Abstract

The overall aim of the article is to analyse how the universal right to education have been built, legitimized and used. And more specifically ask who is addressed by the universal right to education, and who is given access to rights and to education. The first part of the article focus on the history of declarations, the notion of the universal right to education, emphasizing differences in matters of detail—for example, the meaning of ‘compulsory’, ‘children’s rights’ or ‘parents’ rights’—and critically examining the right of the child and the right of the parent in terms of tensions between ‘social rights’ and ‘private autonomy rights’. Despite differences in detail, the iterations of the universal right to education do share to the full in the idea of education as such. In the second part the attempt to scrutinize the underlying assumptions legitimizing the consensus on education, focusing again on the notion of the child. In conclusion I argue that a certain notion of what it is to be a human being is inscribed within the circle of access to rights and education. These notions of what it means to be a child, a parent, a citizen or a member of the ‘human family’ are notions of enlightenment and humanity and, to my understanding, aspects of how democracy is configured around freedom, equality and fraternity.