Anmerkungen:
In: Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences, January 2005
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments October 4, 2010 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Questions relating to provision of education at different levels can be discussed from the perspective of human rights as well as from that of economic efficiency. These two perspectives have in fact played very important roles in discussions on different aspects of education. Particularly, in discussions on the meaning and content of the right to education the importance of these two perspectives is all too evident, both at the national and the international level. However, as we will see, considerable ambiguity on issues relating to meaning and content of the right to education continues to persist. It is important to explore the reasons for this ambiguity and attempt to clarify the meaning and the content of the right to education. The purpose of this paper is to discuss education in the context of human rights and of economic efficiency. The questions that we ask are whether one can infer right to education from the same considerations from which fundamental rights like right to life and liberty are derived; and whether the right to education is derivable from economic efficiency considerations. Our conclusions can be summed up as follows: It is possible to deduce right to education at the basic level from considerations which entail rights like right to life and liberty; the right to higher education however is not inferable from these considerations. While economic efficiency considerations would in general support pro vision of basic education as well as higher education, it is not possible to infer a right to basic education or a right to higher education on the basis of efficiency considerations. The status of basic education in national and international law is in conformity with the analysis presented in this paper. However the position is not very clear with respect to higher education. The dominant view seems to be that right to education at the higher level is contingent upon the economic conditions of the state. We argue that this conclusion arises from lack of clarity about the concept of a human right