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167

Human Rights Awareness of Teachers
and Teacher Educators:
An Investigation
Saroj PandeyThere is universal concern within the international community about the contribution of human rights education in ensuring the protection and realization ofhuman rights. Over the past fifty years global events and people’s experiences
have given the quest for ensuring peace through human rights awareness and education a major thrust. International documents on human rights education publishedduring this period especially those of the United Nations form an important partof the worldwide educational discourses indicating a progression towards the establishment of a world education system. India has adopted multipronged strategy
for ensuring human rights for its citizens. On the one hand, it incorporated into its
Constitution as Fundamental Rights the various human rights provided for in the1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). On the other hand, keeping in view the ethnic diversity and highly divisive society of India, it also practices
the policy of protective discrimination for certain traditionally deprived sections ofsociety like the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), as well as girls anddisabled persons. Consequently while ensuring ‘equality of opportunity’ in mattersrelating to appointment to any office under the State, it also follows a reservation
policy in education and jobs for various disadvantaged sections of society to ensure
their adequate representation in education and service sectors.
Education has been considered as the major
instrument to address inequalities in the Indiansociety by promoting equality, social justiceand respect for the individual human being,
which are preconditions for ensuring rights.
The 1986 educational policy of India and its
program of action suggest various measures tobring equality through the system of education.
A whole chapter of the 1986 National Policy
on Education (NPE) spells out measures topromote equality of educational opportunity byattending to the specific needs of the deprived
sections of society. For instance, the NPE 1986
recommends the redesigning of the curriculum,
textbooks, training and orientation of teachers,
decision makers and administrators to remove
gender bias from textbooks, and bring change
in the status of women through education, educational development of the SC/ST populationand their equalization with non-SC/ST popula-167

168  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

tion at all stages and levels of education. Certain
core values have been identified at the national
level and integrated into the entire syllabus ofschool education across the country. Some ofthese core values are equalization, democracy,
secularism, equality of sexes, and inculcation ofscientific temper, etc.
Analyzing the Indian education system froma human rights perspective, Pandey (2005)
concluded that it has “followed a ‘Value andAwareness Model’ of human rights education,
wherein human rights are not taught as a separate subject, instead, various values related tohuman rights have been integrated in all subjects
and in all stages of school curriculum.” The
Curriculum Framework of 2000 reiterated theview that education is an important instrument
to fight inequality and to respond to the social,
cultural, emotional, and economic needs of students, promote a cohesive society by eliminatingbiases and imbalances due to caste, class, region,
religion, ideology, gender, etc; ensure the rightof the child to equal access to quality educationand other educational opportunities including
those of girls and children with special needs;
and cope with the impact of globalization without losing indigenous traditions and identity.
The 2005 National Curriculum Framework (NCF) provides ample opportunities topromote respect for the child as an individual,social justice, equality, tolerance etc. In fact,“commitment to democracy and values of
equality, justice, freedom, concern for other’swell-being, secularism, respect for humandignity and rights” have been identified as theforemost goals of education. NCF (2005),
therefore, expects the school curriculums toprovide “adequate experience and space for
dialogue and discourse in the school to build
such a commitment in children”. “A sensitivity
to others’ well-being and feelings, together withknowledge and understanding of the world”
are the expected bases of a national commitment to values. In a major departure from theearlier frameworks, however, NCF (2005) tries
to shift the focus from traditional-values-based

