Saturday, May 20, 2006
Education as human rights?
My friend Corinne made a statement the other day that came across to me a little bit strangely. She said she didn't necessarily agree with the idea that Education is a Human Rights.
After a little bit of thought, it makes sense. It seems like as in many Human Rights issues, the answer given as to what is one's right depends on one's standpoint. People make their own hierarchy of rights; some people clearly would not identify with my thinking that the right to agency should be placed higher than than other rights.
In the realm of social economics, there is controversy around the elaboration of income-generating activities for children. Some people would prefer to see them in school. But what if the child's parents are bed-ridden and they are the only one to be healthy enough to gain money to pay for rent, food, medicine? But what if they themselves engage in unsafe trades and become sick at their turn? What do they want?
My friend Gilles-Philippe was doing research in El Salvador about child work in the sugar cane industry. He came up with the same sort of idea. There was a ban against Coca-Cola's use of child labor. Without their paid labor, the parents still did not have enough savings to send their kids to school, and the government promised series of technical training series to ''recycle'' the youth into productive activities, but they never occured. The problem here is that there is not always a viable alternative to child labor. Then... What's next?
After a little bit of thought, it makes sense. It seems like as in many Human Rights issues, the answer given as to what is one's right depends on one's standpoint. People make their own hierarchy of rights; some people clearly would not identify with my thinking that the right to agency should be placed higher than than other rights.
In the realm of social economics, there is controversy around the elaboration of income-generating activities for children. Some people would prefer to see them in school. But what if the child's parents are bed-ridden and they are the only one to be healthy enough to gain money to pay for rent, food, medicine? But what if they themselves engage in unsafe trades and become sick at their turn? What do they want?
My friend Gilles-Philippe was doing research in El Salvador about child work in the sugar cane industry. He came up with the same sort of idea. There was a ban against Coca-Cola's use of child labor. Without their paid labor, the parents still did not have enough savings to send their kids to school, and the government promised series of technical training series to ''recycle'' the youth into productive activities, but they never occured. The problem here is that there is not always a viable alternative to child labor. Then... What's next?
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Hey manue,
I think we had a good conversation on that one at some point late at night last year. When I read that someone doesn't necessarily agree with the idea that Education is a human right, I remembered contemplating "education" as we know it in Canada, while I was in Burkina. There are so many kinds of education, and a rather difficult question may be, well what kind of education are we talking about here? Are we talking about a western education? Education entails imparting values on people, telling people what is right, what is wrong. Telling people one side of a story vs. another. ie. Creationism vs. Darwinism as is being disputed in the states. Or even the history of Canada, not including the immense unwritten history that we have of native peoples. So much is written about the history of European immigration and what ensued. But honestly, I could tell you very very little about native history. But education is also a form of empowerment. It's kind of a double edged sword. I mean, in Burkina, there is oral history for sure, history and myths of kings and other powerful figures, but very little written history. School books would have originally been written by the French, likely, and then maybe their content evolved over time (their books are printed in Quebec, actually, hehe), but even if Burkinabes are changing them, they may be Burkinabes who have been french educated, and may have less respect for other forms of education that exist in Burkina. ie. Education about the meaning of community, about how to act around other people, how to be civil (which may be a rather different definition for us than it is for them)
Then there's of course our famous canadian history of residential schools. Yay assimilation.
Good points about the money earning side of things. I just wanted to let loose the thoughts running through my head when I hear the word education...especially on the Int. Dev. agenda.
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I think we had a good conversation on that one at some point late at night last year. When I read that someone doesn't necessarily agree with the idea that Education is a human right, I remembered contemplating "education" as we know it in Canada, while I was in Burkina. There are so many kinds of education, and a rather difficult question may be, well what kind of education are we talking about here? Are we talking about a western education? Education entails imparting values on people, telling people what is right, what is wrong. Telling people one side of a story vs. another. ie. Creationism vs. Darwinism as is being disputed in the states. Or even the history of Canada, not including the immense unwritten history that we have of native peoples. So much is written about the history of European immigration and what ensued. But honestly, I could tell you very very little about native history. But education is also a form of empowerment. It's kind of a double edged sword. I mean, in Burkina, there is oral history for sure, history and myths of kings and other powerful figures, but very little written history. School books would have originally been written by the French, likely, and then maybe their content evolved over time (their books are printed in Quebec, actually, hehe), but even if Burkinabes are changing them, they may be Burkinabes who have been french educated, and may have less respect for other forms of education that exist in Burkina. ie. Education about the meaning of community, about how to act around other people, how to be civil (which may be a rather different definition for us than it is for them)
Then there's of course our famous canadian history of residential schools. Yay assimilation.
Good points about the money earning side of things. I just wanted to let loose the thoughts running through my head when I hear the word education...especially on the Int. Dev. agenda.
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