A POLITICAL AGENDA A DRAFT

Framing
The reflections and proposals presented here on the extension of the human right to education are in the context of the project “Extension the Human Right to Education”, which has now been established as an international network for almost a decade and connects organisations and individual activists on all continents of the world and brings them into dialogue with each other. The task and achievement of this project and network is to conduct an open dialogue in a radically democratic approach on the conditions and content that should be considered essential for a globally viable understanding of education and at the same time be able to transform this into an ongoing process of joint, democratic debate: Education is not static, but always a process in which all people can and must be involved. Although states and political organisations are responsible for the organisation of educational processes and must ensure that this is possible free of charge, the debates about education and its content must be conducted by all people in free and open discussion.

This draft presented here should therefore only be understood as a suggestion, as an impulse for everyone, not only in the network for the extension of the human right to education. It is an invitation to talk with each other, to develop ideas and perspectives that can then be presented to the United Nations. Also, in the context of a possible extension and organisational change of the United Nations, it is an attempt to also represent those whose voices have not yet been heard.

Extension of the
human right to education
The goal of Education should be enveloped in the essence of Human Rights, it becomes a very important aim of Human Rights to extend its components towards the education scenario. For instance, to protect the right to dignity and optimum development we must ensure that every child gets Quality Education which will not only protect their rights but also will promote the need registering oneself in schools and colleges. Therefore, we must need to pay attention to the constant calls of involving Human Rights into the present education curriculum.

Education is an absolute prerequisite for human life. Educational opportunities and educational processes must always be accessible to all, orientated towards the enjoyment of individual life as well as that of the community and society. Education must always be understood as an open and opening process that also includes the debate about education itself.

This requires a fundamental change in awareness and, in some cases, radical changes to power structures and opportunities for participation – as well as enabling these through education. Global problems require global solutions, which can only be achieved through philosophies, ideas, values and norms that are respected by all cultures and societies, as all people have a responsibility to the best of their knowledge and ability to promote a better social order both locally and globally (preamble to the human duties). This requires recognising the diversity of life forms – a diversity that is an enriching moment for humanity as a whole and for each and every individual.

Education means extension the nature given to all people equally through a culture that is directly one’s own, but which can and must be opened at any time and in any direction. In the hope of enabling world-encompassing thinking – also and always in critical debate. It is a prerequisite for a life that is lived in freedom and yet is aware of the commonality in all differences. Seen in this light, education is inextricably linked to human dignity, i.e. also to being able to develop and realise one’s own life in freedom and with others as one’s own design. With knowledge and skills that relate to shaping the world and one’s own self.

States and political organisations must ensure that education is open and accessible to all people. Education is not a private matter, even if it affects individuals and enables them to change. However, this must be ensured for everyone. Education must be freely accessible and free of charge at all stages of life to enable democratic participation.

Education then means:
Openness of thought and feeling Knowledge of the natural foundations of our existence, globally and individually. The ability to deal with these foundations, especially in times of a global climate crisis that poses an existential threat to the lives of all and each and every one of us.

Education means being able to dispose of the cultural prerequisites of our existence, knowing them, including their historical development, being able to accept them, assimilate them and change them. These cultural preconditions must be seen in a comprehensive way; access to scientific and technical knowledge must be given, also and especially to be able to master and control technical developments. In this respect, education always has a democratising dimension.

Education goes hand in hand with openness to other ways of living, to different cultural ideas, to an exchange that enables shared experiences. No culture should be privileged in principle, not even one’s own, but should always be understood as a model of living, thinking, acting and feeling that faces up to critical questions.

Education is realised as care by people for each other and around each other, always in the interest of their development and their good life.

Education means being able to speak. Without having a language at their disposal and without practising it, people cannot speak for themselves and their concerns. This means that people’s languages must be recognised and legitimate, but that everyone must have the opportunity to acquire one of the politically and legally relevant languages – or to find the opportunity to present their own concerns in one.

Education can only succeed if all people can acquire, assess and apply knowledge. Everyone must be guaranteed the opportunity to acquire at least the basic skills that will allow them to access the available media. Knowledge must not remain exclusive.

Religions are among the central themes that enable human self-understanding and coexistence and propose rules for this coexistence. Religions are to be respected – but education also means that everyone has the opportunity to be critical of religions and to lead a life that is guided by secular ethics.

Political education is the core of education: human dignity, freedom and solidarity always depend on people being able to think politically and act consciously, also in the knowledge that different forms of life can be lived together in the tension between freedom and self-determination, care and concern for one another.

Explanations and
justifications
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is characterised by an important peculiarity when it comes to the question of what is to be understood as education – whereby we disregard the extent to which there are linguistic differences in the meaning of the terms used for education.

