Human rights as a subject in school curriculum

Updated on: Friday, December 14, 2012

The National Human Rights Commission is pursuing the NCERT to introduce human rights in school curriculum, NHRC Chairperson Justice K G Balakrishnan said today.

He said the commission has proposed the introduction of human rights education at primary school level to sensitise children about it.

Addressing a conference on Human Rights Education, he said a module for introducing human rights as a separate subject has been prepared by the NHRC.

"It is up to the NCERT who has to introduce it in the text books, we are pursuing them to do it. It is not education alone, we need more involvement from people to prevent human rights violations that are happening, this is why educating children at the lowest level is important.

"We should envisage about having national human rights volunteers to go to classrooms and impart education," he said.

Justice (Retd) V S Malimath, a former member of the NHRC, said only teaching human rights as a subject and evaluating awareness on the basis of an examination is not enough.

Teaching students about human rights in colleges and universities will not make them introspect upon moral values, he said.

"What we need is to Indianise the whole process and introduce it as a part of a value education, rather than just a subject," he said.

Also present at the occasion, Parvin Sinclair, Director of the NCERT said, "We can come up with a prototype, and support the introduction of human rights as a subject, but first it is important to not only have the schools educated, but requires a support from everyone, including government officials, which needs a sea change."

She said there is a huge gap in teachers' education and the NCERT is coming up with a process of revising the curriculum of teachers training programmes.

Human rights as a subject in school curriculum

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