4th Quarterly, 2006 No.142

2006 Dialogue Among Asian Educators

Jefferson R. Plantilla, HURIGHTS OSAKA

Gathering educators from different countries to present and discuss their views and experiences on human rights education is valuable. It facilitates the reaffirmation of experiences and the learning of different views on this subject.

HURIGHTS OSAKA‘s 2001 and 2006 Dialogues among Asian educators are important for such exchange of views and experiences. Additionally, they are important in understanding the situation of human rights education in Japan. Both the 2001 and 2006 Dialogues involved educators from several countries in Asia, including educators and education officials from Kansai (Osaka) region. Educators from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand attended the 2001 Dialogue. They reviewed the meaning of human rights education in schools in the context of Asia, the problems that impede and the factors that promote it, and the need to institutionalize it through a variety of measures.

2006 Dialogue

In 2006, educators from Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka attended the “Osaka

Conference on Human Rights Education – Dialogue among Asian Educators” held on 18 November 2006 in Osaka city. The 2006 Dialogue consisted of plenary and small discussion group sessions. The plenary session attracted 150 participants – mostly Japanese educators, students and local government officials.

The plenary session opened with short presentations and a panel discussion. Mr. Kenzo Tomonaga (Director, Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute) presented the international human rights education frameworks (United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education [1995-2004] and the World Programme on Human Rights Education). Mr. John Pace (an international advisor of HURIGHTS OSAKA) spoke on the relevance of human rights education in post-conflict and conflict situations. Mr. Osamu Shiraishi (Director of HURIGHTS OSAKA) gave the opening remarks.

Mr. Pace stressed in his keynote speech that

Perhaps the most important gap that exists is in regard to governments, where much still needs to be done to ensure that governments understand the value of investing in human rights education, because this is in their interests and in the interests of their future generations.

He pointed out that the experiences in Cambodia, Liberia, Iraq and Lebanon (where he worked as United Nations official) show the importance of human rights education.

The panel presentation dealt with the problem of competitive education, the experience in implementing a national action plan on human rights education, and the recent developments in human rights education in Japanese schools.

Professor Chiam Heng Keng (Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia) and Ms. Kwak Sookhee (Training Division Chief of the Seoul-based Asia-Pacific Center on Education for International Understanding) pointed out the problem of competitive education, which adversely affects the development of children. Mr. Aurangzeb Rehman of the Pakistani Ministry of Education presented the experience in implementing a national action plan on human rights education.

The problem of competitive education is faced by many countries in Asia, particularly for families who can afford to send children to school. Professor Keng cited the long-term impact of competitive education on children who refuse to join the “competition” or could not “compete” for a varierty of reasons. She cited competitive education as violative of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ms. Kwak shared the same view in discussing the problem of competitive education in Korean schools.

The presentation of Mr. Rehman highlighted the role of a national action plan in promoting human rights education in the formal education system. The National Plan of Action for Human Rights Education of Pakistan is the only national action plan in Asia devoted solely to the school system.

Professor Yasumasa Hirasawa of Osaka University, and Mr. Hideaki Koji of the Osaka Prefectural Education Board spoke about the recent developments in human rights education in Japanese schools. Professor Hirasawa explained the recent report of a national advisory body on education, which incorporated the experiences of the Dowa educators. Mr. Koji explained the whole education system concept in human rights education that is being implemented in the Osaka prefecture.

The panel presentations are significant for two things:

  1. International link of local issues – The issue of competitive education is not unique to Japan. It is happening in many other Asian countries, at least among the students from middle class families. The concept of kiasu (fear of losing) presented by the Commissioner of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission captures the problem facing students. They are being pressured not to fail – as if their whole life depends on passing entrance examinations in prestigious universities. And to be able to prepare for such examinations, so much pressure to study has to be endured for years.

  2. Relevance of international human rights instruments to the current problems faced by children - The mention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in a gathering of Osaka educators and education officials reminded them (as well as non-Japanese participants) that the United Nations agreements are not meant to be ignored especially at the present time when abuse of children has attracted more attention in society.

The small groups discussed four issues: curriculum, materials, teacher training, and link with the community (role of the civil society). The teacher training group revealed several points:

  • Necessity for more teacher training to reach more teachers
  • Need to clarify human rights education in relation to the right to education to avoid making the latter an excuse of governments to avoid the former
  • Need to support teachers in dealing with the problems faced by students.

The materials group reviewed teaching and learning materials from Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The Hong Kong materials presented in the group were in varied forms, but mainly aimed at the young people. Thus computer games and stories in DVD were used to convey human rights messages to the young people in Hong Kong. The materials cite the international human rights standards as well as relevant laws. The Malaysian materials introduce the Convention on the Rights of the Child in simple way – a pamphlet with illustrations for each major child right.

Prior to the Dialogue, the non-Japanese participants visited several primary and secondary schools in the Osaka city and prefecture to become familiar with the education system in Japan, as well as the existing human rights education programs in some of the schools visited.

