Education and human rights

On December 10, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly. The Declaration was a response to the crimes and barbaric acts committed during World War II and to the fascism and Nazism of the 1930s. It is the only such significant document of global scope, written by representatives of all cultural backgrounds and translated into the largest number of world languages. Forgotten, despite the fact that it could be a manifesto of the radical center - the silent majority of humanity - as I wrote about in the pages of "Rzeczpospolita" a year ago.

The Declaration's preamble commits signatory countries, including Poland, to "strive through teaching and education to develop respect for these rights and freedoms." In addition, Article 26(2) specifies that the goal of education is "the full development of the human personality and the consolidation of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," and that education shall promote "understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups."

The current curriculum does not seem to place the above goals high on the priority list of the education process. There is also a lack of systemic support for schools wishing to carry out such a noble mission. If we want the culture of cooperation and coexistence, the culture of co-citizenship to improve, if we want to become a "velvet society”, a society that respects the other deeply and profoundly, then fulfilling these - and other - articles of the Declaration is essential. How can this be done in practice?

A holistic curriculum in harmony with children's rights has been developed in the United Kingdom. It is the UNICEF model of Schools Respecting Rights. More than 1.6 million students in 5,000 schools participate in education, of which teaching about children's rights and human rights is an integral part. Respect for children and their rights is placed at the center of the education process. The program is putting into practice the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose international day was celebrated on November 20.

The process of reaching accreditation at the highest level takes the school four years - as long as the term of the Sejm in Poland. Four are also the areas on which the Rights Respecting Schools program focuses: the child's well-being; activity and participation in the life of the school and the world around the child; building good relationships; and self-esteem.

This program is not only teaching about rights. It is also teaching by rights (i.e., applying them and aspiring to a high ethos) and for rights (i.e., empowering children in their sense of self-efficacy). At a time when children's mental health and well-being are gaining increasing public attention, these four fields and the aforementioned program seem well suited to the needs and challenges facing the Polish education system.

The award given to schools implementing the aforementioned program is a confirmation that these establishments put the well-being of students at the heart of the educational process in practice. Children attending these schools learn about their rights, how to enforce them and how to respect the rights of their peers, as well as - how to build self-esteem. The effectiveness of the program was empirically confirmed by extensive research conducted in 2017-2019, involving more than 190,000 children and 20,000 teachers in the UK.

The Polish pioneer of children's rights, theorist and practitioner of education based on partnership and an ethos of respect for little people was Janusz Korczak. His work - which continues in the schools named after him - should be deepened. In the discussion of the upcoming reform of the Polish education system, it is worth using the experience of the British UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools program. This will help in introduction of a broad-based program putting children's rights at the center of the educational process. Its beneficiaries will be children, more aware of their rights, as well as society - when young people become full-fledged citizens.