Being human or being a citizen? Rethinking human rights and citizenship education in the light of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty

This paper argues against a trend of human rights education, where human rights are taught in the form of citizenship education. In my view, citizenship education and human rights education cannot be taken as replaceable for each other. Underpinning the idea of citizenship is a distinction between ‘politically qualified’ and ‘politically unqualified’ persons. This distinction implies a violation of human rights in the name of social solidarity and security. This paper will argue that citizenship education could imply discrimination/exclusion although it claims to promote solidarity and human rights. Furthermore, the qualification of having rights is not dependent on citizenship but simply in human life itself. Three educational implications are discussed. Firstly, human rights and citizenship education cannot be seen as equivalents. Secondly, educators should be alert to the dangers of possible exclusion implied in citizenship education. Finally, this paper proposes different suggestions for human rights and citizenship education separately.     

Education‐medium and African linguistic rights in the context of globalisation

In the context of globalisation, European languages, especially English, continue to be the favoured medium of official communication and are valued and promoted as the dominant languages of commerce, international communication, education and scientific knowledge. In this paper, I argue that European educational language medium policies perpetuate the hegemonic influence of western languages and their corresponding forms of knowledge. I further argue that these policies have also devalued and marginalised indigenous languages, knowledge systems and cultural identities in sub‐Saharan Africa. I explore the social justice implications of these policies for indigenous language communities in the region.     

Tiering in the GCSE: A children’s rights perspective

This article presents findings on students’ views and experiences of tiering in Northern Ireland and Wales from a children’s rights perspective. It considers the extent to which tiering fulfils the rights to education, best interests, non-discrimination, and participation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It emphasises that while the majority of students were supportive of tiering, their responses highlighted a range of negative effects of tiering on students taking foundation tier. Students described the impact of being placed in the foundation tier on their self-esteem and relationship with their peers, indicating that being allocated to foundation tier can have a labelling effect. Students who were taking foundation papers, or a mixture of foundation and higher-tier papers, were more likely than those taking higher-tier papers to report that they wanted to change tier and to raise issues overall regarding tiering. Furthermore, students who were faced with these difficult choices often had a poor understanding of several aspects of tiers. The article argues that alternative forms of differentiation should be considered, and presents students’ perspectives on some of these. It argues that we must ensure that young people have a good understanding of tiering and that their views and experiences of tiering are taken into account when considering further reforms to GCSEs.     

Education service contracting in the Philippines: human rights as trumps, goals, or policy talk?

In recent years, the goals and purposes of education within the international development discourse have shifted significantly away from education for productivity or human capital development and towards education for the fulfillment of the individual through human rights. The current global education climate provides governments with an environment to support policies of free basic education, driven by a global diffusion of the central principles of education as a human right. This article considers the function of international human rights law and political movements within educational policymaking and practice, specifically regarding policy efforts to increase school access. Using the Philippines as a case study, this article addresses the guarantees for free secondary education in Philippine legal and policy documents, and assesses the current government policy for secondary education expansion??the Education Service Contracting (ESC) Program??to discuss the impact of the country??s human rights commitments on educational policy. Using Kingdon??s multiple streams model of policy analysis, I account for human rights law within ESC policymaking and determine the drivers that have led the country to take up its current model of private expansion. In conclusion, the human right to a free education should be deliberated, not as a trump card to supersede local educational obligations, but as a guiding principle, placed within problem, solution, and political contexts to assess the current state of education and adequately protect those who need publicly funded schooling the most.     

A case for cautious optimism? Active citizenship and the Australian civics and citizenship curriculum

In late 2013 a new curriculum for Civics and Citizenship education was published by the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority for use in Australian schools. In line with previous curricular initiatives concerning education for citizenship in Australia a key rationale behind the new subject is the education of “active citizens”. Research evidence over the last 25 years paints a mixed picture regarding the extent to which the translation of policy intent has been successfully implemented within Australian schools. Exploring the new subject of Civics and Citizenship in Australia in the context of previous initiatives and existing research evidence, we explore the contested and complex nature of active citizenship around three key issues – the scope and form of action that constitutes citizenship in one’s communities, how young people themselves conceptualize and experience participation, the potential that active citizenship opportunities are interpreted as being synonymous with the use of active teaching and learning methods. On this basis we argue that the new curriculum provides some optimism for those committed to education for citizenship in Australian schools, but that this optimism needs to be tempered with a degree of caution.     

