The Reality of Human Rights Education within the French School System: From Paradoxical Objectives to Ways of Implementation

This paper examines and puts forward for discussion the French approach to Human Rights Education (HRE). The intellectual conception is based on a broad humanist philosophy and intends to respect the European fundamental guidelines. But beyond ambitious objectives, the reality is quite different and HRE is somewhat reduced to a theoretical and utilitarian Citizenship dimension. Its actual implementation seems rather to consist in a series of tools enabling a struggle against school violence.