There was a lot of excitement in the EWC office in Oslo when Dr. Felisa Tibbitts, renowned expert in human rights education, came to Oslo this September. With the support of the Fulbright program, EWC enjoyed the benefit of having Felisa stay an entire month to develop a new curriculum on Education for Sustainable Development.
“I love curriculum development!” Felisa says excitedly, rummaging through the extensive papers on her borrowed desk at the EWC offices.
“It involves both the analytical side and the creative side of the brain. You need the analytical side to make sure that there is a link between the learning outcomes and what takes place in the lesson, and to time the curriculum, since a school lesson only lasts about 50 minutes. How do you decide what are the most important things to learn? But you also need the creative side: How do you get the learners engaged in the topic?”
One would be hard-pressed to find someone as experienced in human rights and democratic citizenship education as Dr. Felisa Tibbitts.
She is Chair in Human Rights Education in the Department of Law, Economics and Governance at Utrecht University, and UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Higher Education. Previously she has worked as a lecturer at Colombia and Harvard Universities, and as an advisor for among others the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF, OSCE/ODIHR, and the Council of Europe.
To the EWC trainers in democratic citizenship, she is a legend and a great inspiration.
Having no particular expertise in Education in Sustainable Development (ESD) beforehand, Felisa draws on her past engagement with UNESCO and the CoE (Council of Europe), when designing the new curriculum.
“It’s tough but in the right way” Felisa smiles and continues: “I love that I am learning something new and for such a vital topic.”
Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the global community. (…) ESD is an integral element of SDG Target 4.7, through the Education 2030 Framework for Action. It empowers learners of all ages with the knowledge, skills, values and agency to make informed decisions and make responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society.
“Greening curriculum Guidance: Teaching and learning for Climate Action” – UNESCO 2024
An Urgent Imperative
Education for Sustainable Development will be a strategic priority for EWC in the upcoming years. The curriculum developed in co-operation with Felisa will be the first in a series of projects and will be suitable for pupils between 10 and 18 years old.
The lessons will highlight democratic citizenship, youth agency, human rights and interculturalism, and will address the competences included in the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework for Competencies for Democratic Culture. To help achieve this, Felisa and the EWC team works with the Council of Europe’s RFCDC-ESD Working Group, who are developing a guidance of how the framework and its “butterfly” of competences can be interrelated with ESD curriculum.
“There is an urgent imperative to address both climate change and sustainability,” says Felisa. “We wish to embed education for sustainable development within citizenship education, with an emphasis on democratic processes and human rights.”
As is to be expected when imbedded in an organization passionate about education, human rights and sustainability, the curriculum project gradually grew during the month of September.
Especially when Felisa held workshops with the EWC staff to discuss the different lesson topics: Sustainable lifestyles, sustainable urban planning, sustainable energy sources, international negotiations on climate change, human rights and youth action.
From a more modest initial plan, the goal during the upcoming months will now be to design 10-12 unique lessons and compile it all in a handy booklet – inspired by the already existing “Little BIG Handbook on Democracy.”
A Long-Standing Partner
“Felisa is one of EWC’s longest-standing friends,” says EWC director Ana Perona-Fjeldstad about the cooperation with Felisa. “Since the very beginning of EWC, she has helped us evolve as an organization. She is a highly respected expert in her field, and could have gone anywhere in Europe, but she chose us. That is a tremendous honour that we will remember for a long time.”
Having been a strong supporter of the European Wergeland Centre since its founding in 2008, Felisa has through the years advised EWC on the democratic whole school approach, a monitoring and evaluation framework, and general strategic planning.
“I remember visiting the first set of EWC offices, even before Ana became the director!” Felisa laughs. “It was so exciting that the Wergeland Centre was being established by the government of Norway along with the CoE. I had worked with the Council of Europe in EDC-HRE since the 1990s and was very motivated to support this new teacher training center.”
A Watershed Moment in History
Felisa grew up in an American military family during the Cold War, constantly travelling from place to place. The threat of nuclear annihilation was a constant part of her life, having been made all the more real by her stay in Japan as a young girl.
“I was very serious growing up,” Felisa recalls smiling. “At eleven years old I knew I wanted to work for world peace.”