Can SpRY recognize any PAM in human cells?

The application of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) can be limited due to a lack of compatible protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) sequences in the DNA regions of interest. Recently, SpRY, a variant of Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9), was reported, which nearly completely fulfils the PAM requirement. Meanwhile, PAMs for SpRY have not been well addressed. In our previous study, we developed the PAM Definition by Observable Sequence Excision (PAM-DOSE) and green fluorescent protein (GFP)‍-reporter systems to study PAMs in human cells. Herein, we endeavored to identify the PAMs of SpRY with these two methods. The results indicated that 5''-NRN-3'', 5''-NTA-3'', and 5''-NCK-3'' could be considered as canonical PAMs. 5''-NCA-3'' and 5''-NTK-3'' may serve as non-priority PAMs. At the same time, PAM of 5''-NYC-3'' is not recommended for human cells. These findings provide further insights into the application of SpRY for human genome editing.     

Teachers’ pedagogical perspectives and teaching practices on human rights in Cyprus: an empirical exploration and implications for human rights education

This paper describes a qualitative study that explored the understandings of human rights, pedagogical perspectives and practices in human rights teaching of three Greek-Cypriot elementary teachers. The study revealed some significant challenges in human rights teaching that seemed to be common for all three participating teachers. First, all of the teachers experienced pedagogical difficulties in defining and talking about human rights. A second challenge was that these difficulties seemed to influence both their pedagogical perspectives about the teaching of human rights and their teaching practices. And the third challenge was that the difficulties that teachers faced in preparing their lessons were also reflected in their teaching practices in four ways: the dominance of a “declarational” approach; decontextualization; the trivialization of human rights; and the retreat to familiar discourses and activities. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for teachers, teacher educators, and theory in human rights education.     

Quasticrystals: A new state of matter?

The identification of the occurrence of a material which has a structure that is ordered but not periodic in an electron diffraction work triggered a sensational discovery in 1984. It was found that a rapidly solidified alloy of Al with 10–14% Mn possesses an icosahedral symmetry in combination with long-range order. The discovery of such aperiodic forms has resulted in rewriting the basics of crystallography and has paved the way to search for these materials in Nature and look for specific applications.     

Can Schools Survive in the Age of the Web?

英语时事类文章以其丰富的内容(涉及社会、科学、文化、体育、金融、生活、生物等方方面面)、多样的体裁(记叙文、说明文、议论文、广告等)以及鲜明的特性(新闻性、知识性等),多年来深受命题专家的青睐,牢牢占据各地高考试题的一席之地.通过阅读英语时事类文章,同学们不但可以随时了解天下大事,激发学习英语的兴趣,而且可以学到许多生动鲜活的英语语言知识,从而提高综合应用英语的能力.     

Does teaching children about human rights,encourage them to practice,protect and promote the rights of others?

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Rights Respecting Schools Award makes positive contributions to children’s lives and experiences at school. Within the overall context of education as a right, the Award supports children to learn about their rights and the rights of others. By learning through a rights-based framework, children experience a rights-based approach to education and start to become active rights thinkers and rights holders. This article presents findings regarding the lived experiences of children participating in a rights education programme from a primary school in England. The results are consistent with previous rights education research and confirm that teaching and supporting the human rights of children to children, through a rights education programme, encourages children to practice, protect and promote the rights of others within their school.     

A New Patriotism? Neoliberalism, citizenship and tertiary education in New Zealand

This paper argues that a new patriotism has emerged in New Zealand over recent years. This has been promoted in tandem with the notion of advancing New Zealand as a knowledge economy and society. The new patriotism encourages New Zealanders to accept, indeed embrace, a single, shared vision of the future: one structured by a neoliberal ontology and the demands of global capitalism. This constructs a narrow view of citizenship and reduces the possibility of economic and social alternatives being considered seriously. The paper makes this case in relation to tertiary education in particular. The first section outlines the New Zealand government's vision for tertiary education, as set out in the Tertiary Education Strategy, 2007–12 (Ministry of Education, 2006). This is followed by a critique of the Strategy and an analysis of the model of citizenship implied by it. The paper concludes with brief comments on the role tertiary education might play in contesting the new patriotism.     

Can the linguistic interdependence theory support a bilingual-bicultural model of literacy education for deaf students?