approach for ensuring human rights to peacebased approach. Consequently, Education for
Peace forms an important component of thelatest reforms in school education syllabus in
India. It tries to nurture ethical development
and inculcate attitude, values and skills required
for living in harmony with oneself and withothers including nature. Respect for humanrights, justice, tolerance, cooperation, social
responsibility, respect for cultural diversity, firm
commitment to democracy and non-violent
conflict resolution have been identified as “hallmarks of education for peace” (NCF 2005,
page 62).
Education for peace as visualized and promoted by NCF (2005) aims at developing arational, reflective and mature individual who
is conscious of his/her own rights as well as therights of others and his/her own duty towards
others. In fact, education for peace has been
considered as the bridge that facilitates communication between people and enables them toenjoy their rights without impinging the rights
of others. The constructivist approach advocatedby NCF (2005) provides ample scope and opportunity for promoting the culture of respect forhuman rights and peace as it calls for honoring
the personal experiences of students and treating
it as a base for dialogue and new learning. Education for peace and human rights emphasizes the
skills of active listening, critical thinking, problem solving and conflict resolution, which arealso the thrust of constructivist way of learning
under NCF (2005). Both constructivism andhuman rights education are based on humanistic
philosophy, which is dedicated to developing
mature and self-directed students, and emphasize
continuing and lifelong learning.
It is pertinent to clarify here that though
in recent reforms major shift is visible in theoverall approach of pedagogy of education fromthe behaviorist to constructivist and humanistic
philosophy, the basic principle towards promoting human rights through integrated approachhas remained unchanged. Therefore issues,concerns, and values addressing human rights

Human Rights Awareness of Teachers and Teacher Educators: An Investigation  169

have been integrated across the entire school
activities – both curricular and co-curricular,classroom environment, school management,teacher-pupil relationship, and teaching-learning process, etc. Teachers continue to occupy
the central role in the whole teaching-learning
process in the context of generating humanrights awareness among students, though theirrole has been significantly transformed frommere transmitter of knowledge to facilitator of
conditions that promote the process of knowledge construction.

Teachers and human rights education in
India
As indicated earlier, the Indian education
system relies heavily on its teachers who are
central to the process of teaching and learning. The country has more than five million
teachers working at different levels of school
education and an equally huge network ofteacher education institutions to meet theneeds of teacher preparation for the country.
These include five hundred District Institutesof Education and Training (DIETs), eightyseven Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs),
seventy-three Institutes of Advanced Studies in
Education (IASEs), more than 2,200 primaryand secondary teacher education institutions,and approximately two hundred fifty university
departments of education. The Curriculum
Framework prescribed for various teacher
preparation programs of the country promotes
the inclusion of themes related to various human rights that the teachers are expected tointegrate at the school level. For instance, the1998 Framework of Teacher Education Curriculum developed by the National Council of
Teacher Education (NCTE) is anchored firmly
on the view that the teachers themselves shouldinternalize the values of justice, liberty, equality
and secularism so that they can interpret themeffectively to the students. It strongly believes
that the education of teachers should equipthem with competencies needed to deal withdiscrimination, disparities, inequalities, etc.
Consequently, it spells out certain competencies, commitments, and performance areas forthe teachers to achieve that help them develop
a humanistic perspective that is necessary inpromoting consciousness towards human rights
and their practice inside classroom. The visionof teacher education under the NCF (2005) isthat the teacher education programs prepare theteachers for the role of being an “encouraging,supportive and humane facilitator in teaching-learning situations to enable learners to
discover their talents, realize their physical andintellectual potentialities to the fullest, and todevelop character and desirable social and human values to function as responsible citizens.”(page 107)
The cultural and religious diversities ofIndian classrooms make the tasks of teachersquite challenging for they do not only haveto be acquainted with the religious and social
diversities but also promote equality, justice,and fraternity through their activities. NCF(2005) expects the teachers to be “sensitive
to the social, professional and administrative
contexts in which they need to operate.” (page108) The curriculum planners tried to handle
this challenge to a considerable extent by introducing themes on human rights and duties,
values and their broad features, perspectives on
educational, social, economic and political development in the country, etc. It also addresses
issues like secularism, democracy, socialism,
social and cultural traditions of India, issues of
discrimination, caste, class, gender, religion, andrural-urban stratification in the country with theobjective of enabling prospective teachers tounderstand and internalize the expectations ofsociety from them vis-à-vis their own roles.
As the result of the global challenges andthe pressures on teacher education programs
to prepare teachers to meet these challenges, amore focused attempt in recent past has been
made to incorporate issues like human rights,
peace education, international education, India’s170  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

