The Council of Europe outlined a comprehensive guideline inclusive of national and international, theoretical and experiential, summative and formative perspectives of training in HRE.
2.13 Challenges for Human Rights Education
HRE is not a field without challenges. There are threats to its existence. There is skepticism about its successful implementation. There are hostilities and intimidations from people and institutions that do not believe in HR at all. For some they are “nonsense upon stilts”.22 The implication of the notion of “nonsense upon stilts” is that the existence and practice of HRE is redundant and meaningless. Lohrenscheit (2002) raised many thought provoking questions about HRE which are worthy of consideration:
1. How can [HRE] contribute to the transformation of educational institutions and education systems on the basis of HR principals and democracy?
2. What effects can [HRE] offer especially in restrictive or contradictory situations (for instance in schools where corporal punishment is still practiced)?
3. How can we ensure empowerment? And how can we prevent learners from feeling disempowered when for instance they are confronted with the many [HR] violations?
4. How can we learn and teach about all HR in surroundings where some of them are denied as for instance in smaller, patriarchally organized communities where women’s rights are denied?
22 Jeremy Bentham cited in Sen (1999) who argued that “natural and imprescriptible rights” are nonsense because they do not have a legal foundation.
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5. How can we on a sustainable basis integrate HRE into the existing national education systems? For instance, should HRE in schools be a special course, project oriented, or a general principal to be integrated into the whole curriculum?
6. What do we tell our learners when they know about their HR but cannot find meaningful ways to realize them (e.g. in poorer countries where even basic rights, such as education, health or housing are not fulfilled)? (p. 183).
Lohrenscheit outlined a comprehensive and exhaustive list of challenges that HRE has to address and provide solutions in order to fulfill expectations. These are the practical challenges that HRE is currently facing. Lister has also listed a number of challenges faced by the concept of HR itself as well as HRE:
1. [HR] are too complex for immature minds.
2. [HR] overstress rights and understress responsibilities.
3. To teach [HR] is a form of indoctrination, in which the teacher becomes a preacher.
4. [HR] teachers are usually more interested in social change (or in subversion) than in maintaining the fabric of society.
5. [HR] is a culture-bound conception, born in Western Europe and North America, foisted on the world in 1948.
6. There is no consensus about what it is ‘to have a right’, and no consensus about [HR] in general. Schools should teach only those things about which consensus exists.
7. [HR] are too individualistic and private. Group rights, collective rights and the importance of the public domain are underrepresented.
8. If we arrogate to ourselves the right to pass judgment upon, and seek to interfere with, the internal administration of
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justice in other countries, we are in effect according the same right of judgment and interference in our own. There is no good so great that it is worth purchasing it at the price of national independence.
9. [HR] issues are complex, long-term, and often intractable.
Teaching about them can give students a feeling of impotence, rather than enable them to act upon issues and affect their outcomes.
10. Teachers of HR go too far. They are not satisfied with teaching about [HR]. They want to teach for [HR]. They assert women’s rights, children’s rights and animal rights.
Some even talk of ‘the rights of trees’. Ordinary citizens will not support this (1991, p. 252).
Together, Lohrenscheit and Lister reveal the challenges that HR and HRE are facing and raise questions that need to be answered. Currently, school systems are infested with anti-HR notions and practices for instance, authoritarian nature of school;
authoritarian teachers; pupils’ views ignored; poor communication; marks and grades seen as all-important; ultra-strict rules that tend to ignore creativity of teachers and students alike; and rote learning. These issues, questions, doubts, dilemmas and debates remain there but they do not by any means lessen the validity of HRE for students in particular and for common people in general. It is a source of empowerment, an instrument to realize the dream of having a world where human dignity and worth are duly respected, rights and freedoms are enjoyed by all equally by dint of being human being regardless of citizenship without losing the sight and significance of responsibility in realizing HR.
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In this chapter we tried to cover the literature on almost all aspects of HR and HRE that are relevant for the current research. There are certain issues such as the definition or nature of HR and the role, scope, and limitations of HRE the final word is yet to be said. The study of the subject nevertheless remains important just as the conviction of human society for an HR based culture.
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Chapter Three
Methodology and Research Design
This chapter provides a detailed description of the research design and methodology adopted in the present work. It also delves on the problems that were confronted during the fieldwork. The chapter concludes by providing the details of macro and micro research settings of Taipei and ND where the research was conducted.