The following is a general guidance on ways a concern to promote human rights might translate in educational practice.  As a general guidance it is neither exhaustive nor incontrovertible; nevertheless it is useful as a template or stimulus for ideas and possibilities, and for preparing your lesson plans with a view to submitting these towards election as Blue Capper Fellows.

Human rights is itself a contested idea, and given to debate and interpretation. However, philosophy of law has highlighted the need for relating any critical and thoughtful account of human rights with a plausible account of duties or responsibilities.  Summarily, the idea is that the talk of one’s rights or another person’s rights needs to be accompanied by a discussion of one’s duties or other person’s duties, without which rights-talk can be vacuous.

With this in mind, Professor John Finnis’ (by now) classic text Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford University Press, 1980) appears to me a very helpful point of departure.  In that book, Finnis suggests that philosophical insight into what is worth seeking reveals at least 7 basic choice-worthy and mutually irreducible goods that we ought to seek and promote: life, knowledge, friendship, beauty, play, religion and practical reasonableness.  When we acknowledge that these are goods which we ought to seek and promote for ourselves and for others and that they are goods which we should never intentionally destroy in ourselves and in other persons, then we can speak sensibly also of these goods as our own and other’s rights.

Speaking in this way, one can speak of the 7 basic goods as: goods which we all have a responsibility to promote in ourselves and others; equally we can also speak of these 7 basic goods as natural or human rights to which all persons are entitled to, given the foregoing mentioned responsibility.  Meaning to say: there are at least 7 general human rights, insofar as there are at least 7 basic goods which we should promote:

1. life,
2. knowledge,
3. friendship,
4. beauty,
5. skillful play,
6. religion and
7. practical reasonableness (morality).

In my book, A Philosophy of Education: Learning and Teaching Meaningfully and Responsibly (Prentice Hall, 2006) I offer some modes or specifications of these 7 human rights. These modes of human rights are (more) concrete ways of promoting these human rights, especially as they are relevant for educational practitioners.  I have in mind these human goods or rights as they are to be promoted in our students, but they should also apply to any human being. I reproduce them here below:

1. In relation to the human right to life:
   • Nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit
   • Cultivating healthy lifestyles
2. In relation to the human right to knowledge:
   • Nurturing critical thinking capacities
   • Cultivating a habit of life-long learning
3. In relation to the human right to friendship:
   • Promoting racial and religious harmony
   • Strengthening familial bonds
4. In relation to the human right to beauty:
   • Cultivating the capacity for and appreciation of art, music, drama and other aesthetic activities
5. In relation to the human right to skillful play
   • Nurturing a love for sports
6. In relation to the human right to religion
   • Cultivating a respectful appreciation for such overarching world-views
7. In relation to the human right to practical reasonableness
   • Promoting critical moral reflection

Blue Capper Fellows are very welcome to highlight any of these specifications of human rights when they consider infusing values consistent with the UN and the promotion of peace.  As they do so, they are to bear in mind that some educational institutions require the satisfaction of a national curriculum, which has its important place and should be visible in any lesson plan infusing these values, as I point out in my book (pp. 59-62).

A final caveat: while sufficiently useful for the current purpose of guiding the infusion of values in the curriculum, these general remarks do not do justice to the complexity of human rights, and do not specify what one should do when rights are in conflict, and do not detail which rights have priority. That said, these debatable and unresolved issues need not hinder the educational practitioner who seeks to promote the above specifications, which are general enough to be reasonable and valuable however these debates turn out.