Education as a fundamental right and human rights acquired through education

Abstract

The right to education is an essential tool conditions for the development of an emancipated societies, to maintain and strengthen their cultural identities, ethnic and linguistic minorities. Education can promote (though not guarantee) understanding, tolerance, respect and friendship between peoples, ethnic or religious groups and can help create a universal culture of human rights. So education is an individual expression of freedom that it is an economic necessity from which depends the development of the country.Provision of education should be considered as a long term investment with high priority, because it develops human resources as an asset in the process of national development. So full realization of the right to education can be achieved by improving the economic, social and cultural rights through a political commitment and cooperation of the all. From historical point of view, the education in Europe, before the age of enlightenment, was primarily the responsibility of parents and the church. Education began to become public affair and state responsibility only with the constitution of the modern secular state. In the century XIX, the emergence of socialism and liberalism placed education, more strongly, in the field of human rights. Liberal and anti-clerical ideas of the XIX century influenced to the definition of the right to education which aimed to protect and advance the ideas of freedom, of science, of research and teaching against the every influencing forms from the church and the state. Principles of the right to education was included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and national constitutions and various international and national instruments charge states with the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill all the rights to education because the fundamental right to education entitles all individuals to provide appropriate forms of behavior from their respective governments. Ensuring citizens with many civil and political rights, such as the right to information, freedom of expression, the right to vote and to be elected, and many others, depend on at least a minimum level of education. So thats why its so important the right to education as far as it provides to the citizens more control over the course of their life, in particular, control over the actions of the state against the citizens in general.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n19p155