Human rights are at the core of fair democracy, upholding the rule of law. A doctoral thesis by Tuija Kasa to be examined at the University of Helsinki posits that human rights cannot be considered realised merely through declarations of value or legislation. Instead, they must be actively promoted. Learning to perceive inequalities and injustices is essential to influencing them. Human rights complaints about, for example, discrimination, religions and the treatment of children with disabilities occur repeatedly in Finnish schools.
“In increasingly polarised societies, it’s more important than before to be able to pursue shared goals across various divisions in order to respond to global crises. Human rights education can contribute to tackling these problems,” Kasa says.
Teachers in Finland not systematically trained in human rights
In spite of its inclusion in the national curricula, human rights education has not been systematically implemented in teacher education in Finland.
A big step forward was taken in the latest national core curricula. In addition to being part of the content of certain school subjects, human rights also permeate the curricula as values and obligations.
“In other words, human rights education is the duty of all teachers. Even good curricula cannot be put into practice unless teachers are informed enough on the topic. Leaving the matter up to teachers’ own initiative is problematic,” Kasa notes.
Teacher students highlight uncertainties in their skills
Unrealised human rights education has far-reaching consequences: people without knowledge and skills on the topic will struggle to hold those exercising power critically accountable and to intervene in injustices.
In her doctoral thesis, Kasa investigated the state of Finnish human rights education by surveying the views of teacher students and investigating legal and political documents.
Teacher students consider the theme extremely important and topical, and would like it to be part of their professional education. In particular, legal understanding, as well as equity, equality, democracy and participation emerged as relevant topics. The students highlighted uncertainties concerning their skills and commented on insufficient awareness of human rights issues in Finland.
“Often, we fail to see things close to us clearly: human rights problems are seen as something to do with other countries. In fact, it would be important to learn to recognise such problems also in our own context. For example, racism, hate speech, violence against women and the treatment of Sámi people are themes on which Finland has repeatedly been reprimanded by human rights operators,” Kasa points out.
Evolving human rights education can help identify and address injustice
Human rights originated in the ruins of the Second World War from the hope that similar disasters would never happen again.
However, the realised forms of human rights education have been criticised. Among other things, they have been regarded as ‘declarative’, or legally oriented, detached from actual contexts and injustices. The values and ideals of human rights, such as universalism, rationality and individuality, have been criticised.
In fact, it has been said that human rights education should be reformed in an increasingly critical direction.
Kasa proposes nonideal theory as a new approach. It focuses on negative moral phenomena, such as dehumanisation and inequality. Dehumanisation enables genocide and people’s destruction in war – it is at the heart of human rights violations.
“We have to critically tackle actual injustices and problems.”
Kasa emphasises that human rights are a historically significant result of struggle and an achievement that should not be scrapped in the face of challenges.
“Schools provide an excellent opportunity to practise respect for common humanity and sensitivity to inequalities. A fair society requires citizens to be able to consider the common good over their own interests.”
Tuija Kasa, MSocSc, defended her doctoral thesis entitled Unveiling Injustices: Revisiting Human Rights Education’s Legal, Political and Moral Ideals in a Nonideal World on 17 January at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki.