The Geography and Political Context of Human Rights Education: Israel as a Case Study (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
This thesis provides a critical view of Human Rights Education (HRE) within a context of colonial occupation, authoritarian national ruling structure and oppressive social practices. It explores the reasons behind the introduction of HRE in Palestinian Authority (PA) schools in the Occupied West Bank. It investigates how stakeholders make meaning of and implement HRE. Finally, it examines the relationship between HRE and the struggle against the Occupation and for political and social change. The data was generated during six months divided over two field research trips. The research employed ethnographic methods such as classroom and whole school observations and semi-structured interviews. The analysis is framed within a critical constructivist paradigm allowing for reaching beyond mere descriptive accounts of HRE and foregrounding the findings within the indigenous knowledge. This thesis addresses gaps in the literature by problematising the theoretical basis of HRE and highlight...
Human Rights Education in Conflict and Occupation: Teaching Human Rights in Palestinian Schools
2016
This study builds on the idea that the conceptualisation and implementation of human rights education in the classroom and other instances in the local community can be different from the way in which the concept is understood and described in international policy documents. The literature review indicates that the context and local actors can affect the way human rights education is carried out. However, there has been little discussion on how human rights education practices are affected by a political conflict and oppression. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to increase knowledge about the implementation of human rights education, by contributing with perspectives on how a context marked by conflict and injustice can affect the norms and conditions for education in human rights. The occupied Palestinian territory is used as a case study, and interviews were carried out in which educators and experts describe their experiences regarding teaching human rights in a conflict-t...
Human Rights Education in Israel: Four Types of Good Citizenship
2016
This article examines the involvement of civil society organizations in human rights education (HRE) in Israel. Focussing on the educational programs of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), as a qualitative instrumental case study, this article examines the conceptions of good citizenship embedded in these programs. Specifically, the article analyzes the educational programs’ goals, content, targeted populations, and practices. The analysis revealed that ACRI’s HRE model reflect four ideal types of citizens: citizen of a democratic liberal state, citizen of a participatory polity, citizen of an ethical profession, and citizen of an empowered community. These constitute a multilayered human rights discourse that enables ACRI to engage differentially with various sectors and populations, while still remaining faithful to the ethno-national parameters of a Jewish and democratic state political framework.
Re-conceptualising Human Rights Education: from the Global to the Occupied
International Journal of Human Rights Education, 2020
This article provides a critical view of Human Rights Education (HRE) within a context of colonial occupation and an authoritarian national ruling structure. It explores the reasons behind the introduction of HRE in Palestinian Authority (PA) schools in the Occupied West Bank and investigates how teachers and students make meaning of and implement HRE. Through examining the relationship between HRE and the struggles against injustice, the article problematizes the theoretical basis of HRE and highlights the importance of indigenous knowledges and strategies utilized to bring the decontextualized global to the nuanced and politicized local. This article shows that institutionalizing HRE turns it into a harmful tool in the hands of those in power. Reverting to alternative sources of knowledge and linking human rights to the vernacular of the people, adopting a bottom-up approach and allowing for criticality are necessary measures to enable the re-appropriation of human rights, where HRE becomes a true strategy to build a culture of human rights that can dismantle structures of oppression. There is a need to rethink HRE as a concept, shifting its current reality to one that contributes to building ‘critical consciousness’. This shift, particularly in the case of Palestine, will not emerge without developing alternative forms of education. This idea might be considered problematic. However, as critical educators and researchers, it is our responsibility to take on this battle.
Journal of Peace Education, 2014
What is wrong with peace education in Israel? In this article I attempt to decipher the cultural codes of Israeli schools in their relation to issues of peace, conflict, and citizenship. It combines findings from two studies in order to understand how ‘school culture’ animates ‘peace education’. My main contention is not that ‘peace’ is or is not being taught in the Israeli schools. Rather, I ask how conflict is being taught, and what underlines the schools’ conception of conflict. Arguably, what Israeli schools are trying to avoid is not ‘peace education’ per se, but the very idea of political education. An adequate approach to peace education, I propose in a more general vein, ought to focus on conflict not as an aberration, but as a part of our cultural mindsets and conceptions of the world. An example from the campaign for the rights of labour migrants’ children is used to demonstrate a different approach to political education.
Law and Education: Critical Perspectives on Arab Palestinian Education in Israel
American Behavioral Scientist, 2006
This article explores the dynamic of the Palestinian legal struggle for equal educational opportunities in Israel. It examines the tension between the Palestinians' positions on equality, on one hand, and the way the Israeli legal system seems to define equality, on the other hand. The article argues that the Israeli legal system seems to adopt a narrow formal view on educational equality for Palestinian children, a view that is not liable to bring about societal transformation.
This article first of all illustrates how Israeli history schoolbooks fail to represent or misrepresent the culture of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and then explains the ways in which such mis- or non-representation hinders the cultivation of vital democratic virtues like empathy. Following that, the article identifies three obstacles for rendering Israeli school education more democratic: Israel's identity as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’, the socio-political domination of Palestinian citizens of Israel outside the educational system, and the unwillingness to recognise the existence of moral dilemmas. The article concludes that overcoming these obstacles is crucial for improving democratic education in Israel.
Citizenship, Education and Social Conflict: Israeli Political Education in Global Perspective
Citizenship, Teaching & Learning 10(3), 2015
Thus, despite their different theoretical perspectives and ways of analysing and understanding citizenship education, these contributions share a common concern in regard to the superficiality of the teaching of citizenship. This multivocality is not a drawback but rather one of the strengths of this book, which ultimately is not made of one cloth. In particular, it demonstrates the book’s main argument, namely that to teach about citizenship and to create knowledgeable and political aware citizens, requires bringing politics into the classroom, and that this mission is important not only in the eyes of so-called ‘radical’ multiculturalists, Marxists or feminists.
Education in a Troubled Democracy: Voices from Israel
Curriculum Inquiry, 2004
Democracy offers no automatic principles for a decent and civilized life. Its principles require interpretation and compromise, and must be balanced between the welfare of individuals, groups, and the state. In Israel, the situation is made even more complex by the fact that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. Surrounded by hostile forces, Israel must attempt not only to maintain peace and security but to offer democratic rights to its Jewish, Moslem, and Christian citizens. Jewish and Arab Israelis' lives are woven together against this difficult background through complex patterns of commerce and trust. These patterns have been disrupted during the recent hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. This article presents a window on the Israeli democracy in this turbulent time through in-depth interviews with six Israeli educators, two Jewish and four Arab. They analyze the Israeli democracy and discuss the problems of their own population sectors in particular, giving special attention to the role of education in closing gaps between different groups, increasing trust and understanding, and improving the state of the nation. John Dewey's ideas on democracy and education are used as a framework for analysis. The level of individual interactions between citizens is suggested as significant for the building of trust and the ground-up strengthening of democracy. Suggestions are made for how education can contribute at this level. The author, an immigrant to Israel, adds her own voice as she struggles to balance objectivity with authenticity in this passionately felt arena.