Article 26 „Right to education, educational objectives, parental rights“ states:

1. „Everyone has the right to education. Education must be free of charge, at least in elementary and primary schools. Elementary education is compulsory. Specia- lised and vocational education shall be generally accessible; higher education shall be open to all on an equal basis according to ability and merit.“
2) „Education shall aim at the full development of the human personality and the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial or religious groups and shall favour the activities of the United Nations for the main- tenance of peace.“
3. „First and foremost, parents have the right to determine the type of education their children receive.“

We are therefore aware that Article 26 urgently needs to be modified and expanded. Firstly, we will take a closer look at the categorisation of Article 26. Secondly, we will examine the questions: What does education mean in the current understanding? What must the organisational / social conditions for education be like? What are the contents and topics according to the key problems and key challenges? Thirdly, this then leads to recommendations.

1 Classification of Article 26
Article 26 follows Article 25, which regulates the right to an adequate standard of living and comprehensive social security, and – in the second sentence – lays down special protection for mothers and children and once again emphasises equal social protection for all children. Article 27 in turn stipulates the right to participate freely in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts. (The second sentence of the article also defines the rights of originators.) It is also worth noting that Article 24 establishes the right to recreation and leisure.

Why is it important to emphasise this? One might think that the right to education seems rather subordinate, especially compared to the rights that emphasise the dignity of people, their freedom, their security and the possibility of being able to shape their own lives in safety – including in forms of work that apply to these basic conditions.

On the other hand, Article 26, paragraph 2 states that education „shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms“. It is about contributing to and promoting „understanding, tolerance and friendship“ through education. This makes it clear that Article 26 occupies a central position in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and sets out what it considers to be the basic prerequisite for a human life. Education is an existential element of human life, indispensable and essential, as the preamble speaks when it states and demands that „teaching and education shall promote respect for these rights“.

At this point, it should be noted that the right to education is not at all achievable for many people in the „Global South“ or, importantly, that this is also discussed differently in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, whereby terms such as Global South or North may no longer be appropriate, as the social, cultural and ecological upheavals have long since affected all societies – incidentally, also as a result of refugee movements. The essentials (food, health, access to education) are often not available. More than four billion people have less food available than they would need to reach their natural life expectancy. And more than 11% of people in the world hunger. Over 2.2 billion people have no regular access to clean water. Due to the suicidal overuse of resources, we are not even able to guarantee a decent life for all. In 2020, around 87% of the world’s population aged 15 and over had at least basic reading and writing skills. The illiteracy rate was 13%.

The result: there needs to be a fundamental change in awareness and, in some cases, radical changes to power structures and opportunities for participation – as well as enabling these through education. Global problems require global solutions, which can only be achieved through ideas, values and norms that are respected by all cultures and societies, as all people have a responsibility to the best of their knowledge and ability to promote a better social order both locally and globally (preamble to the human duties). This also reflects the fact that it is necessary to understand the diversity of cultures as a common benefit, even if we live according to very different values and truths – but perhaps share more in common than we realise in the current debate; it rightly points to differences that are ignored and at the same time valuable and enriching for all. To differences in common. This could be a groundbreaking image of humanity for the 21st century. And this does not require consensus, but rather a belief in the commonality of being human – precisely in a world of strangers who can always meet and come closer to one another.

If you then add the InterAction Council’s Universal Declaration of Human Duties and make a comparison with human rights, you can see that these are far more comprehensive in their analysis. It is about the fundamental principles of humanity, about non-violence and reverence for life, about justice and solidarity, about truthfulness and tolerance, about mutual respect and partnership. Ultimately, it is about a change of consciousness. In Articles 9 and 10, this leads to a redistribution of wealth and the duty to make serious efforts to overcome poverty, malnutrition, ignorance and inequality. And this for a world in which sustainability is promoted in order to guarantee dignity, freedom, security and justice for all people. And this also means that all people have a duty to „develop their abilities through diligence and endeavour; they should have equal access to education and meaningful work. Everyone should support the needy, the disadvantaged, the disabled and victims of discrimination.“

Education is the highest good because it is inextricably linked to a human life that is lived in dignity and freedom. This is not a question of exclusivity, nor a utopian consideration, but a statement about a task that makes human life possible as such in the first place – and thus also an obligation for everyone, for every political community and every individual who must be empowered by the social context of life to be able to lead its own life and that of all in self-determination. Education is about enabling and empowering people to design and fulfil a human life.

2 Questions for education
All of this raises three questions that need to be answered again and again to varying degrees and therefore require a joint dialogue – which already is an extension of the human right to education: this must be a certain one, must not be normatively evaded or restricted. Rather, even the conversation about education must be conducted as a dynamic, open and opening debate in which a habitus of education itself develops. Talking about education is itself an act of education, because only in this way can get social co-operation in understanding and as understanding succeed, starting with getting to know the self and others. Education always means overcoming alienation, including the alienation that is systematically generated in modern societies and economies.

So what does education mean?
Education is a highly complex event, a perpetual process in which people are always familiarised with other people and the surrounding social forms of life and cultural circumstances, including traditional ones, to gain independence and the freedom to deal with themselves in their context.

