Human Rights, Diversity, and Citizenship Education

Abstract

The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a propitious time for educators to examine its implications for educating citizens in multicultural nation states. The author argues that students must experience democratic classrooms and schools that reflect their cultures and identities to internalize human rights values, ideals, and behaviors. Schools in nations around the world make it difficult for students to acquire human rights ideals and behaviors because they pursue assimilationist goals that do not provide students civic equality and recognition. Citizenship education needs to be reformed so that it will help students to internalize human rights ideals and behaviors.

Parts of this article are based on the author's introductory chapter in The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (Banks 2009). A version of this article was presented as the keynote address at the Human Rights Education for a Sustainable Future conference, September 19 to 20, 2008, St. Patrick's College, Dublin, Ireland.

James A. Banks is the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council for the Social Studies. He is a member of the Laureate Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi and of the National Academy of Education.