a Relationships between Commonwealth membership, international conventions, national constitutions and school curricula
b Content, ownership, cross-curricular or single subject
c Resourcing, material, teacher preparation
d Effectiveness, examined or unexamined
Human rights commitments in any Commonwealth country are of three kinds. There are those adopted in the constitution. Recent examples include the rights sections in the Namibian and South African constitutions. Older examples exist in the Indian constitution (developed at roughly the same time as the Universal Declaration and providing substantially the same commitments) and in the constitutions of the Caribbean states which, in the 1960s, frequently adopted texts from the European Convention on Human Rights. A second type of commitment arises from the precedents of the common law which in principle, though not always in practice, may influence decisions in other Commonwealth states.
A third type of commitment arises from the ratification of an international convention, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However a significant number of Commonwealth states have never ratified some of these conventions for various reasons, which may be different from an active objection to their content or the obligations they involve2. Nearly half of Commonwealth states have populations of a million or less, with the limited diplomatic and public service apparatus this implies. It can be difficult for small states to have the input into international agreements which provides a corresponding sense of ownership; further, the requirements of reporting and of overhauling domestic law can seem daunting to them.
2 In January 1997, 23 Commonwealth states had not ratified the ICCPR; the same number had not ratified the ICESCR.
But what connection, if any, exists between these commitments and Commonwealth membership on one side, and school curricula in over 50 diverse states on the other? Since the 1980s the communiqués from Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings have included exhortations to members to sign up to the ICCPR and ICESCR in particular. But it was only after the Harare Declaration, 1991, that membership of the Commonwealth could be said to imply a commitment to fundamental human rights, and these were not spelled out with the detail of international or regional conventions. Actually joining the Commonwealth, for most members, had been a natural part of the process by which a colony of the British Empire became a sovereign state, and rarely the subject of specific debate.
As for the relation between human rights commitments and school curricula it is, for most members, still rather indirect. Where they are taught it is often as part of teaching on the constitution, or in such subjects as Education for Living or Personal and Social Education3. Topics such as the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the anti-apartheid struggle may come up in history. Where the constitution has a strong stress on rights and responsibilities, as in India, it can exert a pervasive influence on the curriculum. The same impact may be expected in due course in South Africa.
3 See Bourne, Commonwealth Values in Education, Commonwealth Secretariat.
More usually, however, the human rights components in school curricula appear there as contingent on other curricular or policy factors and do not reflect a broad philosophic or strategic commitment to human rights education. Article 42 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990, is typical of more recent conventions in stating, '"States Parties undertake to make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike." This injunction is not always followed.
Because human rights have only recently been seen as important, and the degree of central direction in Commonwealth countries varies widely, it is impossible to generalise about the content, length and bias of teaching in this area. A 1994 report on secondary school arrangements in 25 member states and two Crown colonies4 found that relevant teaching fell into a great variety of subjects: the constitution (eg Pakistan), social studies (eg Jamaica), moral education (eg Malaysia), religious education (eg Uganda), personal and social education (eg the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan), history (eg India).
4 Ibid
Few countries followed Cyprus in teaching compulsorily the basic rights and freedoms laid down in the Univeral Declaration, but in most their human rights work fell into one or sometimes two subjects. However, in an important group which included Australia, Britain, Brunei, Canada and India, the approach was more cross-curricular. (In England and Wales, in the early 90s, Citizenship was briefly introduced as a cross-curricular theme in secondary schools; it was then dropped as part of the simplification of the curriculum recommended by Sir Ron Dearing, leaving human rights as an option only.)
What emerged from this report was that there is not now an agreed syllabus that would cover human rights as perceived in the member states; that different curricular arrangements (including substantial decentralisation in countries like Canada) would make it impossible to introduce one; and that in consequence the amount of time devoted to human rights and related issues, and the impact on students, currently varies enormously.
An extra variable is the degree of ownership that schools and teachers have over curricular learning, and their own motivations. Where there is an optional element, or the area lacks high status or strong Ministry promotion, these factors become extremely important. Adverse pressures can come from parents, where subjects are not seen as vocationally valuable, and from school authorities, if preference is given to examinable subjects and these are not.
However on the positive side there is evidence from several countries that the enthusiasm of teachers can have a beneficial impact. In the present study, for example, the keenness of teachers at one Harare school to gather materials on human rights made up for problems of low status of the key carrier subject, Education for Living, and in Botswana the involvement of teachers and students in a project called Peer Approach to Counselling by Teens (PACT) provided a supportive environment for human rights work.
Where the curricular status of a topic is vague, or lacking consistent promotion, it is inevitable that the resources to support it will be deficient or erratic. This issue has to be set in the context of the overall shortage of books, materials and basic school equipment which afflicts a large number of Commonwealth schools, not only in the poorest African states. The current project was launched therefore with an awareness of a need to boost the materials that could be available for schools, and with an interest in supportive teacher education, and the use that could be made of qualified NGO inputs.
In the present study the findings here may be summarised as follows:
Botswana: Books and materials were regarded as inadequate. In general, human rights were not covered in pre-service or in-service training of teachers. NGOs could be usefully involved, but teacher organisations were not seen as having a role.
India: Teachers and principals thought there was no lack of print materials, but audio-visual items and international documents were not readily available. Educational administrators thought more materials were needed, particularly modular materials for both teachers and students, on different aspects of human rights and the pedagogy of human rights. Human rights does not feature in pre-service teacher education and teachers and principals felt it should have special attention in in-service courses. The support of NGOs and teacher organisations was important.
Northern Ireland: There was no shortage of relevant materials, but they needed to be better coordinated and more accessible. Human rights do not currently feature in initial teacher training and ought to; they appear only incidentally in in-service courses on religious education, and in children's rights and pastoral care courses. Overall there was a positive reaction to the involvement of NGOs.
Zimbabwe: Students and the research team agreed that there were no textbooks on human rights, although there were some posters on violence and booklets on women and law. Administrators believed there was an urgent need for training and support for teachers, both at pre-service and in-service level; they also valued the participation of NGOs and teacher associations.
The 1994 study had shown that Ministries of Education were wary of commenting on the effectiveness of teaching and learning in this area. A few quoted exam results in relevant subjects, Trinidad & Tobago suggested that social studies workshops for teachers had indicated a lack of teacher confidence, and several Ministries said that they relied on inspectors and curriculum officers to keep an eye on progress.
Throughout the world there are strong and contradictory views as to whether human rights and related matters are best assessed by exams or not, and a widespread recognition that in either case the experience of students in school and out is at least as important as what they are taught. In Botswana the present research recommended that human rights topics should be examinable. In India the majority of teachers interviewed thought that they should form part of an examination and would thereby gain greater attention from teachers and students; but a minority thought this would harm the kind of learning/teaching mode the field required, and it would be better to introduce them in classes not preoccupied with public exams. The educational administrators did not want exams.
In Northern Ireland there was an even split. Out of 15 teachers and advisers who were interviewed three thought there should be exams, three thought there should not, and the remaining nine had mixed feelings. In Zimbabwe the administrators interviewed were not in favour of examining human rights. They thought the focus should be on behaviour, attitudes and lifestyles, not easily examined. Their view tallied with that of students in all four countries, who felt there was a need to go beyond "talking about human rights" in the practice and ethos of a school.
Given the unsatisfactory status of exams as a test of young people's understanding, there would seem to be further scope for impact studies on the lines developed by the project committee for Commonwealth Values in Education.
