News & Articles

“Rights sites” schools in Minnesota (Oct 2009)

Last Updated (Tuesday, 30 November 1999 12:00)

There has been a human rights education movement in Minnesota for the last two decades.

See Rights Sites to learn about one programme in which yr 1-13 teachers integrate human rights education into their curricula.

Human rights learning through social studies (Oct 2009)

Last Updated (Wednesday, 14 May 2014 16:03)

There are powerful arguments for human rights to be a central to the teaching of Social Studies, according to a new CD-based resource to be launched at next week's SocCon 2009. "The social sciences learning area is about how societies work and how people can participate as critical, active, informed, and responsible citizens.

social_studies

The human rights framework is a set of cross-culturally negotiated international agreements about the rights and responsibilities of all human beings and how societies should work to address them." Made possible by the Global Education Fund the CD includes social inquiry templates, Powerpoint presentations for teachers, and human rights learning activities and slides that may be useful in the classroom for levels 4-5 of the New Zealand Curriculum. Email the Facilitation Team for your copy.

Lower Moutere School has found picture books such as "We Are All Born Free" invaluable in their implementation of Human Rights in Education. As colleagues find publications that have proven to be useful in supporting human rights-based education we'll put them in our new Amazon-powered online bookshop.

Human rights education – central to the purpose of schooling (May 2009)

Last Updated (Tuesday, 30 November 1999 12:00)

For a strong argument for human rights-based education take a look at these articles by Fernando Reimers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education:

Citizenship, Identity and Education: Examining the Public Purposes of Schools in an Age of Globalization

Preparing students for the flat world

Creating a rights-respecting culture the key to tackling bullying (May 2009)

Last Updated (Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:30)

Bullying has been consistently cited as one of the key human rights issues in New Zealand schools.

Two key reports were produced for the Behaviour Summit convened by the Ministry of Education in March:

Office of the Children's Commissioner (2009) School safety (download from here)

Human Rights Commission (2009) School violence, bullying and abuse: a human rights analysis (download pdf)

The OCC report cites research indicating high levels of physical and emotional bullying compared to other countries - with one study rating New Zealand schools among the worst category in the world for bullying, with rates more than 50 percent above the international average. (p.viii)

Bullying violates young people's human rights to personal security, health and education, and requires effective school action. According to the OCC report, only programmes that alter the whole school environment, culture and ethos are effective in addressing bullying.

Building a consistent culture of rights, respect and responsibility in the school - as envisaged in the Human Rights in Education initiative - can make a major contribution.

Unicef: rights into action in UK schools (May 2009)

Last Updated (Tuesday, 30 November 1999 12:00)

One of our international partners is Unicef UK, which has been funded by the Department of Children, Schools and Families to work on human rights-based education in five English counties. For an update on the impact of their Rights Respecting Schools Award read How a UNICEF initiative is bringing children's rights to life in UK schools.