Chapter 16 Human Rights Education in the Visegrád Countries: A Difficult Journey
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Abstract
This report deals with human rights education (hre) in the Visegrád countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The analysis focuses on public policies and discourses on hre in this region, in the context of the growing institutionalization of hre on a global scale and new efforts to converge educational policies at EU level, as well as increasing overt criticism of the human rights movement. To this end, the paper presents the historical background to the emergence of the field of hre and situates current strategies on and approaches to hre in a European1 framework. The study focuses exclusively on policies aimed at the formal education system, including the primary and secondary school levels; pre-school, tertiary, vocational, non-formal and informal education, as well as lifelong learning and youth policies, are beyond its scope. The paper aims to shed light on the concepts and approaches used and promoted by institutional actors responsible for designing and implementing hre, putting them in perspective by comparing them to existing education traditions, such as citizenship education. It also touches upon the role of civil society in the development of hre and investigates the possibility of the existence of an epistemic community on hre in the Visegrád region.