Topics Education

Question Does the Western education system violate human rights? It does after all restrict freedom of movement (as absence from a set class at a particular time results in punishment and it's illegal to skip school altogether). It also violates freedom of thought - one of our most fundamental rights - as it requires a student to think about a set subject at a set time. Even intrinsic biological necessities such as the expulsion of bodily waste are often denied to students. Is it fair to conclude that there is something radically wrong with this system?

Accepted:
May 7, 2009

Comments

Insofar as pupils have the same human rights as adults do, your argument is compelling. If we did to adults what we are doing to adolescents, we'd be violating their human rights.

An obvious defense of our education system (BTW, non-Western ones are not much different and mostly more restrictive) would claim that each person's human rights become more extensive as they grow up and that mandatory schooling of people below a certain age does not violate the narrower set of human rights they already have. There is surely something to this story: a mother is not violating a human right of her toddler when she prevents him from exiting down the stairs -- the toddler does not yet have the relevant human right to freedom of movement (though he already does have the human right not to be killed). But can this be developed into a defense of forcing a 14-year-old to attend school?

There's amazingly little serious work on this general question: on what competences and capacities children must possess in order to have this or that (component of a) human right. One important aspect of this general question is the extent to which the law may generalize, that is, may tie the rights of children to their age. Some people are more mature at 14 than others are at 18 -- and can it be legitimate to deny the former the full protection of human rights as afforded to the latter? Would this not be as wrong, and for the same reason, as it would be to place special restrictions on male adults with two Y chromosomes on the ground that they are more likely to commit violent crimes?

Another important aspect of the question is how serious coercion and punishment must be for them to constitute a human rights violation. Clearly, shackling someone to a chair in a classroom constitutes a violation of the human right to freedom of movement, and so would the credible threat of a month in jail for non-attendance. But we don't actually go this far. Are milder punishments acceptable? What actually happens when your teacher denies permission to go to the bathroom and you go anyway? If the sanctions are mild, they may not violate human rights even on the assumption that the pupil has the same human rights as an adult. For example, well into adulthood, I had to take various classes as a condition of my employment: classes about proper conduct in the workplace and about how to handle fire emergencies, among others. Had I refused, I might well have lost my job. Did my employer violate my human rights? If not, then your school might argue, in parallel, that it is not violating your human rights by requiring you to attend classes on pain of suspension or even expulsion. "You have no human right to attend this school on your own terms," it might say, "you are free to stay away but, if you do choose to come, then you have to accept our terms."

To be sure, this sort of argument can only go so far. Not allowing pupils to go to the bathroom is wrong even if these pupils have the option of not being in school at all -- no less wrong than would be not allowing workers to go to the bathroom when these workers have the option of resigning their job and losing their income.

As you can see, there is a lot to be thought about here; it's a superb topic for further study.