The State of Human Rights Educationin Northeast Asian School Systems:Obstacles, Challenges, Opportunities

The State of Human Rights Education in Northeast Asian School Systems:
Obstacles, Cha!enges, Opportunities
was published by the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center
2-8-24 Chikko, Minato-ku, Osaka 552-0021 Japan
Copyright © Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center, 2010
Printed and bound by Kenbunsha
Osaka, JapanAll rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed by the authors in this publication do not necessarily reflect
those of HURIGHTS OSAKA.

Table of ContentsForeword .......................................................………………........................ iii
Acknowledgment ........................................…………...…........................ iv
Introduction .......................................................……………….................. 1
Addressing Human Rights Education Deficits
in the Changing Political Order in Hong Kong ………………............ 6- Yiu-kwong Chong , Hiu-chung Kwok , Yuk-kai Law
Human Rights Education in Practice:
A Case Study of the Korean Experience ......……………….............… 32- Ae Kyoung Jeong
Human Rights Educationin Mongolian Schools ..........................................…………...….…......….58- Altangerel Choijoo
A Decade of Human Rights Educationin Public Schools in Taiwan .................................……………............... 90- Ruyu Hung
About the Authors .................................……………….........…..............102

Foreword

As in any subregion of Asia, Northeast Asia presents a unique set of challenges andopportunities for human rights promotion. Peoples in this subregion share similar sociocultural perspectives that impact on education. The subregion has diverse political systems set
in the midst of growing integration of their economies. While there is little likelihood ofhaving a Northeast Asian intergovernmental mechanism, as in the Southeast and South Asiansubregions, there are nevertheless parallel experiences that provide ground for subregionalinteraction.
Educators in the subregion have been intermittently interacting with each other during thepast decade through workshops and conferences sponsored largely by institutions other thanthe Ministries of Education. HURIGHTS OSAKA has its share of these workshops andconferences since the late 1990s. And so far the only Northeast Asian intergovernmental
workshop on human rights education was the one organized jointly by the United Nations
Oﬃce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNESCO, the Korean National
Commission for UNESCO and the South Korean government in 1999 in Seoul. No otherintergovernmental activities have taken place since then.
In this context, this publication is another step towards finding concrete and practicalmeasures of promoting human rights within the Northeast Asian school systems. It does notcover mainland China and Japan, but it complements existing documentation on the longhuman rights education journey in Northeast Asia.
Osamu Shiraishi
DirectorHURIGHTS OSAKAiii

Acknowledgment

We would like to acknowledge a number of people who helped HURIGHTS OSAKA find ourauthors in this publication. Most of them attended the March 2008 meeting in Osaka wherethe idea for this publication originated.
We therefore thank the following:
Mr. Yan Wing Leung
Associate Professor
Deputy Head, Educational Policy and Administration Department
Co-head, Centre for Citizenship Education
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Hong Kong, SAR China
Ms. Young-Hee Na
Former Director General, Human Rights Education Department
National Human Rights Commission
Seoul, Republic of Korea
Ms. Sookhee Kwak
Former Research Fellow
Korean Women's Development InstituteSeoul, Republic of Korea
Mr. Chia-Fan Lin
Associate Professor
Department of Civic Education and Leadership
National Taiwan Normal University
Taipei, Taiwan
Ms. Narangerel Rinchin
Executive Director
The Center for Citizenship Education
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
We acknowledge Mr. Jeﬀerson R. Plantilla for coordinating the project and reviewing thepapers.
We also acknowledge Mr. Kazuhiro Kawamoto for designing and laying out this publication.

iv

Introduction

This publication is the fruit of a meeting ofNortheast Asian educators organized byHURIGHTS OSAKA in March 2008. The
meeting identified a set of challenges
aﬀecting, and the opportunities supporting,human rights education in Northeast Asian
school systems.

conflict between Confucian beliefs andhuman rights. This persistent problem
should be tackled by dialoguing with
postmodernists to review their stanceagainst international principles, and bypromoting interdisciplinary perspective onhuman rights. There is room forreinterpretation of traditional ideas/values(e.g., the concept of “respect the teachers,respect the ideas” can support the teachingof human rights), give old values newmeaning, and also use the conflict of ideas aso p p o r t u n i t y to r e e x a m i n e t h e i d e a sthemselves.

The March 2008 meeting identified somesignificant obstacles to human rights
education in the Northeast Asian school
systems ranging from macro issues toproblems that affect communities. To
overcome them, several of the obstacles werematched with feasible measures.

