Human rights education and historical learning

The fundamental aim of human rights education is to prevent, or at least attempt to prevent, human rights violations. The principle normative benchmarks for human rights education are the universal standards of human rights. Pupils should be taught how to analyse current distributions of power, social differentiation and inequality. Such education assumes an underlying changeability in the existing social order and balance of power and naturally therefore, also inconsistencies in perceptions of what should be understood as standards of human rights. The talk will explore the uniting and consolidating potential of human rights education and historical study. What in particular do these two compelling approaches have in common? Why should human rights education be regarded as historical study and vice versa; why is it important to conceive of historical study as human rights education, and how can both be taught in a manner that complements the other approach?

The talk will explore the theoretical commonalities in approach between human rights education and historical study. A discussion of teaching materials created by students at the FU Berlin will then follow; examining how such a compound approach can be implemented in history classrooms and what difficulties teachers and pupils are likely to encounter. Findings from the ‘Change. Handbook for History ‚ project will be presented, which was carried out between 2014 and 2016 by the working group for history didactics (Arbeitsbereich Didaktik der Geschichte) at the FU Berlin and sponsored by the ‘Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’

Prof. Martin Lücke is professor of history didactics at the FU Berlin. His principle fields of focus are the Holocaust and historical learning, the history of gender and sexuality, and theoretical debates within history didactics.