When I read the first week assignment from our course’s wiki I thought there was a very obvious question: I have ever been sure that the right to education is a fundamental basic human right!
Of course my belief is affected by my local culture: here in Italy we have a strong public schooling system and the mandatory primary instruction is absolutely consolidated, although, unfortunately, not entirely free..
However, if possible, the readings have enforced my opinion: I could not believe that in an advanced nation like the USA the right to education is NOT constitutionally guaranteed!
I think, in brief, that there is no real freedom without education. This statement is not (only) related to local political conditions like Brazil (no vote right for illitterate…). In “Removing obstacles…” (pag. 8 ), Tomasevski stresses the reasons for education, including access to good jobs and higher level of salaries. But I want to add one more reason: people need education to be free. Free to understand, free to choose, free to change, free to decide of their life.
So, I think that a state should make great efforts to make their citizens free, guaranteeing to them the higher education level.
Now, if the first question was “if people need to be educated”, the second one is related to how to educate people. If the first question was very easy to answer, this one is tremendously difficult! It involves a number of issues, to which we are likely to give answers too much conditioned by our cultural background. Examples from Tomasevski are very illuminating: is it “traditional school” the right way to educate everyone, everywhere?
We must also be aware of terms: education and instruction are not synonymous…
But what education is needed? Schooling or alternate ways? Mandatory or not? I would add: publicly-funded or not?
My personal opinion is that, at least for primary level, “traditional” schools are yet an invaluable occasion of experiences and knowledge sharing for children. We can dispute about organization, using or not using technologies, and so on, but classes are so important for the growing of our young citizens! I am also a strong supporter of the publicly-funded schooling system.
It strikes me that Greg talks about the right to refuse education. It is an interesting point of view: a sign of civilty about the balance between public and private rights. However, I am not able to completely agree: are we sure that Lesotho herders should continue to be herders? What if they had the opportunity to be more educated? I guess that the cause-effect chain is not always so clear…
I see another issue in the background: is education to be considered a new way of colonization? This is a serious problem. We can start from the problem of language, that I consider very important. Stian raised this question, too. For instance, the level of knowledge of English, in Italy, is becoming nowadays a strong discriminant for access to better jobs and opportunities: this course is an example…. 
This is a problem enhanced by the Internet: most of the valuable educational resources available on the Web are in English. On the other hand, as stated by Stian, it is crucial to preserve contextualization of educational content and practices.
Of course, there are many other obstacles and issues. Economics is perhaps the main one: the education system is expensive, both for governments and families. Poverty is a big obstacle, but illiteracy generate new poverty.. so we have to find a way to break this vicious circle. Anyway, I think that public funds should be allocated rather to schools than to military!
It’s worth noting that economics may play a role also in the opposite sense. For example, in some of the richest regions in Italy (the so-called “north-east disctrict”) there are so many occasion of work (even if often unqualified) that the teenagers (and their families) are not encouraged to finish high school: they do not consider higher education relevant.
But the Tomasevski’s papers are an endless source of situations to which we rarely think: removing of racial and gender discrimination, avoiding old and new colonialist approaches, respect of the contextualized nature of education, risks of education as a way for indoctrination.
There are further issues regarding adults and lifelong learning. It is a topic just mentioned by Tomasevski but it will be more and more important in the future.
A final annotation: maybe if the World Bank and the IMF were more committed (Removing obstacles…, pag. 9) to the right of education, many things can change…
) e il successivo vaglio finale di un comitato di members della rivista.
in English
