58 EDUCATION RIGHTS its form and substance, including curricula and teaching methods.48 This aim has been developed in terms of minority and indigenous rights in the UNDM49 (not a legally binding document) and in ILO’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169) (legally binding, but only for those states, mostly in Latin America and Scandinavia, which have ratified it). The ILO Convention, for example, requires that all sections of the national community, particularly those in most direct contact with indigenous peoples, should receive education to eliminate prejudices, and that text books should provide a fair, accurate and informative portrayal of their societies and cultures.50 As the Committee on the Rights of the Child has outlined, this calls for a, ‘balanced approach to education and one which succeeds in reconciling diverse values through dialogue and respect for difference’.51 In furthering these aims, states should ensure that education materials, teacher recruitment and training,52 and curricular development all promote intercultural education,53 and adopt measures to combat abuses of education. As such, human rights bodies have called on Bahrain to include human rights education in the general curriculum to, ‘[develop] … respect for human rights, tolerance, and … religious and ethnic minorities’;54 [and] called on the Turkish authorities in Northern Cyprus to refrain from censoring Greek language textbooks;55 and accepted the dismissal of a teacher in Canada for promoting anti-Semitism in the classroom.56 A thorny issue – linguistic rights in education Instruments aimed at the promotion and protection of the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples, as for general human rights instruments, are most hesitant on the right to first-language education. The only legally binding instrument specifically devoted to minority rights, the FCNM, recognizes, ‘that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to learn his or her minority language’.57 The right to learn a language is quite different from the right to learn through that language, and the provision continues to lay out a series of qualifications to the right to be ‘taught the minority language or [to receive] instruction in this language’.58 The ILO Convention outlines teaching indigenous children to read and write their mother tongue as an objective, rather than a right.59 Where learning the official language is essential to give children the opportunity later to integrate fully, have equal opportunities to advance to higher and further education and to seek employment, it is essential that they be given adequate opportunities for learning that language.60 However, sound research indicates children learn best when they first learn through the medium of their first language. UNESCO, the lead UN agency on education, promotes bilingual education, not only because it gives the opportunity for multilingualism, but also because it permits children from minority and indigenous groups to learn alongside those of majority groups (latterly, if not initially).61