Human Rights Education: Ideology, Location, and Approaches

As human rights education (HRE) becomes a more common feature of international policy discussions, national textbook reform, and post-conflict educational strategies, greater clarity about what HRE is, does, and means is needed. This article reviews existing definitions and models of HRE, and argues that ideology—as much as location or other variables—offers a means of schematizing varying approaches to HRE. This article reviews models organized around principles of global citizenship, coexistence, and transformative action in the context of one nation-state (India), and suggests that the mutability and adaptability of human rights education are its strength.