The government policy in most Northeast
Asian countries that support competitive
education has been impeding human rights
education. One idea of addressing thisproblem is through a redefinition of the ideaof competition in education using humanrights principles.

To the problem posed by simultaneous
impact of globalization and localization, lossof identity, existence of multiple identities,
the meeting agreed on the need to- Promote the idea that globalization andlocalization enrich each other, respect/appreciate diﬀerent identities

The meeting also identified opportunities
that should be exploited such as thegovernment support for education programson specific issues (children, gender) that canbe used to promote human rights educationin the school system.

- Use globalization in a positive sense –using modern technology – tounderstand the situation and people inother countries in the subregion- Promote globalization as a positive
influence in people, as a “win-winsituation”

In order to maximize the meeting results, afollow-up activity was initiated to address ina practical sense the situation in Northeast
Asian school systems. The follow up project,
entitled “Overcoming Obstacles to Human
Rights Education in the School Systems in
Northeast Asia,” was developed in late 2008
and started to be implemented in 2009. The
project is part of the long-term goal of
helping institutionalize human rights
education within the school systems inNortheast Asia. For the short-term, the- Help take away fear of human rights as
Western imperial idea.
The problem of indiﬀerence of students,
parents, and teachers to human rights
education can be addressed by promoting
human rights in relation to their daily lives.
In the context of Northeast Asia, the culture
and human rights issue takes the form of1

Introduction

project is meant to present in concrete terms
the current challenges and opportunities
relating to human rights education within
the school systems in Northeast Asia by 1)
pro viding detailed discussion on thechallenges and opportunities common as
well as unique among the countries in thesubregion, 2) presenting concrete
experiences that address the challenges andmake use of the opportunities, and 3)
creating a network among Northeast Asian
educators that continues the exchange of
information on the development of humanrights education in the different school
systems.

Several papers discuss the over-archinginfluence of the Confucian beliefs in thedevelopment and implementation of humanrights education in Northeast Asian school
systems. The Confucian influence tends torestrict human rights education as itprovides a notion of a child or young person
different from that provided by theinternational human rights standards(particularly the Convention on the Rightsof the Child). Rather than see children as
persons with rights and capacities, they areseen as weak members of society who should
always be guided to the right path. There isalso the notion of the role of teacher inside
the classroom that translates into
hierarchical and authoritarian classroom/
school system. Related to this is the view
about discipline, and the acceptability ofusing corporal punishment. The Confucian
influence aﬀects likewise the participation of
students in school activities and in theschool policymaking and r ulemaking
processes.

The expected main beneficiaries of theproject in the long run are Northeast Asian
educators - mainly those who promote
human rights education in the school
systems such as the teachers themselves,
school heads, teacher trainers, professors inteacher colleges, researchers of education
institutes, education oﬃcials, and educatorsfrom non-governmental organizations.

The social environment provides challenges
in terms of the sense of the future. There is astrong belief about the need to succeed inschooling by getting at least a university
education, in order to succeed in life. This
reinforces the government educational
policy that supports competitive education.
The society considers children as having a
singular mission of focusing on learning the“basic subjects” such as mathematics,science, and language subjects in order tohave the chance to pass university entrance
examinations. The children are therefore
expected to spend most of their time
fulfilling this mission, starting at a very
young age. The future lives of the children/
young people are considered secure with

The project eventually produced four reports
from Hong Kong, Mongolia, South Korea
and Taiwan. The reports provide diﬀerent
perspectives and discuss diﬀerent contexts.
However, common elements appear in termsof challenges and suggested measures toensure widespread institutionalization ofhuman rights education in the schoolsystems.
Common Challenges
The challenges generally appear in threeareas: culture, social environment andpolitical situation.
2Introduction

tertiar y education, or higher level ofeducation.

rights education into the school curriculums
has not been fully mainstreamed despite
years of efforts of education officials,s c h o o l te a c h e r s , a n d o t h e r e d u c a to r s(particularly those belonging to the nongovernmental institutions).

The political situation is a challenge both interms of the eﬀect of the past politicaldevelopments, and the current politicalcontexts. The history of the development ofpolitical consciousness of the people and thechange in the political systems aﬀected theunderstanding of human rights by thepeople. While the understanding of humanrights as equivalent to civil and politicalrights is not wrong, such understanding has
not expanded to cover other rights or issues.
Human rights have been relegated to protest
against the government or making claims for
one’s own benefit only, to the prejudice ofthe society as a whole. Human rights aspositive elements that support a vibrant anddiverse society have largely beenunrecognized. The current political context
is likewise a problem as it minimizes theopportunities available in the educational
policies and curriculums. With the lack ofelaboration on the human rights content in
the curriculum, support for training,teaching/learning materials, and incentives,
human rights education becomes a burden toteachers and school oﬃcials.

