The November New Tactics on-line dialogue features “Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience”. This dialogue specifically features ideas, experiences and methods from human rights higher education programs for incorporating practical experience into human rights curriculums to better prepare human rights advocates for doing “on the ground” and “in the trenches” human rights work.
The featured resource practitioners (biographical information) include:
- Abigail Booth, Programme Manager, Head of Nairobi Office, Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Kenya
- Alice Nderitu, Fahamu (Kenya) in coordination with the University of Pretoria, South Africa
- Jadwiga Maczynska, Project Manager, Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre, Krakow, Poland
- Mingzhen Ge, Shandong University, Human Rights Center, Law School, China
- Diane Sisely, Director, Australian Centre for Human Rights Education at RMIT University
- Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota, USA
- Robin Kirk, Director, Duke University Human Rights Center, North Carolina, USA
- Nicole Palasz, Center for International Education, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Amy Weismann, Deputy Director, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
- Susan Atwood, Instructor, University of Minnesota’s Leadership : Leadership for Global Citizenship.
| Be sure to take a look at our new collection of articles, guides, and classroom modules for your curriculum: New Tactics Resources for Educators! |
Main themes of this dialogue:
- Stories of Practice: examples of how practical experience is being incorporated in human rights education programs
- Challenges: ethical issues with incorporating practical experience in human rights education programs
- Curriculum Resources: creating and simulating practical experience
Please help us to keep this dialogue organized by 'replying' to these main themes, or 'replying' to other comments, instead of creating NEW comments. Thanks!
about my experience of teaching human rights law courses!
Mingzhen Ge, Shandong University, Human Rights Center, Law School, China
Hi, Irafan
It is nice to know that you are intreseted in my own experience of teaching human rights. In 2003, I begun to teach intenternational human rights law in our school till now.Under-graduate students could select this courses. Since these students are all senior students, and they all have basic legal knowledge background, so I think it is more easier for me to teach. In the first lecutre of this class, I will do some investigation among students, in this investigation, I will ask many questions about human rights, these questions focus on theoritical and practical human rights issues, throught these questions I will know the background of these students, Then, I will choose some special topics to teach.Certainly, there will have some problems which students can not understand properly, even you try your best to analyize the problem . I will give some human rights materials in English to students to read and translate, then will make students discuss some particular issues in class. I also often introduce some real cases in China to class to discuss. In my own eyes, education is one process, not one point, its effects maybe can only show in coming days, even in coming years. So we teacher can not expect, all students can really understand what you teach, sometimes, only through some term of time, they can really understand. Such as, one of my students,
he do not understood some topics about human rights, and dto question me both in and out of class, also he really did disagree my opinion about some issues. At that time, I only told him, just remember what I teach and at same time keep his own ideas, years later, he should rethink the same issues again. Then about two to three years later, he told me, he finally understood what I have taught bout some special topics.
From 2004,I begun to teach this courses bilingually, I used english materials to teach. It is effective for students to use english texkbook even there have some difficulties.
when we talk about human rights education, we all know, we aim to enlarge the knowledge of students, to improve their skills, to produce their own ideas and to change their attitude. In my own opinions, attitude should be the most important aim which we want to reach.So, we should think of how to use effecient methods to change the attitudes of students after they finish the course.
There have other more opinions about my own teaching exprience, in the coming days, all of us human rights educator can communicate and discuss with each other.