Session Information
13 SES 07 A, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948 by United Nations, special priority was given to publicise the Declaration through education, “principally in schools and other educational institutions” (United Nations, 1948). Over the last 63 years, the interest about teaching and learning processes in human rights amongst Governments, International Agencies, local NGO’s, schools and education stakeholders has grown; as a consequence, several educational models for human rights have been developed. Despite the pedagogical or practical discrepancies amongst them, these models incorporate certain theoretical approaches to human rights. I will present briefly the theoretical approaches to human rights that I develop from the work of Megias (Different Theories of Justification of Human Rights, 2006) and Dembour (Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflection on the European Convention, 2006; What are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought, 2010) in order to focus on utilitarianism.
The aim of this paper is to explore the utilitarian approach to human rights, in particular, the philosophical foundations underlying them and their possible consequences for human rights education. To fulfill this purpose, I will discuss the main arguments of the utilitarian theories given by their representative authors and how these are related to a particular understanding of what human rights are. This particular understanding, as a consequence, will derive on specific ways to teach and learn human rights. I suggest that the scope of utilitarianism as a philosophical approach to human rights has a deep influence in several aspects of education such as the purpose and objectives of this education, the content, main stakeholders, as well as teaching strategies and learning outcomes. I will use current practices of human rights education worldwide to contrast the advantages and disadvantages of such influence in the development of a democratic culture; and also, to discuss if the education of human rights as universal values is something possible or desirable from this philosophical approach.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Clapham, A. (2007). Human Rights, a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford Universty Press. Dembour, M.-B. (2006). Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflection on the European Convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dembour, M.-B. (2010). What Are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought. Human Rights Quarterly, 32(1), 1-20. doi:10.1353/hrq.0.0130 Freeman, S. (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. (S. Freeman, Ed.)Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones, T. (2006). Combining conflict resolution education and human rights education: thoughts for school-based peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 3(2), 187-208. doi:10.1080/17400200600874826 Mark, C., & Hay, I. (2006). Ethical Approaches. Research Ethics for Social Scientists (pp. 12-22). London: SAGE Publications. doi:10.4135/9781849209779 Megias, J. J. (2006). Diversas teorías justificadoras de los derechos humanos. In J. J. Megias (Ed.), Manual de Derechos Humanos. Los derechos humanos en el siglo XXI. (pp. 184-205). Cizur Menor, Navarra: Thomson, Aranzadi. Mill, J. S. (2003). Utilitarianism and On Liberty. (M. Warnock, Ed.) (Second Edi., Vol. 1900, p. 264). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Smart, R. N. (1958). Negative Utilitarianism. Mind, LXVII(268), 542-543. doi:10.1093/mind/LXVII.268.542 Snik, G., & Van Haaften, W. (2001). Philosophy of Education as Foundational Analysis and Critique: Conflictin Liberal Views on the Rights to an Education for Autonomy. In F. Heyting, D. Lenzen, & J. White (Eds.), Methods in Philosophy of Education (pp. 73-87). New York: Routledge. United Nations. (2005). Plan of Action for the first phase (2005-2009) of the World Programme for Human Rights Education (p. 29). New York. Retrieved from http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/253/74/PDF/N0525374.pdf?OpenElement West, H. R. (2004). An Introduction to Mill’s Utilitarian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.