about How Education Works. In Education in America (pp. 29-49). University of 

California Press.

 

Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational 

Goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81.

Report of the Human Rights Council on its seventeenth session. (2011, May 24). Human Rights Council: UN General Assemby.

What is human rights education? (n.d.). In The Advocates for Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/what_is_human_rights_education

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION declares a commitment to those human rights expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the UN Covenants, UN Human Rights Conventions and Treaties, and the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. It asserts the responsibility to respect, protect, and promote the rights of all people.

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION promotes democratic principles. It examines human rights issues without bias and from diverse perspectives through a variety of educational practices.

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION helps to develop the communication skills and informed critical thinking essential to a democracy. It provides multicultural and historical perspectives on the universal struggle for justice and dignity.

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION engages the heart as well as the mind. It challenges students to ask what human rights mean to them personally and encourages them to translate caring into informed, nonviolent action.

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION affirms the interdependence of the human family. It promotes understanding of the complex global forces that create abuses, as well as the ways in which abuses can be abolished and avoided.

Human Rights Educators’ Network Amnesty International USA January 1991 (Slightly modified by HRE USA NJ Educators, 12-2015)

Forced Quarantines, Evictions, Refused Services in Guangzhou

(New York) – May 2, 2020 

Human Rights Watch has called upon the Chinese government to end the discriminatory treatment of Africans” due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“In early April 2020, Chinese authorities began a campaign to forcibly test Africans for the coronavirus, and ordered them to self-isolate or to quarantine in designated hotels. Landlords then evicted African residents, forcing many to sleep on the street, and hotels, shops, and restaurants refused African customers. Other foreign groups have generally not been subjected to similar treatment.”

In practice, Africans were forcibly tested and quarantined. Chinese authorities “visited homes of African residents, ordered them to self-isolate at home with surveillance cameras or alarms installed outside of their apartments.”

Whys is this allowed to continue? Economics! “In the past two decades, China has become Africa’s most important economic partner.” China has many investments in Africa that boosts Africa’s economy”

“Africans in China have long experienced racial discrimination. Some jobs exclude “heiren,” or blacks.” Many “are being paid less than their white colleagues for the same job.”
Educational Implications for black Teacher’s of Color teaching abroad…

“A Cameroonian national teaching in Wuhan, said the school where he taught had not paid him since the coronavirus outbreak but that he knew at least two white teachers at the school who continued to receive their monthly salary: ‘African teachers feel discriminated against. We don’t know what to do, we don’t know where to go to, we have no money, nobody wants to talk about it.’”

What’s worse? Being violated for a disease you didn’t cause or feeling violated like your country doesn’t care about you. Feeling expendable and abandoned. I think, “All of the above!” 

The schools do not want girls [with disabilities] to go to the classes. Usually they argue that they are not normal people so they cannot sit in the classrooms and learn like other students.  –Disability rights activist, Kabul, April 2018

Afghanistan has one of the largest populations per capita of persons with disabilities in the world. At least one in five Afghan households includes an adult or child with a serious physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychosocial disability. 

More than 40 years of war have left more than one million Afghans with amputated limbs and other mobility, visual, or hearing disabilities. Many Afghans have psychosocial disabilities (mental health conditions) such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, which are often a direct result of the protracted conflict. Other Afghans have pre-existing disabilities not directly related to the conflict, such as those caused by polio.

Violent changes of power, long periods of contested government, endemic poverty, and widespread lawlessness, insecurity, and hostilities have undermined even minimal efforts by successive governments to conceive, adopt, or enforce policies to address the needs of persons with disabilities, even as this population has continued to increase.

The massive internationally funded reconstruction effort that began in Afghanistan in 2002 offered a new opportunity to address this long-standing deficiency. The government has drafted important legislation and ratified core international human rights conventions. Donor funding has led to improvements in roads and other infrastructure, but reconstruction efforts have proceeded with little planning for the needs of persons with disabilities. Major urban areas have both public and private transportation in the form of bus systems, but these have no modified services or accessible vehicles for persons with disabilities. Most public buildings lack ramps, elevators, and wheelchair-accessible toilets.
Entrenched discrimination means that persons with disabilities face significant obstacles to education, employment, and health care, rights guaranteed under the Afghan constitution and international human rights law. 

War and corresponding insecurity have greatly undermined efforts to deliver services, particularly outside urban areas. While a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have provided services to Afghans with disabilities, they have reached only a fraction of the population in need. Donor fatigue with funding social services, as well as the withdrawal of most international forces has led to reduced support for programs and services.

The everyday barriers that Afghan women and girls with disabilities face in one of the world’s poorest countries” is abysmal.  Obtaining access to health care, education, and employment, along with other basic rights, is particularly difficult for Afghan women and girls with disabilities, who face both gender discrimination and stigma and barriers associated with their disability.

 Indeed, Afghan women with disabilities face intersecting forms of discrimination in a society where gender bias and violence against women are endemic. Women with disabilities are generally seen as unfit for marriage.

Whether married or single, women with disabilities are often seen as a burden on their families and are at increased risk of violence both in and out of the home. 

Afghan women who already face significant obstacles in finding work outside the home find those difficulties are compounded if they have a disability. As our research shows, Afghan women with disabilities who have sought government assistance or employment are at increased risk of sexual harassment within government institutions.[1] 

Schools and education are designed to structure its citizens to the ways of society.  According to Goyette (2017), “While primary schooling is nearly universal for the world's young children, secondary school is fast approaching this ideal. The next frontier in school expansion is at the tertiary level. Access to postsecondary schooling is growing at a faster rate than primary.” Globalization and internationalization can create and eliminate inequality.  Whereas the overall goal is to promote equalities, when political and social faction are omnipresent, inequalities will emerge.  We see them daily around the world when looking at gender, sexuality, race, class, religion and politics. While tests are used as a type of barometer or thermometer on well education is working, tests become a type of litmus for quality and inequality.  Results are based upon social, racial and physical factors and controlled by political factors. While noted scholar, Linda Darling Hammond, suggest that these test scores reflect both educational quality and educational inequality (p. 157), it is duly noted that globalization and internationalization promotes a decrease in gender gaps. 

“As education systems become less national and more international in character, struggles between social classes within nations have less force to shape education than the powerful international and institutional ideology of meritocracy” (Goyette, 2017).  One last note: Goyette (2017) writes, “A high degree of centralization occurs when one institution, usually the national government, has strict control over the functioning of schools in a country.” America, however, has a decentralized national government. Concerning education, states have more control.  This control leads to more fluctuations than cohesion.