Despite explicit support for human rights
education, practical problems exist including
inadequate pre- and in-ser vice teacher
training on human rights education,
inadequate development of proper humanrights contents in textbooks, lack of humanrights lesson plans and other teachingmaterials, inadequate use of participatory
teaching/learning methodologies that canlead to human rights understanding, andinadequate participatory translation ofhuman rights into school policies, rules andactivities.
These obstacles exist in the context ofperceived weak understanding of humanrights by the teachers, the students and theirparents.
Overcoming Challenges and Obstacles
Thechallenges
andobstacles
notwithstanding, there are efforts that
contribute to the development andmainstreaming of human rights education
within the Northeast Asian school systems.

Common Obstacles
While governments and schools express
support for human rights education, theeducational policies and programs ofgovernments and the rules of the schools
have the opposite eﬀect.

The Mongolian situation provides a very
positive political and educational policy
environment for human rights education.
The eﬀorts currently undertaken should bebases for continued expansion of humanrights education in the Mongolian schoolsystem.

The educational policies in Northeast Asia
range from explicit human rights education
policies to that of insuﬃcient provisions. In
both cases, the incorporation of human3Introduction

The same is true for Taiwan where eﬀorts onhuman rights education provide then e c e s s a r y e x p e r i e n c e , m a te r i a l s a n dmethodologies for greater mainstreaming of
human rights education in the Taiwanese
school system.

a. Human rights education as a right initself – in line with the provisions of theUn i t e d Na t i o n s h u m a n r i g h t s
instruments, the reports emphasize theneed to recognize the state obligation
to promote human rights education as aright in itself;

T h e Ko r e a n s i t u a t i o n r e q u i r e s m o r ecollaborative work among the National
Human Rights Commission of Korea, thehuman rights organizations, teachers andschool oﬃcials, and education oﬃcials, tomobilize support for human rights
education. Increasing understanding of
human rights among the people requires
more demonstration of the necessity ofhuman rights education in relation to thecurrent situation of society as well as theneeds of the children/young people.

b. School system approach – there is
likewise a strong emphasis on the needfor a proper environment for humanrights education by looking beyond theschool curriculum and considering theimportant role of extra-curricular
activities (within the school and in thecommunity), school r ules andregulations including those that governt e a c h e r- s t u d e n t r e l a t i o n s a n d
disciplining of students, participation of
the whole school community (students,parents, teachers, school oﬃcials) inreviewing/adopting school policies andrules, and also appropriate school
facilities. Such a human rights-friendly
school environment can ensure a better
human rights education program
aﬀecting not only the students but also
the parents, teachers, and schooloﬃcials.

The opportunity for teaching/learning
human rights within the curriculum of Hong
Kong school system exists, though limited.
But since it is an opportunity, the Liberal
Study subject should be a major starting
point for the further development of humanrights education in the curriculum.
In sum, while challenges and obstacles
remain, they have not stopped eﬀorts tomainstream human rights education within
the Northeast Asian school systems.

c. Need for human rights awareness ofstakeholders – the reports likewiseemphasize the crucial importance ofteachers, school oﬃcials and parents
having appropriate level of humanrights awareness (if not sufficientknowledge of human rights) to be able
to teach human rights to students.
Some reports explain the activities thatinvolve these stakeholders (including
teacher training and participation ofparents in human rights activities).

O p po r t u n it i e s wi thin the Scho ol
SystemThe four reports invariably emphasize
several points that provide opportunities forthe integration of human rights education
into the school system. Following are someof the points emphasized:

4Introduction

This publication adds to a number ofliterature that present Northeast Asianexperiences in human rights education
within the school system. It points to theneed for an evaluation of the current school
system in order to strengthen existing
programs on human rights education or
redevelop such programs. This will address
key issues that prevent human rights
education from becoming a mainstream
educational concern.
This publication likewise supports the needto continue the sharing of experiences,materials and expertise among the Northeast
Asian educators and to create a subregional
momentum to further promote human rights
education in the school system.
HURIGHTS OSAKA is preparing amaterial that compiles various componentsof human rights education in the form ofeducational policies, school rules andregulations, teaching and learning materials,
and classroom and field activities. This is
another step in the task of promoting humanrights education as a strong component in
the Northeast Asian school system.

5