Educating for Peace and Human Rights - (Peace and Human Rights Education) Annotated by Maria Hantzopoulos & Monisha Bajaj

Book Synopsis

Over the past five decades, both peace education and human rights education have emerged distinctly and separately as global fields of scholarship and practice. Promoted through multiple efforts (the United Nations, civil society, grassroots educators), both of these fields consider content, processes, and educational structures that seek to dismantle various forms of violence, as well as move towards cultures of peace, justice and human rights. Educating for Peace and Human Rights Education introduces students and educators to the challenges and possibilities of implementing peace and human rights education in diverse global sites. The book untangles the core concepts that define both fields, unpacking their histories and conceptual foundations, and presents models and key research findings to help consider their intersections, convergences, and divergences. Including an annotated bibliography, the book sets forth a comprehensive research agenda, allowing emerging and seasoned scholars the opportunity to situate their research in conversation with the global fields of peace and human rights education.

Review Quotes

"This book is a timely and much-needed addition to scholarly work in both PE and HRE, as the authors highlight how the overlaps between PE and HRE can emerge as fertile ground for new thinking and action in the global fight for social justice. Accessible and relevant to beginners and seasoned human rights and peace educators alike, the authors demonstrate their conceptual expertise in these fields through the depth and breadth of their analysis." --International Journal of Human Rights Education

"[T]his book is an important, well-written, and even essential text for new and seasoned PE and HRE scholars, practitioners, and activists. Its global scope, accessible approach, and breadth of content make this text primed for use in university classrooms, grassroot campaigns for justice, and in the hands of everyday peacebuilders and human rights advocates around the world." --Educational Review

"Educating for Peace and Human Rights: An Introduction builds on previous texts by the two authors, but it truly shines as a way of introducing students new to these areas of education. Of particular importance is the care that Bajaj and Hantzopoulos take both to present the historical emergence of peace education and human rights education and to build on discussions of these historical foundations, with an emphasis on critical and decolonial elements of these fields." --Global Campaign for Peace Education

"Maria Hantzopoulos and Monisha Bajaj, leading figures in the fields of peace studies and human rights education, offer a critical foundation for their respective fields of practice and show how education for peace and human rights can together reduce inequality and oppression ... For those seeking an introduction and for those long immersed in either or both of these fields, this book is a valuable resource." --Theory and Research in Education

"[An] accessible text that is eminently suitable for courses on both human rights education and peace education. This book leads the way in inspiring new courses that combine and synthesise the two fields." --London Review of Education

"[E]ssential for those within the fields of PE and HRE. Future researchers, policymakers, and activists can use the book as a starter for them in deciding future studies and making educational policies ... [T]eachers and practitioners from various educational contexts and settings may find it a useful resource, particularly as a practical guide to teach peace and human rights together in the classrooms." --Journal of Peace Education

"Education for Peace and Human Rights: An introduction is highly relevant to today's debates on peace and human rights as part of the broader sustainable development agenda, however, and, perhaps more importantly, it serves as a starting point for a deeper discussion about education, its goals and the role it has in creating a more sustainable, peaceful and rights-respecting world." --International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning

"An exceptional text from two luminaries of the field who skilfully synthesise and integrate two distinct yet interconnected fields. In building bridges and signposting new paths, it promises to serve as a valuable foundation for academics, students, school-based educators and practitioners across a range of fields directly, or indirectly, related to peace and human rights." --Human Rights Education Review

"The book and the coming series are just one example of the growth in the research and practice of peace and human rights education and their much-needed contributions to creating a more democratic, peaceful, and just world." --Comparative Education Review

"A practical and timely book which spotlights and legitimizes peace education and its critical contributions to academic and informal educational spaces. It contains thoughtful strategies and useful tools for teachers and anyone hoping and helping to build the beloved community. I am recommending it to my fellow peace educators, from the elementary to the postgraduate levels, so that together we can nourish into being a future of greater empathy, collaboration, and justice." --Maya Soetoro-Ng, Associate Specialist at the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, and Consultant at the Obama Foundation, USA

"As rising authoritarianism, pandemics, and climate crises continue to (re)shape conflict and injustice around the world, Hantzopoulos and Bajaj's compelling roadmap of and singular vision for the foundations, complexities, situated engagements, and generative intersections of peace education and human rights education are exactly the interventions that we need. A Must Read." --Kevin Kumashiro, former Dean of the School of Education, University of San Francisco, USA

"This critical guide is much more than a map and handbook for peace and human rights educators-its truest audience is every teacher at any level who aspires to create a classroom based on the practice of freedom, and is in persistent pursuit of firm footing in this broken world." --William Ayers, formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

"Hantzopoulos and Bajaj brilliantly point to new directions in peace and human rights education that are critical, post-structural and decolonial - and interconnected through a shared focus on human dignity and transformative learning. Chapter 5 is a tour de force!" --Felisa Tibbitts, Chair in Human Rights Education, Utrecht University, the Netherlands and UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Higher Education

About the Author

Maria Hantzopoulos is Associate Professor and Chair of the Education Department at Vassar College, USA. She is co-editor of Peace Education (Bloomsbury, 2016) and author of Restoring Dignity in Public Schools: Human Rights Education in Action (2016).

Monisha Bajaj is Professor of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco, USA and Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. She is the author of Schooling for Social Change: The Rise and Impact of Human Rights Education in India (Bloomsbury 2012).