EDUCATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

How do we educate in a multi‐racial society so that the population at large both understands and accepts the need for the same human rights to be enjoyed by all members of society irrespective of their colour, their religion, or their ethnic origins? This is no easy question and the battle has been fought many times in the last 150 years for the Catholic minorities in this country, Jewish minorities, and minorities generally. It is clear that it is insufficient merely to declare that human rights should be shared by all in society on an equal basis. Those who already agree will support demands for equal rights and those who do not will merely express their dissent. We are faced here not with a process of information, of helping people within a society to understand a new and sometimes a menacing or threatening group, but we are concerned basically with the whole question of how we develop and change the beliefs and attitudes of one group of people in relation to another. Psychologically we still do not know enough of how attitudes are formed and certainly we do not know enough about how attitudes are changed.