Human Rights Education for the Twenty-First Century [antikvár]

Foreword_ Shulamith Koenig All of the contributors to this book are pioneers in the new, vast, and broadly defined field of human rights education. They believe that such education offers hope for the future of our children and the destiny of humanity as a whole. They form a community of concern with a program for action. Their program promotes people learning to safeguard and hold fast to their dignity and freedom—women, men, and children engaged in learning about human rights in the context of their struggles and their daily lives. I invite you to join this community which sees human rights as a fully comprehensive, holistic value system capable of guiding our lives beneficially and preventing abuses of our human rights. Human rights education is essential to a genuine process of global social change, and it should be included in educational and cultural activities in every society throughout the world. The chapters in this volume supply many reasons—social, legal, and political— for promoting human rights education. There are personal reasons as well. People often come to human rights education because of a transforming personal experience. For me, it all began in Israel in agonizing conversations with my dearest friend, the late Achi Yotam, an Adlerian psychologist. Achi, my husband and friend Jerry, and I often discussed the questions of how and why the oppressed turn into oppressors. One night we talked until the morning light appeared over the far mountains. We shared our deep distress over recent developments in our community, including abuses of the human rights of Palestinians. With idealism and perhaps some naivete, we sought to find Archimedes' fulcrum, the distinct leverage point which, when discovered, can effect genuine and lasting change. In human terms, we agreed, that point is dignity. If we take human dignity seriously, we must join forces to reject, remove, and fully eliminate the gap of dignity between people in all societies across the globe, beginning with our own community As a result of this clarifying analysis, I resolved to work with Palestinians for a two-state solution. At the time, while the Intifada pitched stones against bullets competing in a deadly game, I saw clearly that human rights education may be a way to learn to look at our lives from the perspec-