role in non-aligned movement, regional cooperation, South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC), nuclear arms race,
disarmament, emerging international economicorder, globalization, environmental pollution
and conservation and sustainable development,
etc. in pre-service teacher education curriculums. These issues now find place in almost
all teacher education programs at the primaryand secondary levels as well as in the Master in
Education courses.
This brief description of teacher education
curriculums in India suggests that Indian teachers are expected to be well-equipped with the
3As (Awareness, Analysis and Action) of humanrights once they come out of teacher education
institutions and have the necessary skills to
identify and translate into action the values andconcerns related to human rights hidden in the
text using the integration approach.
But are they actually aware of the humanrights issues and equipped to practice humanrights in classroom situations? The growing
incidence of violation of the rights of children
by the teachers themselves in the form of caste/class/religion-based discrimination, corporalpunishment, and even violation of the modestyof children, etc. is a cause of serious concern for
all education officials, and calls for some urgent
remedial measures. Ironically, hardly any study
has been conducted in the country to ascertain
the basic awareness level of teachers about human rights, who are supposed to practice theminside their classrooms. Recently, though, somescholars doing doctorate courses show someinterest on this very crucial issue. This study
is an attempt at measuring the awareness ofteachers of various issues and concepts related
to human rights.

Methodology of the study
The survey was administered on a sampleof sixty-four teachers and teacher educators
working at different levels of school education.

A Human Rights Awareness Questionnaire(HRAQ) developed by the investigator wasused for data collection. The HRAQ consistsof thirteen items, with two open-ended items(respondent writes his/her own answer) while
the rest of the items were multiple-choice type(respondent chooses the correct alternative).
The questionnaire covers basic issues such as theconcept of human rights, articles in UDHR, theday which is celebrated as International Human
Rights Day, articles in the Indian Constitution
which include human rights, fundamental rights
and fundamental duties of Indian citizens,and special implementation procedures of theUnited Nations agencies, etc. Since all items in
the questionnaire were selected from primarylevel textbooks, it was expected that all teachers
have some awareness of issues related to humanrights education that have been integrated in
all levels of school education as well as teacher
education programs. The sample included
forty-six male and eighteen female teacherswith teaching experiences ranging from one
year to more than twenty-five years. Incidental
sampling technique was followed and teachers
attending the in-service programs of NCERT
were selected as sample for the survey.

Analysis of Data and Results
The study included a very heterogeneousgroup of teachers in terms of age, teachingexperience, and school level assigned to them.
A scrutiny of their demographic profile reveals
that the age of respondents varied from 27 years
to 56 years, the latter being at the far end of
their career in the teaching profession. Understandably, their teaching experiences also varied
from a minimum of one year to a maximum of
thirty-eight years. Of the total sample of sixtyfour teachers and teacher educators, nineteen
teachers taught primary classes, twenty-six
teachers taught secondary classes and sixteen
teachers taught at teacher education institutions.
Three respondents did not furnish any specificHuman Rights Awareness of Teachers and Teacher Educators: An Investigation  171

