HR TEACHING EXEMPLARS FOR SCHOOLTEACHERS

In an immense and very significant effort to give human rights education a much-needed boost, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), together with other institutions and organizations, developed and published in 2003, three guidebooks on human rights education for teachers and primary and secondary schools.

The CHR is a national institution that is primarily responsible for spearheading the promotion of human rights in the Philippines, and it mobilized various stakeholders for this undertaking in consonance with the United Nations (UN) Decade of Human Rights Education (1995 – 2004).

Known as the “Human Rights Teaching Exemplars for Elementary and High School Education” and the “Facilitator’s Manual on human Rights Education,” these are some of the major fruits of the State’s response to the UN call to action for the Decade, with the CHR, the Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (ChEd), non-government organizations and sectoral people’s organizations crafting the Philippine Human Rights Education Decade Plan (PHRED).

It all started in April, 1997, when the CHR and the DepEd organized a writing workshop to develop Human Rights Education (HRE) teaching modules. The writers were composed of teachers of public and private schools and HRE practitioners from non-government organizations. A total of 250 modules were written with an average of 12 HRE modules per grade/year level. These were then field-tested in 54 participating try-out schools all over the country.

The modules were then revised based on feedback generated from the pilot testing. A total of 101 modules were left after the revision workshop, finally named as the HRE Teaching Exemplars.

In 1998, a series of orientation workshops for elementary and high school principals were jointly conducted by the CHR and the DepEd, along with a series of regional launchings of the 101 HRE Teaching Exemplars.

In 1999, the DepEd, with the use of their Special Program Fund Allocation totaling P1,000,000, printed these exemplars. The CHR’s printing counterpart was supposedly P500,000 from the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund’s (UNICEF) pledge, but this did not push through because the modules were submitted for review by the UNICEF to its consultants to improve on its contents and presentation.

Despite this minor snag, the CHR and DepEd, in 2000, initiated a nationwide survey on the human rights awareness level of classroom teachers.

In June, 2003, the inter-agency team of CHR and DepEd officials and staff processed and analyzed all the generated data gathered from the survey. The results showed a not so surprisingly low level of human rights awareness among the country’s classroom teachers.

Realizing this discouraging situation, both agencies deemed it necessary to conduct a massive human rights education program among public school teachers. The national and regional facilitators/trainors of teachers were the first to be trained. They, inturn, trained all the teachers in their respective areas on strategies and techniques of teaching human rights in the classroom level.

From June to August of 2003, the same inter-agency team conducted a series of writing workshops, field tests, critiquing and revision/rewriting workshops and developed the “Facilitator’s Manual on HRE.”

From 2001 to 2003, the CHR and DepEd also conducted a review of the Basic Education Curriculum, a review of the first edition of the HRE Teaching Exemplars, writing workshops on additional/new lesson plans for basic education, revision of the first edition, pilot-testing in all region of the country of all revised and additional lesson plans and rewriting/finalization workshops and preparation of all manuscripts.

The second edition of the exemplars is a work in progress. Three years in the making and punctuated with major revisions and refinements to suit the changing needs of the academic community, these books exemplify the resolve and commitment of professionals from across the wide spectrum of human rights to secure an environment that is conducive to a better understanding of the value of human rights education in safeguarding the individual’s dignified existence.

From 2003 to 2004, the three books were mass-produced, initially in mimeograph form and---with funding from the British government---finally, in printed form. This was followed by a series of regional launches of the three books, back-to-back with a series of regional training of DepEd trainors.

In 2004 to 2005, the first graduates of the trainors’ trainings conducted their school-wide in-service education and training on HRE of the exemplars to classroom teachers.