Education as a Human and a Citizenship Right — Parents' Rights, Children's Rights, or…? The Necessity of Historical Contextualization

Abstract

This paper serves as an introduction to the three following papers by Roth, Wahlström, and Quennerstedt, analyzing the contextual background to the different treaties—the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child—and focusing on how the relations between parents' rights and children's rights in the matter of education were shaped during the various drafting stages. The paper forms part of a project that intends to study the meaning and consequences of the increased tendency to view education from a perspective of rights. More specifically, the project aims to focus on the implications of parental rights and to analyze potential contradictions between parents' and children's rights in education.

Tomas Englund is a professor of education in the Department of Education, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. His research interests center on curriculum theory and didactics, curriculum history, political socialization and citizenship education, and the philosophy of education. He directs the research group “Education and Democracy” and is co-editor of the journal with the same name (in Swedish, Utbildning & Demokrati). He has recently been published in Journal of Curriculum Studies, Journal of Education Policy, and the Routledge Falmer Reader in Philosophy of Education.

Ann Quennerstedt is a senior lecturer at the Department of Education, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Her areas of interest are educational policy, issues of children's rights in education and curriculum studies. Publications include the dissertation Kommunen—en part i utbildningspolitiken? [The municipality as a participant in educational policy] (2006), two chapters in Skolan som politisk organisation [The school as a political organization] (Pierre, 2007, ed.), two chapters in Vadå likvärdighet? [What about equivalence?] (2008), which she also has co-edited with Tomas Englund, and an article co-authored with Tomas Englund in Journal of Curriculum Studies (2008).

Ninni Wahlström is a senior lecturer and Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Her areas of interest include philosophy of education, curriculum research, and educational policy. She has recently had a chapter published in Utbildning som kommunikation [Education as communication], edited by Tomas Englund, and two chapters in Vadå likvärdighet? [What about equivalence?], edited by Tomas Englund and Ann Quennerstedt. Other articles have been accepted for publication in the journals Educational Philosophy and Theory and Journal of Curriculum Studies.

Notes

1. In the following our intention is not to analyze the different uses of human rights and citizenship rights but rather to stress and look at human rights as a broader concept, often contextualized as referring to all or most human beings, and citizenship rights as referred to a relationship between citizens and an actual state. However, it is noticeable that history discourses on human rights always contain relations to ongoing discourses on citizenship rights. In general, discourses on human rights, with their historical legacy and relationship to natural rights, aim to include every human being and regard human rights as universal, whereas citizenship rights, with their relationship to specific states, are particular, even though they can be regarded and rhetorically used as “universal.”

2. Ten years prior to this Amy Gutmann warned that “as more and more parents pull their children out of public schools, public schools will be increasingly incapable of fulfilling their democratic purposes” (Gutmann 1987: 116).

3. Although this analysis has not been realized at the time of writing it is planned within the framework of project (cf. note 4). While specific reference will be made to developments in Sweden it will also include a comparative perspective.

4. The three papers presented here form part of a research project in progress: “Education as a citizenship right—parental rights, children's rights, or… ?” The project is financed by the Swedish Research Council and is carried out by researchers from the Department of Education, Örebro University, Sweden. In general terms the project intends to study the meaning and consequences of the increased tendency to view education from a perspective of rights. More specifically, the project aims to focus on the implications of parental rights and to analyze potential contradictions between parents' and children's rights in education.