly critical is how human rights is seen in terms of the purpose of schooling and education in relation to society. The famous Paulo Freire gave us an important quote:
I can't emphasise that enough because the purpose and function of any new generation is to learn from the advances and defeats of those who went before them, and chart their own destiny. That is being done within an increasingly volatile political context in most countries.
If schooling and education is not just about training young people to conform to the existing social order, however broken that might be, but about giving them the space to be creative and to envision a different world, then it means the emphasis upon providing students with the knowledge, the problem solving skills, and the communication skills to be able to do all of that in an organised and disciplined manner, is fundamentally what the task of schooling and education is.
I can't emphasise enough the support that teachers need in those very difficult environments, so it is really important that we are able to work internationally on those agendas. It would be configured differently in each place based upon all kinds of reasons, but to have that common focus cannot be more important.
Find out more about the competition here.
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