Teaching about human rights in the secondary school: a case study

Abstract

The present MA thesis investigates Human Rights Education (HRE) through film in Secondary Education in Greece. The research follows a group of twenty students attending an English class in the Second Grade of a private Senior High School in Thessaloniki. The study aimed at bringing several human rights issues to the foreground with the help of movies, on which the students produced presentations and other projects. The students’ reactions as well as their contribution to approaching human rights violations were recorded in the form of a diary, following the demands of the field of ethnography in education. The Covid-19 pandemic and the climate change phenomenon are the main issues approached from a human-rights perspective. The gap between legal, and moral obligations of Human Rights and the reality of their inapplicability in practice is a recurring issue, along with the impact of the economic and political neoliberalism on social inequalities. The class ethnography postulates a multi-faceted and complex picture of how adolescent students understand human rights as relevant or applicable in their lives.