Educating the Next Generation: Incorporating Human Rights Education in the Public School System

This New Tactics in Human Rights Project Tactical Notebook explores how the Albanian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) integrated human rights into the public education system as part of an an effort to prepare Albanians for their transition to democracy. ACHR worked with the new democratic government in the post-communist transition period in order to meet their goal of introducing human rights education (HRE) into the public curriculum. They built up strong international contacts, both for financial support and educational expertise; organised mass trainings of teachers; developed a collection of new Albanian curriculum materials for teaching human rights to all age groups; set up 42 pilot schools and HRE centres throughout the country; and implemented a new university curriculum for the training of future teachers. This Notebook explores how ACHR negotiated with the new democratic government officials to launch a long-term process with a nationwide impact.

The authors begin by providing context, noting that, "after 45 years of an oppressive and isolationist communist dictatorship, in 1991 Albania faced a new world of democratic possibilities....[Thus,] Albanians needed an educational system that prepared its citizens for critical thinking and encouraged political participation. Instead, it had the remains of a dogmatic and rigid communist educational system and curricula, which could not adequately teach students their rights and duties in this new society."

In response, in 1993 the Norwegian and Dutch Helsinki committees invited ACHR, along with the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) and the Institute of Pedagogical Research (IPR), to participate in a project aimed at changing the methodology of the educational system. In short, HRE methods are participative and encourage interaction; teachers are urged to move beyond the "lecture" methodology, and to embody and encourage creativity and flexibility so that the classroom is alive and dynamic. A core group of Albanian HRE teacher-trainers were selected from IPR's paedagogical experts with critical support from international trainers. They then carried out 4 large training sessions in each of the 4 largest districts in the country, involving a total of over 600 teachers.

ACHR next began preparing materials tailored for Albanian classrooms, drawing from HRE materials produced in other countries - translating, amending, and adding to them to fit the Albanian cultural situation. Together with the trainers and teachers from the first series of trainings, ACHR experts produced a set of pupil activity books for every level from first to eighth grade.

Established in Tirana, the first pilot school featured documentation centres and pupils' resource centres and sought to model the environment and democratic climate ACHR wanted to create in all schools. ACHR used the pilot school first to train the teachers within the school itself and later to train 4 or 5 teachers invited from each of Tirana's 47 schools, expanding ACHR's influence to the entire system. Each year, ACHR then launched the pilot school process in the 6 regions chosen for that year. This process involved working with one primary teacher, one secondary teacher, and one vice director or headmaster from each pilot school to conduct a 1-week teacher training in Tirana. These trained teachers in turn carried out a 2-day teacher training in the pilot school, assisted by ACHR and IPR experts, for all the school's teachers. The pilot school then organised a series of 2-day teacher-training sessions for small groups of teachers from all other district schools. This eventually resulted in all teachers being trained - usually about 300-400 in a district.

Throughout this process, ACHR also conducted public activities and discussions on HRE, while working to strengthen alliances and support networks, involve more people, sustain those already interested, and refine its thinking.

In 1997 the Norwegian Human Rights House Foundation carried out an external evaluation of the HRE process. Several findings are included; amongst them: "[t]eacher-pupil cooperation created a climate of trust and optimism in class....Children felt freer to talk, were more open and openly expressed their views..."

In order to sustain the HRE process, ACHR recognised that new teachers needed to learn HRE skills before they graduated. So, they met with human rights specialists, teachers' school deans, paedagogues (professors of education), students, and foreign specialists in HRE. The organisation also studied how other European countries had dealt with human rights in their educational systems. ACHR proposed that the universities include a pilot programme on HRE in their curricula and formed a group of HRE specialists, trained six years earlier, to collaborate with the universities. ACHR then established contacts with 5 primary teachers' schools, the dean of each of which selected 20 students in their senior year of teacher preparation, along with 5 paedagogues (professors of education). The HRE training programme lasted one school term. It was made up of eight 120-minute teaching modules. Two types of introductory seminars were held: Seminars with the 5 groups of students drawing on many practical and participatory activities to prepare them for the nature and content of HRE. Also, a 3-day seminar trained the paedagogues to teach the modules. All students were provided with relevant textbooks and at each university an HRE Resource Center was established, which contained computers, photocopying machines, HRE libraries, and other material.

ACHR then developed a process to evaluate how well the modules were being implemented, sharing these reflections in a report and a national symposium on HRE at paedagogical universities. "In a very professional debate involving deans as well as teachers we discussed the achievements and problems of the two-year process, and ultimately the university participants themselves proposed making HRE a compulsory subject in the official university curriculum. In addition, representatives of the schools that train secondary teachers expressed their interest in including HRE in the curricula..." So, to respond to the latter request, ACHR worked in cooperation with the 5 universities to establish another pilot process - this one involving mixed groups of 20 students studying to be secondary school teachers: 5 from languages and literature, 5 from mathematics and physics, 5 from history and geography, and 5 from biology and chemistry. ACHR again used surveys to establish the HRE knowledge of both the students and the paedagogues; the organisation then held preliminary seminars with the groups, conducted training sessions for the paedagogues, and adjusted the HRE curriculum to suit secondary school students. ACHR also worked with HRE educational specialists to prepare booklets for the different subject areas.

"As of March 2003, HRE is now a compulsory subject in two of the universities and an optional subject in the other three. ACHR considers this project complete and very successful."

Prior to several appendices (including details such as ACHR HRE publications, recommended English-language sources on HRE, and modules for the HRE course for primary school teachers), the authors offer recommendations for other organisations seeking to implement HRE programmes in order to be sure that citizens are being taught their rights and obligations in a democratic society:

• Build a collaborative relationship with those institutions that control the curriculum, whatever government level they may belong to - form contacts and create alliances, concentrating on agencies that are most closely connected to the initiative's objectives. Specific suggestions for forging ties include:
  • engaging the cooperation of the government's own paedagogical experts
  • building alliances with prominent individuals who can work with the ministries or agencies
  • using the support of other organisations to persuade the government to collaborate
  • calling attention to international agreements the government has already signed (such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child) to remind them of their responsibilities
  • building grassroots pressure upward from the schools and teachers' associations
  • presenting the mission as one of assisting the government in providing the best education possible for that country's children.
• Seek out international support - ACHR holds that a government may be more responsive to a proposal that it perceives to have broad international political, technical, and financial support.
• Use pilot projects - These projects can demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of a proposed educational methodology. Also, ACHR has found that smaller and safer investments pilot projects are easier for school administrators and government officials to accept. If the pilot goes well, these administrators will be in a strong position inside the education system to argue for broader implementation of the overall plan.
• Nurture alliances and cooperation at all levels - Consider inviting headmasters and/or government functionaries to HRE trainings and/or involving them in the planning of the pilot schools.
• Build on existing national expertise - "We were not trying to bring in a foreign methodology and force it on the Albanian Ministry and teachers, saying, 'Your methods are all wrong, so do it this way.' On the contrary, our approach to the educational professionals was collaborative: 'Let's take advantage together of the opportunity this political transition gives us and develop an educational system that will move Albania into a better future'."