Education both as a right and a duty has been the subject of writing across cultures since ancient times. It can be argued that the seeds of a right to education were sown long before the modern age of post-World War II. Education as a right and/or duty has been found in the teachings of various religions. In the Hebrew tradition, the book of Leviticus commanded the Israelites ‘as a lasting ordinance for generations to come’ to teach the Mosaic law.290
The
290 Leviticus 10: 11 ‘you must teach the Israelites all the decrees the LORD has given through Moses’
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Levitical priests were required to instruct the people carefully in the law as a sacred duty.291 Leviticus forms part of the Torah, the five books of Moses. In the Moslem tradition, the Koran treats the Torah as the word of Allah given to Moses and the Koran refers to
Mohammed as the prophet mentioned in the Torah. There is an obligation to be educated in Islam. A popular saying of the prophet Mohammed is that ‘education is obligatory on both Muslim men and women, even if they have to go to China to seek it.’292
The Buddha in the fifth century BC recognised a right of education for all. His thoughts were contrary to the then dominant Chaturwarna philosophy which divided humanity into four castes with Brahmins at the top and Sudra at the bottom. The basic tenet of Brahminism is that the right to education belonged solely to the top caste: the Brahmins themselves. Buddha rejected this division and preached ideas of common humanity and equality, including the rights of women.293
Hsun-Tzu (312-230 BC) in his Admonitions to Learning suggested that education should begin with reading the Confucian classics.294 His aim was to see young men trained and refined to become virtuous and ultimately to attain sagehood.295 The sage was seen as the teacher in society and, according to Hsun Tzu, preferably the ruler. He taught that human nature is essentially evil but through education the potential for good could be realised. Through training individuals the entire social order could be improved:
Children born among the Han or Yueh people of the south and among the Mo barbarians of the north cry with the same voice at birth, but as they grow older they follow different ways. Education causes them to differ.296
After the birth of Christ and during the Middle Ages in Europe the church was the ‘state’ educator. From the Enlightenment developed the concept of a secular education. Later, seventeenth century English jurisprudence developed an obligation on parents to educate
291
Baruch A Levine, Leviticus: Instruction for the Priests (2001)
<http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Torah/Leviticus.shtml?TSBI> at 6 July 2012.
292
Benazir Bhutto, ‘The Prophet Preached Equal Rights; Now the Task Is To Restore Them’, Asiaweek Magazine, August 25, 1995.
293
Human Rights Solidarity, Religious and human rights: human rights message for Vesak - day of celebration of Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing away
<http:www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2000vol10no06/557/> at 6 July 2012.
294
Chung-ying Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy (1991) 326- 327.
295
Ibid.
296
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their children. John Locke in 1692 referred to Roman law which had found education to be the parents’ duty.297
He went further to assert:
The well educating of their children is so much the duty and concern of parents and the welfare and prosperity of the nation so much depends on it. 298
Locke saw ‘virtue’ rather than the acquisition of knowledge as the main end of education and reasoned this quality was best developed in a young gentleman at home under a good
governor in his father’s sight.299
Later commentators have elevated Locke’s observations to founding a natural right (to education) superior to positive law.300
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) disputed some of Locke’s observations in Emile, or, On Education.301 Rather than reasoning with children as adults, in teaching them manners and virtues, Rousseau insisted that ‘the man must be treated as a man and the child as a child’302
and that ‘childhood is the sleep of reason’.303 However, he agreed that a child would be better educated by a ‘sensible though limited father than by the
cleverest teacher in the world’.304
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) extended Rousseau’s philosophy to the education of women and girls. Her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters stressed the importance of rationality and suggested that the child be taught ‘to combine their ideas… to compare things that are familiar in some respects, and different in others,’305
and taught to think, thinking being a ‘severe exercise.’306 However, she cautioned: The mind is not, cannot be created by the teacher, though it may be cultivated, and its real powers found out.307
297
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1692) § 40.
298
Ibid, Dedication to Edward Clarke, of Chipley, Esq.
299
Ibid §70.
300
Douglas Hodgson, ‘The international human right to education and education concerning human rights’ (1996) 4 International Journal of Children's Rights 237, 239.
301
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Institute for Learning Technologies <http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/> at 6 July 2012.
302
Ibid Book 2, [216].
303
Ibid [320] quoting Shakespeare.
304
Ibid [71].
305
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life) (1787) 22.
306
Ibid.
307
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Johann Fichte (1762-1814) paralleled John Locke’s idea of education being the key to national prosperity. In his Addresses to the German Nation he stated that the preservation of the nation rested on the need to better educate the children.308 Georg Hegel (1770-1831) stressed the futility of purely subjective ideas and the need to be receptive to the thoughts of others. He used the expression the ‘right of the child to be brought up’ in the circumstances of man ‘not being by instinct that which he must become’.309
He traced the transition from ‘natural’ family education to the civil education of social relations which replaces the family as educator:310
[C]ivil society has the duty and the right to supervise and influence the upbringing of children insofar as this has a bearing on their capacity to become members of
society.
Hegel’s thoughts on education reflected a combination of progressive and traditional approaches. On the one hand he lamented ‘the unfortunate urge to educate the individual in thinking for himself’ which ‘has cast a shadow over truth’.311
On the other hand he firmly censured educators who imposed ‘the misery of endless repetition, pressure and stupefaction, ceaseless spoon feeding and stuffing’.312
He asserted that students must not be treated as servants and should be encouraged early to develop their own reason.313 Hegel’s more liberal ideas on education were later to be reflected in international human rights documents.
William Blackstone postulated a duty to properly educate children but confined it to the parents of legitimate children.314 John Stuart Mill in 1869 observed more expansively that one of the most sacred duties of the father was to give an education to the child he brought into existence. Not to do so he saw as ‘a moral crime both against the unfortunate offspring and against society’.315
308
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, ‘Introduction and General Survey Speech’ in R Jones and G Turnbull, (translators) Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation (1922).
309
Georg Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden (Theorie-Werkausgabe) (1928) [7.327].
310
Grundlinien der Philosophies des Rechts, Werke 7, (Philosophy of Right) in Allen Wood, Hegel on Education (1998).
311
C Butler and C Seiler, Hegel: The Letters (1984) 279.
312
Ibid 199.
313
M Mackenzie, Hegel’s Educational Theory and Practice, (1909) 175.
314
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1830), 434.
315
John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty’ (1869) Great Books Online [12] <http://www.bartleby.com/130/3.html> at 6 July 2012.
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