June 25- At a forum convened by the NHRCK on June 25, the NHRCK held a four-hour discussion with authors and editors of school textbooks. This forum, entitled “For Human Rights Friendly Textbooks,” discussed the ways to improve textbooks in human rights prospect, and pointed out anti-human rights views in current textbooks.
School textbooks have been in the revision process under the guidelines set forth in the 7th National Curriculum, which was announced by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in 2007. This forum aimed at reviewing the texts, illustrations, and terms used in textbooks, to ensure them to be consistent with human rights standards, and further discussed the inclusion of chapters on human rights in textbooks.
The forum concluded that the below should be avoided:
△Biased terms: Contrasting ‘normal’ or ‘normal families’ with persons with disabilities or single-parent families.
△ Stereotypical gender roles: Describing women in the context of housework while describing men in the context of professional work.
△ Prejudicial description of the socially underprivileged: Placing only sympathetic views on the socially underprivileged.
△ Lack of balanced views on conflicting ideas: Emphasizing one-sided views on conflicting social issues.
On these anti-human rights views in current textbooks, the participants expressed their concerns that learning through these textbooks could result in a biased idea to be formed among students, consciously or subconsciously.
The NHRCK is planning to provide educational materials, images or data of human rights surveys to ensure existing textbooks to contain human rights perspectives.