information about the classes they were teaching. Majority of respondents (forty-eight outof sixty-four) have post-graduate qualification,
while fourteen respondents have graduation
degree, and the rest have +2 qualification, i.e.,they have twelve years of higher secondary
education.
The scoring procedure followed in thequestionnaire was 1 for correct alternative andO for incorrect alternative. The responses had
been analyzed both by item and total scoresin order to know the extent of awareness ofteachers. The frequency distribution of total
scores obtained by respondents on the HRAQ
indicates that majority of the respondents (30)scored between 0-29, twenty-five respondents
scored between 30-39, while only nine respondents scored above this average (49-69). The
human rights awareness curve of the scores of
respondents is presented below.
The graph indicates the level of humanrights awareness of the respondents. The skewed
picture of the awareness curve is indicative
enough that majority of teachers are not wellaware of the basic issues related to humanrights, which they are expected to promote intheir classrooms.
This finding has been further strengthenedby the analysis of the respondents’ answers to
open-ended questions. In one question thatwas meant to elicit their understanding of theconcept of human rights one teacher repliedthat “These are the rights of human beings tolive in a protected and secured society”, anotherteacher said it is the “right to live with dignity
and use all powers of the world” and yet anotherteacher felt human rights means “equal rights
for all.” A few other responses are presented
below:“Teaching all people alike without any discrimination of caste, colour, race, sex, etc.”“Fundamental rights of human being.”“Right to live with peace and justice.”“Rules and regulations meant for people”“Practicing one’s right without hurting other’s
rights”“Live with nature”“‘Dignity of people””Live and let live”“Right for humanization”

Graph 1: Human Rights Awareness Curve
30
25
20

Frequency(Respondents) 15

10
5
0
0-9

10--19 20--29 30--39 40--49 50--59 60--69
Class interval (Scores)172  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS“Fundamental rights provided by the IndianConstitution”“Freedom of speech, to live and move [in] any
part of the country.”

These responses suggest that a) teachers havea vague idea of human rights and lack the conceptual clarity which would help them to clearly
and unambiguously explain human rights, b)some teachers have equated human rights withthe fundamental rights provided in the IndianConstitution, c) others have equated it withpeaceful co-existence, d) still others felt thatit means following social norms. 15% of the
respondents did not reply to this item at all.
The other open-ended question was meant
to elicit the awareness of respondents about
the International Human Rights Day and thedate of its observance. 25% of the respondents
did not have any idea about the day, although
this International Human Rights Day is observed every year in majority of the schools of
the country, with a number of activities beingorganized. 34% of the respondents did not
respond to this question. Therefore almost
50% of the respondents seem to be unawareof International Human Rights Day and its
relevance to the society.
A few items relate to the provisions of
UDHR, which are included in the primary-level
Social Science textbooks of Indian schools. The
responses reveal that only 11% of the respondents were aware of the various articles of the
UDHR, while 24% knew Article 26 of UDHR
(right to education). Incidentally this article has
been frequently referred to in the recent debate
in the country on whether to make education afundamental right of the child or not, and also
all the teacher training programs (pre-service
as well as in-service) have themes on free andcompulsory education wherein it is customary
to refer to Article 26 of UDHR from where theconcept was drawn out by the framers of the
Indian Constitution.
Similarly only 42% of the respondents
indicated awareness of the fundamental rights

they enjoy in the Constitution, and sixty-two
percent expressed their ignorance about theirfundamental duties. It is pertinent to note that
the Indian society has always been considered as
duty-based society and the 42nd constitutional
amendment of 1976 recognized it by including an article on fundamental duties (Article
51A), in Part IV of the Constitution of India.
To make teachers and students become awareof these duties, they are published in the title
page of all school textbooks. The states are also
entrusted with the responsibility to educate thecitizens on Fundamental Duties so that a properbalance between rights and duties may emerge.
However, the findings of the study suggest thatthe efforts made so far are insufficient to maketeachers become aware of their rights and duties, and teacher educators themselves appear tobe ignorant about crucial issues and concepts
related to human rights and duties which they
are expected to promote and practice in their
day-to-day classroom teaching.
Majority (70%) of the sampled teachers
also lacked awareness about the existence of
Human Rights Protection Act in India, andthe principle of peaceful co-existence practiced
and popularized in the form of “Panchsheel”.1
54% of all the respondents did not answer the
related item asking what Panchsheel means [Theprinciple of Panchsheel is related to: a) serving
humanity; b) peaceful coexistence; c) women
empowerment; d) children’s rights - with “b)peaceful coexistence” as the correct choice],and of those who answered the item 26% gaveincorrect answers.

