An Evaluation Study of the New School Books in Light of Human Rights Principles and Gender Equality

The study was part of a joint program between the Association of Education on Human Rights in Morocco and the Central Committee for Human Rights at the Ministry of National Education and Higher Education, with the participation of civil organizations active in the fields of human rights and combatting violence against women. The program consisted of reading fifty school books and evaluating them regarding human rights and gender equality. The team started from the specific assumption: Has the situation of the school book actually changed from a single book that is solely concerned with contents to multiple books according to a modern pedagogical engineering that is centered around the teachers’ needs and respecting their mental and linguistic levels and their learning processes, with the objective of developing democratic reactions arising from citizenship values and human rights? The outcomes of the study came in three levels: The image of women in school books, gender equality in some of the fundamental human rights and the principles of human rights that the school book promotes.