Drawing on Cummins' (1989) linguistic interdependence model, proponents of bilingual-bicultural models of literacy education for deaf students claim that, if ASL is well established as the L1, then literacy in English (L2) can be achieved by means of reading and writing without exposure to English through either speech or English-based sign. In our opinion, this claim is based on a false analogy: the situation of the deaf learner of English literacy does not match the conditions assumed by the linguistic interdependence model. We draw on the work of Vygotsky and Halliday to develop a conceptualization of the processes involved in becoming literate, examining the particular and unique challenges that deaf students face as they strive to become members of the linguistic community of users of written English. We argue that becoming literate involves mastering three modes of lanuage use: 'social speech,' 'inner speech,' and written text. In some respects the educational context for deaf students is analogous to that of other bilingual learners; in some crucial aspects, it is very different.     

Can virtual schools thrive in the real world?

Despite the relatively large number of students enrolled in Ohio’s virtual schools, it is unclear how virtual schools compare to their traditional school counterparts on measures of student achievement. To provide some insight, we compared the school performance from 2007-2011 at Ohio’s virtual and traditional schools. The results suggest that Ohio’s virtual schools have grown rapidly, but also have experienced much lower levels of school performance than traditional schools. In light of these findings, we discuss factors that may be contributing to the large number of low-performing virtual schools in Ohio. Considering the lack of sufficient evidence that Ohio’s virtual schools are effective, we conclude that the relentless pursuit to expand virtual schools is problematic.     

Radical investment in the curriculum in times of Covid-19: Can we question the anti-science discourses?

PROSPECTS - This article questions the centrality of knowledge and learning in the curriculum, as well as the restriction of education to learning even when education is thought of as consisting of...     

The governance of the South African higher education system: balancing state control and state supervision in co-operative governance?

The publication of the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE) in 1996 was hailed as the first systematic attempt to map out a policy terrain for higher education in South Africa since the elections of April 1994. Its recommendations, particularly on the governance of higher education, elicited much discussion and debate. The debate continued (and continues) with the publication of the Green and White Papers, the Bill on Higher Education, and the Higher Education Act (HEA) in late 1997.This paper explores and seeks to clarify the emerging model of educational governance that has been accepted by the Ministry of Education in South Africa as the basis for managing and transforming the inherited system of higher education. Specifically, the paper considers the philosophy of “co-operative governance” and the governance recommendations of the NCHE Report and the HEA. These documents are examined in relation to state control and state supervision models of higher education governance. The paper concludes by considering the politics of policy development in the transformation of the South African higher education governance system.     

Can the Subaltern Nation Speak by Herself in the History Curriculum?

This article examines and discusses the ways in which hegemonic and subaltern discourses alternatively evoke different, and sometimes competing, notions of the nation and how they might productively coexist within the history curriculum. More precisely, using Homi Bhabha's conceptual tools of pedagogic and performative narratives of the nation, the article examines history curriculum as permeable to alternative and endless reinventions of the nation and as intrinsically linked to a fixed, stable, and officialized narrative. The study, based on the analysis of the construction of the Catalan nationhood in school textbooks and teachers' and museums' resources in Catalonia (Spain), suggests complex dynamics between hegemonic and subaltern discourses, rather than fixed conceptualizations. Whereas revolutionary discursive depictions of the nation incorporated in the curriculum have a tendency to be officialized, institutionalized, and domesticated through their mediation in educational texts, the article suggests possibilities for more effectively building the subaltern voice within the school curriculum.     

Can the performance effect be ignored in the attendance policy discussion?

Should universities require students to attend? Academics disagree. One side in the discussion of university attendance policies has tried to dismiss any association between attendance and student performance, insisting that students have a fundamental right to choose what and when to attend. By merging student record data and course attendance data for three cohorts of final year undergraduate students at a London‐based university, we are able to isolate attendance effects for 674 students, giving us a large sample, without the inherent weaknesses of more traditional survey methods. We provide fresh empirical evidence for the positive association between attendance and exam performance, and argue for a more balanced view in the attendance policy discussion. Politicians and Higher Education policies are increasingly focused on employability, student retention and completion indicators. Carefully crafted attendance policies can have positive effects on pass and completion rates, primary policy targets of Higher Education funders and policymakers. Attendance effects therefore cannot simply be ignored.