Testimonial from Therese Prisse and Jean Mattijsen on ROLE

THERESE PRISSE

President of ELSA Alumni JEAN MATTIJSEN

VP AA of ELSA the Netherlands 2021/2022

The Rule Of Law Education (ROLE) Campaign was conceived in 2019 by ELSA Alumni and ELSA to enable ELSA members to teach high school students throughout Europe about the rule of law and citizenship with highly interactive materials: Concrete examples and activities regarding systemic justice are aimed to instil knowledge and confidence in young individuals to internalise and advocate the rule of law.

Two years later, the project is in total development. The International Board of ELSA presented the project to the Network and had regular calls with the National Coordinators on implementing the Campaign. Eight National ELSA Groups were self-nominated for piloting the project. At the Rule of Law Conference, celebrating ELSA’s 40th anniversary in Vienna, updates on the project were presented.

ELSA Alumni established the ROLE curriculum materials, which consists of ten lessons. The first six lessons start with topics such as fair play and access to justice and gradually build up to how pupils can actively challenge social injustices they perceive around them - being the change.

This curriculum was first piloted in the Netherlands during a two-day course at the Haagse Montessori School in The Hague. 14 teacher - facilitators were recruited: ten ELSA members from six universities and four lawyers from Eversheds Sutherland Amsterdam. After facilitation training, these trainers facilitated all ten lessons for 150 pupils in five classes. In the end, each class had developed their own Rule of law project and pithed these for a jury to get school support for implementation.

As the curriculum was provided in English, it allowed ELSA and ELSA Alumni to test the efficiency and the flexibility of the programme. It was most inspiring to see the first moment where pupils were captivated by the materials and activities and enjoyed the curriculum presented by students and young lawyers with little teaching and facilitating experience.

The pupils and teachers were very enthusiastic. With anonymous surveying according to applicable data privacy rules and interviews, we learned that: 1. High school students were very excited about students and young lawyers teaching and felt they could internalise and personalise materials easily because of the short (age) distance; 2. The experience would be improved if materials were to be spread over three days (concentrated project) or individual lessons; two days were perceived as very dense; 3. The more interactive the facilitators were (more focused on the activities as opposed to teaching), the higher the feedback scores - this requires facilitation confidence and more preparation by teachers; 4. The four lessons guiding classes to create their own rule of law project created the mist energy; this is where it all came together; 5. More attention could be given to preparing pictures and other social media materials.

Besides being a forum for the Rule of Law, ROLE serves as a meeting place for pupils with law students and practitioners. Facilitated by ROLE Trainers, the pupils and their teachers meet law students, lawyers and school management and enter a discussion on how they perceive injustices that surround them differently. In the end, the Dutch students thought of different projects, such as providing gender justice by free tampons in school restrooms or climate justice by replacing meat options in the cafeteria with healthy options. It is inspiring to talk about ideals, and it is captivating when one tries to apply and implement them in their immediate environment.