Promoting common values through schooling: can we reconcile local, national and global citizenship?

Promoting Common Values through Education and Culture

EC Eastern Partnership conference

25 June 2019Tbilisi, Georgia

Audrey OslerUniversity of South-East Norway

University of Leeds, UKA.H.Osler@leeds.ac.uk

www.humanrer.org

Education for Global Citizenship: establishing a common framework for local, national and global learning

Human rights and common values in schooling

Ways forward: how are teachers and schools doing this work

Outline

1 Education for Global Citizenship: establishing a common framework

for local, national and global learning

In classrooms we have many students who are not citizens

Some don’t aspire to citizenship

Some are refugees, undocumented migrants, stateless persons

Others, although citizens, feel excluded and are ‘othered’

BUT ALL ARE HOLDERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The problem of traditional approaches to citizenship and

democracy in education

Global citizenship ‘doesn’t exisit’

Global citizenship is a cosmopolitan project, stressing our common humanity

BUT… schooling is generally a nationalist project

Some contradictions in teaching about global citizenship in schools

Schooling is generally part of a anational project

Connected to public policies which support the nation-state:

➢ national history

➢ national myths

➢ national symbols

➢ national literature

➢ national media

➢ national military

➢ sometimes a national religion (Kymlicka)

Local : most of us engage in everyday ‘acts of citizenship’ at the local level: in our community, church or mosque, among our neighbours, in a sports club, book club etc.

National: national governments generally stress national citizenship, voting and the role of elected representatives

European: EC and many European governments also stress European citizenship within education; notion of a common European identity

Global: In some context and among some groups there is a renewed focus on global action and global cooperation

Thinking about citizenship and citizenship education at different

scales

Youth protest and climate change

Adults + global citizenship: mixed response in Europe to migrants +

refugees fleeing economic crisis + conflict

The ‘endtimes’ of human rights?(Hopgood 2013)

Sergio Veiria de Mello –UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

2003

The culture of human rights must be a popular culture if it is to have strength to withstand the blows that will inevitably come. Human-rights culture must be a popular culture if it is truly to innovate and to be truly owned at the national and sub-national levels.

2 Human rights and common values in schooling

“

Education for cosmopolitan citizenship, based on human rights

STATUS

Citizenship (nationality): exclusive status

Human rights: inclusive

FEELING

Sense of belonging (physical, psychological and social security

PRACTICE

Engagement in community

Human rights as a framework for citizenship learning in a global age

human rights are ‘an expression of the human urge to resist oppression’

Then human rights education and global citizenship must necessarily be about supporting students to name inequality, challenge injustice, make a difference, develop solidarities at local, national and global levels

What are human rights?

1948 UDHR - central place to education -means of enabling rights

1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child confirms the right to education and also the right to human rights education

2011UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training: working definition of human rights education (HRE) as a minimal entitlement

Human rights, identities and education

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

The right to human rights education: Convention on the Rights of the Child: article 29

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment.

The right to human rights education: Convention on the Rights of the Child: article 29

Human rights education:

Learning about rights (knowledge);

Learning through rights (democratic upbringing and school practices e.g. student councils; learning to live together, recognition of difference);

Learning for rights: making a difference, critical patriotism (Banks et al., 2005; HRE as transformation, Osler & Starkey, 1996, 2010; Valen-Sendstad, 2010)

Learning about, through and for rights (UN Declaration on HRE and training, 2011)

Human rights depend on human solidarity across borders -national, ethnic, religious

In struggles for justice, an individual who experiences a violation of their rights cannot always depend on the immediate community or neighbours.

U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X argued for human rights, rather than civil rights:

since then ‘anybody, anywhere on this earth can become your ally’ (1965, in Clark, 1992: 175).

‘We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognised as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans’ (1964)

Human rights are necessarily cosmopolitan

Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York

Human rights as an ethical framework: a means of strengthening education for all

‘I treat them all as children, I don’t see differences…’

Ignores structural inequality, different learning needs, such as those of developing bilinguals

Ignores research on culturally responsive teaching (Geneva Gay, Gloria Ladson-Billings)

Fails to engage with family expectations of school…

Norwegian policy framework has tended to assume that language competence will realise genuine equality: failure to engage with minority perspectives (Osler and Lybæk, 2014)

Equality and sameness…

3 Ways forward: how are teachers and schools

doing this work?

