Maleš,
D., Milanović, M. and
Stričević, I.
LIVING
AND LEARNING THE RIGHTS
Education for Human Rights in the
System of Preschool Education
Zagreb:
Faculty of Philosopy
University of Zagreb Press (FFPress), 298 pp.
The purpose of the manual Living
and Learning the Rights is to serve as
a pedagogical tool and a resource to preschool teachers and other professionals
who work with children in
preschool institutions,
as well as
to parents who wish to assist their children in learning the
issues of human rights, equality and justice before
they enter school.
The incentive for development of the manual came
from the seminars organised by the Institute for the Development
of Education of the Croatian
Ministry of Education and Sport in cooperation with the National
Human Rights Education
Committee and the
Human Rights Education
Associates from the US. The main
purpose of the manual was to be a comprehensive resource for training
in human rights of preschool teachers
and other professionals working in preschool institutions
in Croatia in the framework of
the National Human Rights Education Programme. The basis for the
development of the manual, as well as for
teacher training in the implementation
of the National
Human Rights Education
Programme, was the Convention on the Rights of
the Child. The manual consists of the contributions
of experts who participated in teacher training
seminars, as well as of
originally written texts. The main
authors are D. Males,
M. Milanovic, and I. Stricevic, and other authors are M. Markocic, R. Miljevic-Ridicki, M. Uzelac and V. Spajic-Vrkas.
The content of the manual is
divided into four chapters.
In the first
chapter the teachers are introduced into human rights that are seen as
indicators of the quality of
living of each individual in the community.
International instruments
for children's rights are described, and abbreviated version of the
Convention on the Rights of the
Child is given. Writing about family as
the first school of democracy,
the authors refer to children's rights in the
family and parents' rights, as well as
to the need of establishing democratic relations in the family.
At the end of this section
there is an overview of
children's rights in the system
of pre-school
education in the Republic of
Croatia – from legal perspectives, pedagogical standards and programmes,
to basic conditions of realization of children's rights
in the system
of pre-school
education.
In the second
part the stress is on human rights education and on the presentation
of the National
Human Rights Education
Programme in the
system of preschool education. The text focuses
on aims, objectives, broad areas of
content, principles and strategies of work.
The third part
focuses on the issue of human rights and the
rights of the child in
a preschool institution,
the place where children should live and learn their
rights. The framework of discussion
on quality of preschool environment from the perspective
of the enjoyment
and protection of rights of
the child is organised around
children's needs. The chapter on institutional context working roles and
climate as major features of overall
pre-school context are elaborated. This section brings
description of numerous topics and activities in teaching children
about rights and actions for
children's rights – from promotion and protection of personal dignity and equality, rights
and responsibilites, survival rights, development rights, participation rights, to protection rights.
The fourth part
relates to professional
training of educators
in children's rights. This part
is intended for all who
work on training of pre-school
staff, as it brings a great
number of workshops and examples
for working with educators, professional assistants and parents.
At
the end of the
Manual there is a whole text of
the Convention on the Rights of
the Child.