Conclusion
The analysis of data resulted in very interesting conclusions. It is noteworthy to clarify
here that the results obtained have very limited
generalization capacity due to limited numberof teachers and teacher educators included in
the study, and also because any generalizationneeds the rigor of tool construction and sample

Human Rights Awareness of Teachers and Teacher Educators: An Investigation  173

selection. The study did not follow these requirements since the objective of the study was
to conduct a quick survey of the awareness levelof those who are considered to be the facilitators of human rights in their classrooms. The
study, however, has succeeded to a considerable
extent in achieving this objective as it has beenfound that teachers generally lack the awarenessof even basic human rights concepts, which areintegrated in various textbooks of the primaryschools of the country, and also taught in theteacher education institutions. The findings
also suggest that the present integrated modelof providing human rights education has not
fully succeeded in equipping the teachers withawareness and pedagogical skills to identify thehidden agenda of the curriculum and bring itto the surface, or positively interpret various
issues of the school syllabus to promote humanrights among students. Similar results have beenobtained by a survey conducted by the Peter
D. Hart Research Associates in 1997 as part of
Human Rights USA project. The results of thisstudy suggest that less than 8% of the adults and
4% of the young people in the USA are awareof and can name the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.ii
Since teachers lack the knowledge of basic‘A’ of human rights (i.e. Awareness) they cannot be expected to practice the other two ‘As’
(Analysis and Action). Consequently, insteadof becoming the promoter of human rights theyoften become perpetrators of injustice and inequality. Therefore, the current model of humanrights education does not seem to yield desired
results and the pedagogical approach needs to bechanged from integrated model to a combination of multiple models and approaches in order
to empower teachers with the knowledge, skills
and attitudes to promote respect for the basic
rights of individuals.
Teachers need to be prepared through preservice and continuous in-service teacher education programs on the skills of analyzing theforces that violate the rights of individuals andbe trained on relevant pedagogical techniques

to utilize multiple models and transactional
strategies in their classrooms for effective humanrights education.
In-service teacher education programs exclusively focused on human rights educationand its transactional modalities are urgently
required to create necessary awareness and develop skills required by the teachers to ensure
human rights education in schools. To sum up,a more aggressive and effective human rights
education program is necessary to ensure proper
dissemination and education of human rights
among teachers; to generate awareness among
teachers about the concept and concerns related
to human rights; and to equip them with thetransactional skills to practice them within thefour walls of classroom as well as in out-ofschool activities.

References
Ministry of Human Resource Development. 1986.
National Policy on Education, New Delhi, Government of India.
National Council of Educational Research and Training.
1996. Human Rights. A Source Book, New Delhi,
NCERT.
_____________. 2000. National Curriculum Framework
for School Education, New Delhi, NCERT.
_____________. 2005. National Curriculum Framework.
New Delhi, NCERT.
_____________. 2005. Position paper National Focus
Group on Education for Peace. New Delhi, NCERT.
National Council for Teacher Education. 1998. Curriculum Framework for Quality Teacher Education.
New Delhi.
_____________. 1998. Competency Based and Commitment Oriented Teacher Education for Quality School
Education. New Delhi, NCTE.
Pandey, S. 2005. “Human Rights Education in Schools:
The Indian Experience.” Human Rights Educationin Asian Schools, 8, 95-107.

Endnotes
1
Panchsheel or the Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence are part of the 1954 agreement between

174  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS
India and the People’s Republic of China. The fiveprinciples are:1) Mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty andterritorial integrity2) Mutual non-aggression3) Mutual non-interference in each other’s internalaffairs4) Equality and Mutual Benefit
5) Peaceful co-existence.
2
See Peter Hart Research Associates, Inc., 1997,
Hart survey on attitudes and knowledge of human rights– Adults and Youth. Available at www.hrusa.org/features.
shtm and www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/youthsurv1.htm