Human rights are 'basic rights all people ought to have because they are human beings'. That is, human rights are both the freedom and rights all people ought to enjoy to lead their lives as human beings and those which they should exercise as citizen...
Human rights are 'basic rights all people ought to have because they are human beings'. That is, human rights are both the freedom and rights all people ought to enjoy to lead their lives as human beings and those which they should exercise as citizens, the members of a country. Teaching these concepts of human rights at schools or social institutions can be called the education of human rights. Recently, as cases of infringements of human rights are becoming more diverse and social consciousness also shows greater concerns about the protection and guarding of human rights than before, so the necessity of the education of human rights is receiving more attention.
We will grow up to be human-rights-friendly only if we receive systematic education during elementary and middle school years when knowledge, values, and attitudes are developed, formed and completed. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse educational contents of human rights in elementary schools, focusing on the curriculums of social studies, and to make the education of human rights more systematic and substantial one by finding ways to improve existing educational programs through the aforementioned analysis. To this end, first of all, this paper examined the theoretical backgrounds such as the meaning, contents, teaching methods and underlying principles of the education of human rights. On the basis of these studies, and according to the criteria of the theoretical backgrounds aforementioned, we analysed the curriculums and textbooks of social studies of the 3rd and 4th grade currently employed in the revised curriculums of social studies of 2007, and those of 6th grade to be applied in the revised curriculums of social studies of the coming year, 2011. The following problems have been identified as a result of the analysis.
First, while continuous education of human rights is needed to acquire the propensity to do human-rights-friendly in everyday life, current curriculums of social studies are focused too much on the second semester of 4th grade, and 6th grade. That is, it is difficult to systematically connect the education of human rights of a year to that of the next year.
Second, problem is that the types of human rights appearing in the texts of social studies are not diverse. Even though cases of infringements of human rights are becoming more diverse recently due to the change into multi-cultural society, the school violence, and the development of information and telecommunication, the educational contents of current curriculums are not sufficiently reflecting those various cases of abuses of human rights.
Third, the educational contents of current curriculums do not suggest practical problems elementary school students must face because they are mainly focusing on the problems over the whole society rather than on the problems of schoolchildren. That is, current curriculums are dealing with cases of infringements of human rights too broad and difficult for children to understand and be interested in, so from current curriculums they have little opportunity to learn how to develop critical minds and seek various ways to solve the problems when their human rights are infringed.
The followings are proposals for improvement of current education of human rights in the subject of elementary social studies based on the problems derived from the analysis.
First, the concept of human rights must be specified concretely and clearly in the objectives of the education of social studies.
Second, we should suggest more comprehensive and diverse contents of human rights, reflecting the cases of infringements of human rights of present society and anticipating those of future society, rather than dealing with the educational contents of human rights only from national, societal, political and economical perspectives.
Third, we should maintain connectivity and continuity of education of human rights. We ought to equip schoolchildren with human-rights-friendly propensity, having them approach human rights not just for acquiring knowledge, but for habituation of exercising human rights in everyday life.
Fourth, we need to develop and propose teaching, learning and evaluation methods.