Teaching Human Rights in Primary Schools delves into the important issue of Human Rights Education (HRE) implementation, exploring the nature and extent of HRE in education policy and practice in English primary schooling, and seeking to understand the reasons for deficiencies in practice in this area. HRE enables people not only to identify rights violations in their own lives, but also equips them with the knowledge, values and skills required to accept, defend and promote human rights more broadly. An awareness of human rights is therefore crucial, no matter what a person’s age, and as such it is vital that information about human rights is included within formal education. Beginning with an overview of the relevant international obligations and agreements related to HRE, Struthers then demonstrates that these are ostensibly not currently being met in either policy or practice in England. The book then draws upon current literature and empirical research with teachers to explore and analyse the barriers to HRE implementation. While the book uses the specific context of English primary education, it makes broad interdisciplinary recommendations concerning how the provision of HRE could be improved, which will be relevant to other countries instituting programmes of HRE or values and citizenship education. Interdisciplinary in nature and addressing HRE at both the international and domestic levels, this book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in both education and law. It will be of particular interest to those engaged in the study of human rights, children’s rights and education law, as well as those interested in curriculum policy and development, teaching methodologies and the sociology of education. It should also be essential reading for teacher educators, teachers and policymakers.

This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university. Each model discusses the scope of the project, its rationale, students' response to the content and pedagogy, challenges or controversies that arose, and their resolution. Unique in integrating theory and practice and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, this book provides indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.

Thousands of children from minority and disadvantaged groups will never cross the threshold of a classroom. What can human rights contribute to the struggle to ensure that every learner is able to access high quality education? This brilliant interdisciplinary collection explores how a human rights perspective offers new insights and tools into the current obstacles to education. It examines the role of private actors, the need to hold states to account for the quality of education, how to strike a balance between religion, culture and education, the innovative responses needed to guarantee girls’ right to education and the role of courts. This unique book draws together contributors who have been deeply involved in this field from both developing and developed countries which enriches the understanding and remedial approaches to tackle current obstacles to universal education.

12. Parental educational rights

In this special edited volume, scholars with diverse backgrounds and conceptual frameworks explore how economic, political, social and ideological forces impact on school curricula over time and place. In providing regional and global perspectives on curricular policies, practices and reforms, the authors move beyond the conventional notion that school contents reflect principally national priorities and subject-based interests.