She continues:
“I really didn’t feel that I had a choice. What I was exposed to growing up – which included not only the Cold War, but also the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the U.S. civil rights movement – compelled me to devote myself to promoting peace and justice. The decision that I had to take at some point was to focus on the field of education rather than go into foreign policy.”
Then, all of a sudden, a watershed moment in world history transpired: At a press conference on 9 November 1989, DDR politician Günter Schabowski makes a fateful miscommunication and initiates the dismantling of the Berlin Wall – the 155-kilometer barrier that had physically separated East-Germans from West-Germans for 28 years.
Upon seeing the stirring images of Germans tearing the concrete wall down and embracing each other, Felisa felt an immediate urge to travel to Europe to witness the Eastern part of the continent again opening itself up to the outside world.
“What about them?” she recalls thinking to herself, referring to the former Soviet republic and Soviet satellite states declaring their independence and movement away from Marxism after the implosion of the Soviet Union, which quickly followed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“I had to go and see what was happening,” she laughs.
Working with the Dutch Helsinki Committee in Utrecht, she helped several countries’ educational sectors transition from Leninist and Marxist curriculum to one based on critical thinking, human rights approaches and democracy learning.
“Now it has become full circle,” Felisa laughs. “In the 1990s I started out sleeping on a couch in my office in Utrecht, working for an NGO, and now I travel back to the Netherlands through my chair at Utrecht University.”
Dealing with Hot-Button Issues
Human rights are not always a non-controversial issue. Felisa has experienced going head-to-head with politicians and religious leaders who don’t want topics like women’s rights discussed in the classroom.
“In certain environments, if only one religious leader speaks against a curriculum, a lot of teachers will refuse to teach it in their classrooms,” says Felisa, explaining you need to be able to navigate sensitive issues.
“We call these hot-button questions,” she smiles.
She has also been asked to develop curriculum for countries struggling with societal violence and ethnic strife. Although she prefers to support local curriculum developers, in some cases when local writers are concerned about repercussions for working on sensitive curriculum, she has been brought in to work alongside local writers.
After the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, she was asked to make a human rights curriculum there, choosing to bring up some sensitive topics rather than ignoring them completely. She has also worked on national curriculums in Kosovo and Gaza on civic education and human rights.
If the People Remain, the Knowledge Remains
Felisa feels a chill run through her when thinking about the state of democratic development in the world these past years. She wants to remind people that democracy is fragile, and that it is more important than ever to work with human rights education:
“We face the same challenges in education that we face in our societies. Because of the ‘backsliding’ of democracies in so many places, those of us engaging in EDC-HRE find ourselves in a very difficult, yet essential position. On the one hand we recognize that we need education to proactively work against this democratic backsliding and assault on human rights. At the same time, in those countries where they are perhaps most endangered, we have less space for addressing these topics in the school setting due to government censorship. This is a genuine, heartbreaking dilemma, which is why efforts of NGOs, such as the Wergeland Centre, remain essential for seeing us through these difficult times.”
Right up until the contested election and mass protests in Belarus in 2020, Felisa was working together with OSCE/ODIHR and local curriculum developers on a human rights curriculum. Unfortunately, the curriculum was never implemented, and some of the authors had to go into exile.
“We invest not only in learners, but in teachers too,” Felisa says. “We invest in people. Even if the curriculum you worked on has been changed or scrapped – as long as the people are there and are still working – the effort you have put in has not been in vain. Political opportunities come and go, but if the people remain, the knowledge remains.”
It Matters
“Educators are intrinsically optimistic,” Felisa laughs when talking about the joys and the challenges of her profession.
“The best thing about this job is to work with people like you at the Wergeland Centre – human-centered, ethically driven educators who care deeply about equality and human dignity,” she says.
“We understand that what happens in schools, matter tremendously for the health of our democracies and our efforts to secure human rights in our own countries and globally.”
Felisa’s work in human rights education has taken her all over the world. She credits sheer luck as well as a strong determination to seize every opportunity that presents itself for her long and multifaceted career.
“I have had an amazing life! Even though, working in this sector, you have to make sacrifices, move countries often, and live on a small budget,” Felisa smiles.
And then suddenly, she turns serious:
“Every effort you make as an educator and activist to promote democracy, human rights and sustainable development – every effort, no matter how small or large, short-term or sustained – it matters.”