Human rights education 1995–2017: Wrestling with ideology, universality, and agency

Abstract

Starting with an analysis of two edited volumes on human rights education published twenty years apart, the article argues that academic scrutiny of the field has focused more on its potential than on its effectiveness on the ground. Using as optics, ideology, agency, universality, epistemology, and contextualization as well as two case studies, one on Bangladesh and the other on South Africa, the authors point to (a) the ongoing weakness of front line teachers’ preparation to teach the uniquely normative character of human rights education and (b) the limited impact of research on human rights education at the delivery points.