Human rights and cosmopolitan education of the XXth century

The first half of the XXth century became a turning point for the history of education. The aftermath of the WWI and the development of educational psychology made education a matter of international concern. In 1925, the private International Bureau of Education (IBE) was created with the support of the League of Nations and in 1929 the Bureau became intergovernmental (IBE, n.d.-a). In 1947, the IBE was joined with UNESCO as a new center of international cooperation in education. The IBE served as an arena for discussing the core educational issues worldwide and was aimed at creating frameworks for educational reforms (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2013). Until 1968, when the IBE became an integral part of UNESCO, the Bureau had been organizing International Conferences on Public Education (ibid). The topics discussed at these conferences indicate the most emerging issues in education at this time. The work of IBE mainly concerned the elaboration of administrative frameworks, which would allow to accept more people to educational institutions and provide them with quality education, development of the curriculum, based on the data of psychological development of a child and defining the aims of education, relevant for the context a student would live in (ibid). In 1948 the right to education, as well as the right to human rights education, were fixed in the UDHR and in 1966 in the ICESCR. Consequently, in its recommendations, the IBE made a great emphasis on the universal right to education, inclusiveness of educational systems and the promotion of peace and international understanding (ibid). The activities of the “Bureau” also signified that Education became a new independent academic field of studies.

Many IBE member states followed the recommendations of the organization. Education became more inclusive – legal frameworks raised the age of the permitted child labour, thus, leaving more time for all children to study. Lifelong and special needs education became a part of educational studies and concrete domestic policies (Schugurensky, 2012). Women were gradually achieving equal access not only to schools, but also to higher educational institutions (Taylor Allen, 2008). By 1950s in the U.S. the segregation in education is outlawed. Various international and regional research organizations were founded, such as

World Conference of Adult Education, International Association of Social Educators, Latin American Fundamental Education Centre, Cairo Conference on Free and Compulsory Education in the Arab Countries, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and Comparative and International Education Society (Schugurensky, 2012).

Of course, the implementation of the right to education in many locations was highly problematic. The pace of the evolution of colonial education was incomparable to metropolises – affordable state education institutions made up less than half of schools and universities in colonies (Madeira, 2005). In South Africa, the regime of apartheid drastically affected the access to education of black population of the country (Schugurensky, 2012). In Soviet Union, the notion of individual rights was absent from citizenship education within the curriculum (Zepper & Brickman, 1992).

In the situation of the Cold War, school curricula generally promoted the idea of the “Empire of evil” of the ideological opponent, justifying the bipolar order of the world and the armed conflicts emerging from this confrontation. The emphasis was mainly done on civic duties and patriotic values, especially in terms of history studies (Meyer et al., 2010). As I mentioned before, in the first half of the XXth century the term “cosmopolitan education”

was mainly associated with the exclusive access to education abroad of national elites (Halme-Tuomisaari, 2013). It can be claimed that the inclusive educational policies could be characterized as cosmopolitan, however, they were based on the same nationalist idea of the unique civilized nation, which, unlike non-civilized nations, followed the path of progress and aimed to include the excluded natives of the nation in the ranks of its citizens (Popkewitz, 2008).

Conclusions

In this chapter I intended to explain the reader why I pose the question about the compatibility of human rights and global citizenship, as cosmopolitanism is being called today within UNESCO frameworks. The terms have different theoretical origins and served different purposes in different contexts of the history of human thought. The idea of human rights has been present in different cultures since the foundation of the first human civilizations. Historically both cosmopolitanism and human rights can be seen as exclusive, but, while the considerable consensus about human rights was established already in the first

half of the XXth century, cosmopolitanism as a term remained an exclusive elitist notion.

Moreover, its evolution in the context of European conquests and the creation of European empires might evoke an imperialist pretext. It appears that in the end of the XXth century the interpretation of cosmopolitanism drastically changed: many works, devoted to the historical development of the notion of cosmopolitanism refer to the theory of natural rights as its analogy (Heater, 2004; Lettevall & Petrov, 2014) cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitanism middle ages, imperfect cosmopolis heater etc. Probably, the contradictions between the theory of natural rights and cosmopolitanism were blurred within the contemporary discourse (Tambakaki, 2010). For that reason, in the beginning of the chapter I emphasized the importance of “historical philosophizing…with the virtue of modesty” (Nietzche, 2016, p.

26). When analyzing the evolution of the concepts in the context of their elaboration, I aimed at remaining independent from the contemporary interpretations to the possible degree. I believe that the reflections I presented on the foundations of human rights and cosmopolitanism are important for understanding the historical problems that are inherent to these terms, for further analyzing how these issues might emerge in the course of their further conceptualization and which solutions can be offered by UNESCO.

5 Methodology

“Besides, it`s not true that no one has found the answers.

There are more answers than questions, and lots of people have found answers that were perfectly satisfactory for them”

William Somerset Maugham, “The Razor`s Edge”, 1944

Introduction

Taking into consideration the multitude of factors, internal and external, that could have influenced the creation of the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) agenda and the inclusion of Human Rights Education (HRE) within GCED might seem impossible to find the answers to the questions that I posed in this study. However, I do not aim to suggest the final and the only trustworthy view on this phenomenon, but only to present the picture, as it appears before me in the result of my methodological, theoretical choices and the data gathered. The following chapter discusses the choice of the paradigm and methods, related to the specificity of my research questions and the data that I aimed to obtain – formal interviews with the members of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) GCED team and several other interviewees, related to the development of HRE and GCED agenda in UNESCO policies, participant observation and document analysis. Furthermore, it will discuss the process of my work in more details, including the sampling, the elaboration of interview guide and the techniques used. I will also touch upon the ethical principles I needed to consider in terms of my research. I conclude with the reflections on validity, reliability of the gathered data and its limitations that were due to various circumstances I faced during the research.