Them and us: human rights heaven and hell (Okafor and Agbakwa, 2001): an ongoing process of

othering

Teachers consider human rights abuses in Norway as ‘peanuts’ (Vesterdal, 2016)

So they teach about human rights abuses elsewhere- linked to Nordic HR paradox) (NIHR)

unprecedented number of refugees and migrants - “super-diversity” (Vertovec, 2007):

public debates about diversity, integration, and multiculturalism, the role of education in promoting national identity without sufficient attention to human rights

the securitization of education policy, which has led to problematic educational initiatives addressing radicalization and the targeting of Europe’s Muslim populations

Three key challenges to human rights and social justice in European classrooms

The narrative imagination

Homi BhabhaPost-colonial theorist

‘The right to narrate’: Bhabha (2003)

Narrative as pedagogical tool

Successful (& on-going) struggles for rights

Students can tell own individual and collective stories

Narrative troubles the dominant national narrative

To protect the ‘right to narrate’ is to protect a range of democratic imperatives: it assumes there is an equitable access to those institutions – schools, universities, museums, libraries , theatres – that give you a sense of a collective history and the means to turn those materials into a narrative of your own

(Bhabha, 2003)

The right to narrate

Teachers and Human Rights Education

Osler and Starkey 2010

Trentham, IOE Press

HRE as transformative learning, underpinned by narrative

Human rights project is about our common humanity- a cosmopolitan project

The task is first to imagine (“I have a dream”) and then to work towards a better – a more just future

Remembering that greater justice can come out of conflict

Education for human rights: remembering the past and looking to

the future

Moral obligations and political obligations A just society is worth struggling for in a spirit of solidarity “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire, 1970) teaching has a political as well as a moral dimension. It is a

political act. “Teaching involves both intended and unintended lessons,

and it is often in the unintended hidden lessons that oppression finds life and reinforcement”(Kumashiro 2012).

the teacher’s self-awareness, is an essential step in avoiding the processes of “banking education” which Freire challenged

Re-thinking the role of the teacher

The culture of human rights must be a popular culture if it is to have strength to withstand the blows that will inevitably come...

‘Education’ is the word we use to describe this process, and it deserves more attention. We must work harder at communicating the human rights story through all available means, not least electronic media. Security will be advanced as we fill in the lacunae of ignorance, empower the dispossessed and enable them to recognize their rights.

Sergio Vieira de Mello

2003

Realizing a culture of rights

To revitalise education for social justice we need to re-imagine the nation as cosmopolitan and as multicultural

Involves reconceptualising the curriculum so it does not promote an exclusive national identity or encourage learners to see themselves as part of a nation whose interests are which is necessarily opposed to other nations/ regions/ religions

A form of education which equips students to challenge injustice in the here and now

Cosmopolitanism and human rights at home

What would a student who had experienced this kind of education – human rights-based, socially just, critical, cosmopolitan and culturally responsive, look like?

A curious, confident and enthusiastic learner with skills to go on learning

Feel part of a learning community Would believe that her teachers cared for and about her Open to new and different perspectives Would know there are always new things to learn Knowledgeable about arts, literature, history sciences and social

sciences bilingual, if not multilingual Caring Ready to struggle for justice

Such a student would be:

And what kind of teachers do we need? (What kind of teacher education does this imply?)

Two teachers whose practice has inspired me (1)

‘Veronica’, London

Osler, A. (2017). Citizenship education, inclusion and belonging in Europe: rhetoric and reality in England and Norway. In: J. A. Banks (Ed.), Global migration, structural inclusion, and citizenship education across nations. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Two teachers whose practice has inspired me (2)

Mr OJIMA, Nara, Japan

Kitayama, Y., Osler, A. & Hashizaki, Y. (2017). Reimagining Japan and fighting extremism with the help of a superhero: A teacher’s tale. Race Equality Teaching, 32(2): 21-27.

Draw on theory and put it into practice (reflexive)

Know there are always new things to learn

Recognise and build on students multiple identities

Respect children’s rights

Prepare their students to participate in their local communities

Help students to understand and contribute to an interdependent nation and an interdependent world

Equip students with skills to be politically efficacious

Care for and about their students (Noddings, 2013)

Are ready to struggle for justice

Teachers educating for human rights: recognising political and moral

responsibilities to students

Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York, 2016

Thank you!