Promoting a just education: Dilemmas of rights, freedom and justice

Educational Philosophy and Theory 39 (6):592–603 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper identifies and addresses some dilemmas to be faced in promoting educational projects concerned with human rights. Part of the difficulty that human rights education initiatives must cope with is the way in which value has been historically conferred upon particular notions such as freedom and justice. I argue here that a just education must grapple head‐on with the conceptual dilemmas that have been inherited and refuse to shy away from the implications of those dilemmas. To do this I address the fundamental fictions upon which rights are based and view those fictions as nonetheless useful for opening up the ethical terms of human rights education. With reference to the work of Arendt, Lyotard and Levinas, I conclude that the real potential of human rights education lies in its capacity to provoke insights that help youth live with ambiguity and dilemma, where freedom, justice, and responsibility cannot be dictated to them, but rather involve tough decisions that must be made in everyday life

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
60 (#241,099)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Otherwise Than Being, or, Beyond Essence.Emmanuel Levinas - 1974 - Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press.
Otherwise than being: or, Beyond essence.Emmanuel Levinas - 1974 - Hingham, MA: Distributors for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Boston.
Between past and future.Hannah Arendt - 1961 - New York,: Viking Press.
Collected philosophical papers.Emmanuel Lévinas - 1987 - Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press.
Alterity and Transcendence.Emmanuel Lévinas - 1999 - Columbia University Press.

View all 8 references / Add more references