The Future of Education

Human rights are often neglected in Western high school classrooms. When they are covered, the focus is all too often on situations occurring in the developing world. This leads students to believe that critical human rights abuses happen only "over there" and leaves many feeling powerless to affect positive change. A place-based and human rights approach to curriculum design and teaching has the potential to overcome these challenges. Place-based education engages students in local experiences and uses these as the foundation of study. Human rights education, with its focus on peace, equality and human dignity, empowers students with the knowledge and skills to critique injustices and needless sufferings, and to work for social justice. 

This paper describes an innovative program, called Picture Justice, which is rooted in both placed-based and human rights education.  Created in 2014 as a partnership between The United Nations International School, Proof: Media for Social Justice and several human rights organizations based in New York City, the program equips high school students with the skills and confidence to address social injustices in their own communities through photography, story telling and human rights education. In 2015, the program's focus was on America's criminal justice system. Participating high school students used New York City as their classroom to investigate racial disparities in America's War on Drugs, the torture of solitary confinement, the criminalization of mental health problems, as well as a variety of human rights issues. They met with lawyers and activists from NGOs working on reform, trained with human rights photographers, and met with 17 formerly incarcerated people to hear their stories and take their photos. The students then designed a photo exhibit called "Broken?" and devised a theater piece. The culmination of the project was a public 1-day symposium on mass incarceration attended by students and activists, as well as the story tellers, who came to view their portraits, see their stories performed and engage with the audience. 

The paper describes the process of creating and facilitating the program, and highlights its impacts on all those involved. Using Picture Justice as a case study, it illustrates ways in which teachers can incorporate human rights and placed-based approaches into their social studies and arts classes.