Reflexive Pedagogy: Interrogating Assimilated Educational Perspectives for a Robust Jurisprudence of Dignity

Education in India, particularly school education, is a curious experience. Schools in India, among other things, have become the formal de facto spaces to effectively initiate, establish and promote the difference between Rights and Privileges. Consequently, while private education in India is a privilege, public education is doled out as a right to the most vulnerable human beings. The question, whether this ‘dole’ masquerading as a ’right’ is in recognition and protection of individuals’ dignity, in particular the inherent worthiness of the most vulnerable human beings, begs exploration. Where human dignity is compatible with vulnerability, a concept of human dignity which discards or denies the dignity of the vulnerable and weak is at odds with the real human condition. In the 'age of rights' it is the call for a 'robust jurisprudence of dignity' – educating for human dignity, merits urgent attention.

Call it ironic, on the one hand we are celebrating the ‘Age of Rights’ and in stark contrast - educators, scholars, and activists mindful of the issues of universal human rights as critically important topics in education today urging schools to promote awareness and understanding of human rights in their curricula from the earliest levels - at an age where all notions of Education are challenged in a time of austerity and social turbulence.

The reduction of international human rights to the Trojan horse of a neo-liberal empire's bid for world power has effectively boxed Education in a quandary. Education in a time of austerity and social turbulence has adopted a new avatar – embracing the skilled and talented and rejecting the fragile, vulnerable and limited. Human vulnerability is meticulously painted as an intrinsic evil. Thus, those who are frail or weak are not autonomous or not able to care for themselves and hence do not possess dignity. Whether each human being has intrinsic dignity and whether the very concept of “dignity” has a useful place in contemporary ethical debates merits investigation.

Human rights is an important issue in contemporary politics, and the last few decades have also seen a remarkable increase in research and teaching on the subject. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial.

The term rights-based approaches has become so familiar that we tend to assume that it is well-understood and that it is a foregone conclusion that rights-based approaches offer more potential for sustainable impact. While the language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world, human rights advocates and scholars highlight various challenges and pinpoint some of the major tensions that still exist within developing and developed jurisdictions. The failure to respect, protect, or fulfill human rights is a fundamental and leading obstacle to economic development and social justice.  A critical analyses of a number of rights frameworks across a wide range of human rights issues, such as health, human dignity, criminal justice, property and transitional democracy calls into question the notion of domestic justiciability.

The potential strains in the relationship between human rights and the rule of law raises a fundamental dilemma in respect of the extent to which a ‘right’ to dignity can best be promoted, protected or monitored by domestic decision-makers. Through the right to dignity, courts are redefining what it means to be human in the modern world. As described by the courts, the scope of dignity rights marks the outer boundaries of state power, limiting state authority to meet the demands of human dignity. Yet, within the context of the protection of those human rights which increasingly tend to engage social, political or economic considerations and interests, the collective message that emerges is that such rights may often be, in fact, essentially non-justiciable.

 The objective of traditional needs-based charity model when evaluated in terms of effectiveness and efficiency paints a glowing picture, and yet consistently fails to live up to the long-term vision of participation, accountability,  non-discrimination, and equity. Practically speaking, we are still struggling to understand what this major organizational shift - from needs-based charity model to an inclusion and justice model means. This offers us a compelling need to reflect carefully and fully upon what it tells us about human rights law generally, and the extent to which such rights may be truly amenable to adjudication by the courts.

Reflexive pedagogy through a careful and continuous interrogation of assimilated educational perspectives would enable us to reexamine the relationship between the individual and the state and, in turn, contribute to a new and richer understanding of the role of the citizen in modern democracies.  The quest for a robust jurisprudence of dignity illuminates the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; it also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.

Key words: reflexive pedagogy,  justiciability, human rights, dignity, neo-liberal, education, assimilated perspectives