Local and national situations

In this context, understanding the situation in Osaka based on a recent survey of human rights awareness of secondary students sponsored by HURIGHTS OSAKA is appropriate. The survey was originally meant for public and private schools. But the Osaka Education Boards (prefectural and city) did not agree to administer a 69-item questionnaire, or its short version with only 29 questions. The results of the Osaka survey were meant to be compared to similar surveys in India and the Philippines respectively. The shorter survey questionnaire was thus administered to 2,635 students in 15 private secondary schools in Osaka. The survey findings provide interesting links to the 2006 Dialogue such as the following:

  • The Convention on the Rights of the Child is known only by half of the respondents, while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is less popular and known by less than 40% of the respondents.
  • Only 3/4 of Japanese respondents understood the concept of universality of human rights.
  • The answers of more than 40% of the respondents imply that they were taught human rights in an unsystematic way.
  • Activities outside classroom are quite rare. The highest among them, community fieldwork, has only 5.2% response. The percentage of respondents that did not or rarely participate in any kind of activities is 93.1%.
  • Two-thirds of the respondents were confidently positive about the effects of human rights education but the remainder see only partial effect or no effect.

It is interesting to note that based on the Osaka students’ responses the use of Internet for human rights education or simply to obtain knowledge on human rights is low. This survey result must be seen in the context of a generally high rate of Internet use in Japan. The comparative analysis of the three-country survey results shows that the Internet as a source of human rights knowledge is used more in India than in Osaka. One has to note in this regard that the Osaka survey covers only private schools with students coming mainly from middle-class families, and thus assumed to have little problem accessing the Internet. On the other hand, the student-respondents in India and the Philippines were from private and public schools in urban and rural areas with limited Internet facilities in school and in the community.

At the national level, the current efforts to reform the education law in Japan bring about a question on how the schools will treat human rights education. For some time now, there are concerns raised about the “growing tendency to overemphasize respect for the individual rights and disregard the broader picture as a community” and the “standardization of education resulting from excessive egalitarianism” that led to neglect of the “individuality and competence of the children.” There seems to be a contradiction in these two concerns – with the concern for lack of development of sense of community juxtaposed with lack of emphasis on the individuality of students. But both have a negative perception of “rights”. Adding the concern about the need to raise the scholastic abilities of students under the current education reform efforts, how will human rights education fit in is the question. With the concern for improving performance in international tests, will this increase the exam-oriented character of the education system (as seen in the schools’ neglect of world and Japanese history subjects to give more time to the study of subjects included in the university entrance examinations)?

International human rights instruments and the schools

During the 2001 Dialogue, the Japanese participants said that

In Japan, international human rights standards are seen by many people as foreign and irrelevant for a number of reasons: the international human rights instruments use legal language, they do not apply to daily lives of people, there is no international pressure for their use, and even lawyers are not interested because they cannot be used in local courts.

The results of the 2006 survey of secondary students in Osaka seem to confirm this notion about international human rights instruments as reflected in the way they are taught (or not taught) in Japanese schools (or in the private schools in Osaka to be more specific). It is good that the 2006 Dialogue has reminded the educators and teachers in Japan about one international human rights instrument (Convention on the Rights of the Child) and the need to use it to address the problems of children (such as child abuse at home and in school) that are currently highlighted in Japan.

Some suggestions arising from the 2006 Dialogue

In light of the discussions during the 2006 Dialogue, some suggestions are offered:

  • Improve compulsory teacher training program on human rights by giving more time allotment and content (especially international human rights instruments) for human rights.
  • Give more attention to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in addition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and domestic laws in both teacher training and classroom teaching.
  • Pursue the implementation of the Osaka Prefectural Education Board's whole school system by emphasizing its human rights basis to the school administrators in the same manner that UNICEF pursues it child rights friendly school system approach.
  • Encourage the development of materials that appeal to the young similar to the efforts in Hong Kong using dramas in DVD format and computer games to promote practical aspects of human rights. At the same time, make the existing websites on human rights more appealing and useful to the young people.
  • Continue holding dialogues among Asian educators, which may eventually lead to an Asian network on human rights education.

Concluding remarks

A major problem during the 2006 Dialogue was the limitation of time for the Japanese and non-Japanese participants to discuss in-depth the issues raised above. Nevertheless, it is important to note the significance of this sharing of, and learning about, experiences exercise. The Dialogue was designed to provide practitioners the chance to reflect on their own experiences and to think of ways of making human rights education achieve its goal. As more experiences come along, more Dialogues are needed.

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Endnotes
  • For more details on this Dialogue see “Dialogue on Human Rights Education” in issue number 23, March 2001, FOCUS Asia-Pacific (HURIGHTS OSAKA) page 11, and also “The Asian Dialogue on Human Rights Education” in volume 5, Human Rights Education in Asian Schools (Osaka: HURIGHTS OSAKA, 2002).
  • The Osaka survey was undertaken by Mr. Yoshiro Nabeshima.
  • Yoshiro Nabeshima, Education Policies and Human Rights Awareness of Secondary School Students in Japan, HURIGHTS OSAKA, 2007. This report will be included in a forthcoming publication on the whole research project.
  • From the end of the 1970s, the use of computers by Japanese schools spread quickly all over the country that eventually developed into the use of multi-media facilities in the 1990s as part of the official government education policy. By late 1990s the use of internet in schools “for learning, searching for information and inter-school and international exchange” begun. See Toshiyuki Mizukoshi, Educational Reform in Japan - Retrospect and Prospect accessed at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/ unpan011543.pdf
  • “Educational Reform” in Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, and Science and Technology website, http://www.mext.go.jp/english/org/reform/03.htm
  • “The Asian Dialogue on Human Rights Education”, op. cit., page 72.
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