Human rights in Tunisian textbooks (9th year Basic Education)

Abstract

This dissertation deals with human rights in Tunisian textbooks. For this study, we have chosen forty didactic aids to six disciplines taught in the 9th year Basic Education (Arabic, French, English, History, Civic Education and Islamic Education). The analysis of these didactic aids shows the existence of implicit or explicit human rights messages conveyed by these prototypic cases. These contents are studied on both quantitative and semantic levels in order to draw up the cartography of human rights (cf. recapitulative tables). This cartography gives an overview of the values and rights studied in these textbooks. Although, all the values and almost all rights are more or less emphasized, the child's rights, the values related to cultural activities and liberty of creation and the values of tolerance, openness, mutual understanding and respect for different civilizations are given more importance. Besides, we worked out some methodological clues to analyze not only the crossing of texts but also the crossing of rights and values which makes' it possible to undertake a semantic analysis the ultimate application of which would lead to a new typology of hu1!1an rights. The crossing shows either the relationship between texts that convey the same rights and values or the interdependence of these rights and values. The conclusion of this work would serve as a basis to suggestions of a didactic nature concerning the proposed subjects, the didactic aids used and the methodology made use of.