Tackling ignorance about law in human rights education

Abstract This paper aims to unpack potential reasons why law and legal knowledge—despite its apparent importance and value in teaching and learning about human rights—appears to be largely conspicuous by its absence in human rights education (HRE) in schooling. Drawing on a range of contextually relevant categories of ignorance identified from discourse on epistemologies of ignorance, it argues that deficits in legal literacy on the part of the wide range of stakeholders involved in HRE can manifest in multiple guises, including: ignorance as a strategic choice for political ends; ignorance as a conscious, rational and practical (not necessarily self‐interested) choice; and inadvertent ignorance or such that is unconsciously selective in nature. By approaching the issue from this novel standpoint, the overarching aim of the paper is to illuminate the prospects and possibilities for tackling instances of such ignorance going forward.