Human Rights Education in Pennsylvania: Helping Us Remember

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 15. Politics, Curriculum and Reform

Abstract

Schools and curricula are designed to help improve and equalize communities, enlightening all involved from shadows of ignorance through many types of multicultural and inclusive education. In the context of persisting and unjust inequalities, corroded by many forms of prejudice, multicultural education has developed powerful tools for a variety of educational entities. A new and growing arm of multicultural education is taking shape in the form of human rights education. Education in human rights violations, including the Holocaust, has been recently mandated for school entities in Pennsylvania (among several other states), serving to help us prevent the ‘memory loss’ that comes with time, turnover, cynicism, and sometimes even denial of past injustices and war crimes. What is the social, historical, and educational context into which states and educational entities are offering education about the holocaust and other violations of human rights? To what extent have current households and populations been exposed to school-based education and curricula on human rights? What social indicators can we hope will show change and improvement over time? This paper examines these issues using unique and very new data from a 2014 survey of a representative sample of Pennsylvanian households. Results show the current extent of human rights education in Pennsylvania households is extensive but incomplete, reaching only about 65% of households in the state.

Author

• Michael F. Polgar, Pennsylvania State University