Abstract
The overall aim of the article is to analyse how the universal right to education have been built, legitimized and used. And more specifically ask who is addressed by the universal right to education, and who is given access to rights and to education. The first part of the article focus on the history of declarations, the notion of the universal right to education, emphasizing differences in matters of detail—for example, the meaning of ‘compulsory’, ‘children’s rights’ or ‘parents’ rights’—and critically examining the right of the child and the right of the parent in terms of tensions between ‘social rights’ and ‘private autonomy rights’. Despite differences in detail, the iterations of the universal right to education do share to the full in the idea of education as such. In the second part the attempt to scrutinize the underlying assumptions legitimizing the consensus on education, focusing again on the notion of the child. In conclusion I argue that a certain notion of what it is to be a human being is inscribed within the circle of access to rights and education. These notions of what it means to be a child, a parent, a citizen or a member of the ‘human family’ are notions of enlightenment and humanity and, to my understanding, aspects of how democracy is configured around freedom, equality and fraternity.
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Notes
Thereby understanding the documents as readable, determined in general, and repeatable, or iterable, an iterability that ties repetition to alterity (1988, p. 7).
Later in this article I argue that such preconditions, per se, disclose a paradox in that the right to education could not be a right on its own. Both civil and political rights require a certain level of education, a certain know-how and capability. It seems that education is a precondition for understanding one’s right to rights.
See Hafen (1976): ‘Children’s Liberation and the New Egalitarianism: Some Reservations about Abandoning Youth to Their Rights’. For a further insight into related concepts, see Hart (1964): ‘Are there any Natural Rights?’, Feinberg (1966): ‘Duties, Rights, and Claims’, and Lyons (1969): ‘Rights Claimants, and Beneficiaries’.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (2005 [1896]) we can note that once civil society makes its appearance, the abstract relations which aim for social well-being become predominant over the rights of intimacy and privacy.
Frederick the Great, who was King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, is often cited as the ideal of enlightened despotism, famous for his interest in philosophy and the arts and sciences. His career went through a period of anti-authoritarianism, followed by a cultivation of military virtues.
Kant uses the German word Der Mensch, speaking of the human being.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that the idea of childhood as not yet adult, or as a becoming adult, is entwined with the concept of the child and childhood in developmental psychology (that of Jean Piaget) and sociology (that of Talcott Parsons). The child is viewed as unfinished, not fully human, or incomplete and juxtaposed with adulthood (completion). In consequence, these concepts of socialization include a dichotomy where the child is socially immature and the adult is socially mature (cf. Qvortrup 1990, 1994; Jenks 1996).
Derrida notes that the English translation says, ‘somewhat abusively’, ‘democracy where Aristotle says only dēmos’ (Derrida 2005, p. 48).
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Bergström, Y. The Universal Right to Education: Freedom, Equality and Fraternity . Stud Philos Educ 29, 167–182 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-009-9174-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-009-9174-y