Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms

Foreword; Olga Talamante PART I: OVERVIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION 1. Building a Human Rights Education Movement in the United States; Felisa Tibbitts 2. The Challenges and Triumphs of Teaching for Human Rights in U.S. Schools; Susan Roberta Katz and Andrea McEvoy Spero PART II: PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS 3. Each One, Teach One: The History and Legacy of the Black Panther Party for an Elementary School Audience; Jessie Blundell 4. The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living: Human Rights Education in the Elementary Classroom; Erin Brennan 5. Bringing to Life Human Rights Education in the Science Classroom; Annie Adamian 6. Challenging Islamophobia in the Middle School Classroom: Using Critical Media Literacy to Teach Human Rights; Kelly Delaney 7. Tout Moun Se Moun "Every Person Is a Human Being": Understanding the Struggle for Human Rights in Haiti; Victoria Isabel Duran 8. Know Your Rights: Understanding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Jacqueline Fix and Puja Kumar Clifford 9. Teaching The Crucible through Human Rights; Barbara J. Arduini 10. Reframing a Community College Social Problems Class through a Human Rights Perspective; Lindsay Padilla 11. Teaching and Learning Asian American Leadership: A Human Rights Framework; Melissa Canlas 12. Female Genital Mutilation: A Pedagogical Tool To Explore Global Violence Against Women; Onllwyn Cavan Dixon Afterword: Will Human Rights Be Decolonizing?; K. Wayne Yang  

Andrea McEvoy Spero is the former Director of Education at The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, USA. Susan Roberta Katz is Professor of International and Multicultural Education and Human Rights Education at the University of San Francisco, USA.  

"This volume offers a unique and powerful approach to global education in the twenty-first century, one that promotes a concern with human rights over a logic of capital accumulation and economic survival. What an important message of possibility that the mastery of content and skills take place in the context of developing intercultural understanding and advocating for equity, access and justice. When we are now asked to increase achievement and to pay more attention to social and emotional learning in our central city schools and classrooms, I can think of no better approach than to develop a generation of transformative intellectuals who connect their academic learning and their self-worth to a love and solidarity with the global human family." - Ernest Morrell, Macy Professor of Education, Columbia University, USA

"Bringing a human rights perspective into US schools and classrooms has always been an elusive challenge because we tend to think of human rights as somehow unrelated to our reality. Susan Roberta Katz and Andrea McEvoy Spero instead demonstrate that honoring and protecting human rights is everyone's business. Through the examples provided in Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms, teachers and students can envision the role they can play in protecting human rights here in our country, as well as throughout the world." - Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

"The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for education to achieve the development of every child 'to the fullest potential' and the 'preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society.' Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms grounds that aspiration in the compelling, concrete experiences of teachers in twenty-first century schools, where human rights can provide a context for shared values, respect, and meaningful learning across classrooms divided by economics, race, culture, and