University and Community Partnerships – Building and Supporting Human Rights Education in the classroom
Working in collaboration with experts in the field of human rights and museum education, a team of educators were entrusted to develop a set of materials for students from Grades 2 – Grade 12 in Canada. The political context for the materials was the era of apartheid in South Africa from 1948 with the inception of the white minority National Party to the democratic 1 person 1 vote that took place in 1994. The goal for the collaboration was to create learning materials that were approachable and engaging for children and youth while honoring those, whose struggle for freedom came at huge personal sacrifices. The task at hand included interpreting the human experience of living through trauma and human rights abuses in ways that built empathy and understanding across differences. The UN Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a plethora of human rights instruments were integrated into the lesson plans, created for students, spanning across the curriculum from Social Sciences, to Women's Studies to World Issues. In the presentation, I will share some of the strategies that were acquired that made it possible to create learning materials for Primary, Junior and Intermediate and Senior students. An important insight derived is that of the human rights defender, in their role in advocating for human rights. This role takes on many professional and community profiles, from photographers on the ground to creative writers, to investigative journalists, each brought a critical angle for raising international awareness about the human rights abuses that were the order of the day during the apartheid era. Contemporary students studying the contributions of human rights defenders can come to appreciate the role of social action and work for change among everyday people as well as at the international governmental levels.