Education must first be understood as a process that has to do with the nature of people, their natural constitution, in three respects. And this applies equally to all people. On the one hand, they are given the opportunity and task by nature to develop and unfold, to discover talents and to create something from these in interaction with others that the individual can grasp as the unfolding of a person who is perfect for themselves. A development that can be associated with discontinuities and breaks, sometimes with loss of viability in old age or through illness. Secondly, this development never succeeds alone, but always together with other people, literally from the beginning of human life, which no one can master alone. Thirdly, this development is linked to the fact that although people have predispositions, they are at the same time dependent on growing up in a social and cultural environment that they can assimilate, right down to the basic structures of their natural circumstances. They need a milieu that enables them to unfold and develop their talents and potential so that they can accept themselves as educated people.

This education of the self therefore inevitably stands in contrast to the fact that people are dependent on education by others, on being accompanied, supported and encouraged on their path of life and learning, on being provided with materials, with knowledge about the world, about people and ultimately about themselves, as well as with skills that they can practise as abilities. Education therefore means self-awareness in a social and cultural environment as well as awareness of and for this environment, human dignity and appreciation of social and cultural circumstances. An awareness that is meaningful for everyone, the basis of a life as a social being that combines freedom and solidarity and recognises responsibility for the natural, cultural and social world and makes this its purpose in life.

Education in this understanding of human life cannot be achieved by a single person. It requires an understanding that people discover themselves as individuals in a world humanity and experience themselves in this, in the experience with others, which they can understand as a moment of their own existence. However, this presupposes that the community of all in general and always in the very specific context of life can achieve both: to be a good environment, protective and supportive, while at the same time systematically and comprehensively opening up learning opportunities.

Education always takes its starting point in one’s own living conditions, in the contexts of one’s own upbringing, in familiar ideas and patterns. But education means knowing and appreciating these, yet always working to broadbroaden one’s own horizons by respectfully engaging with what is initially seen as different or foreign.

What must the organisational conditions for education be like?
Free access for all and in the greatest possible freedom and independence for all is indispensable. States and political organisations are obliged to guarantee this free access free of charge at all stages of life – access that always ensures that good quality, safe and supportive learning and practice that enables independent judgement is guaranteed in all spheres of human life, cognitive, motor, emotional and affective.

Because education is a genuinely human aspect of life that enables and enriches life, it must be ensured that free education is available at all stages of life. The restriction of free education to the elementary sector must be overcome. Free education must be guaranteed as early as pregnancy, then in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Lifelong learning must be made possible, incidentally also as a moment of qualification to prevent unemployment. And that’s not all: people in old age must have access to educational opportunities, because this is how they can support and promote the development of societies. As a radical consequence, such a comprehensive approach to education also includes preparation for dying and death.

Good quality learning means that the learning processes are realised in respect and recognition, in knowledge and initiation of individual abilities and performance potential. Good quality learning and teaching also means that the development of each person is made possible in his or her own time, which he or she can achieve through his or her physical condition.

Cancellations and exclusions from educational processes must be prevented – those who fail to meet challenges must always be given the opportunity to choose a different path that makes an educational world accessible to them.

States and political organisations are obliged to ensure these institutional and organisational prerequisites for education by providing all professionals teaching and educating – all nursery schoolteachers, all social educators and workers, all teachers – with a substantive and comprehensive education geared towards a common learning practice. Anyone who teaches people something that contributes to increasing the happiness of all, as well as individuals, and thus serves peace, deserves respect, recognition and support.

All over the world, elementary education should be offered free of charge and access to secondary schools should be made possible. Privatisation of the education system by the state is inadmissible; states must not withdraw from the task of providing education for all. Private education programmes may be approved under state or municipal supervision if and insofar as they guarantee access for all or offer special services that go beyond the requirements for independent living. In particular, non-governmental organisations or municipal initiatives should be supported, for example if they are active in the field of informal education and can promote communal living. Nevertheless, such initiatives must not be used as justification for restricting state services and benefits.

Educational professionals must have proven their qualifications. At the same time, however, it must be ensured that enthusiasm for education can develop. In everyone, in those who are educated and taught, and in those who, as teachers, make knowledge and skills accessible, provide support in learning processes and give input. The right to education is inevitably also a right to initiate and organise educational processes, to be a teacher. States must open up every opportunity for people to learn to be good teachers, namely those who organise educational processes as an enabler of freedom and self-determination.

Educational opportunities must always be organised in such a way that, on the one hand, they are provided by the state, i.e. free of charge, and meet the basic requirements of quality. On the other hand, regional and municipal responsibility must be given and organised in such a way that all those involved can exercise their responsibility for educational processes. People must be given knowledge about their living conditions and how they can shape them in a way that sustains life. Educational programmes must prevent cultures from disappearing or being damaged. They always include a moment that serves to criticise attacks that could destroy the foundations of life.

What are the contents and topics that can and must be addressed to overcome the key problems that people are aware of?
This is primarily about extending the human right to education, i.e. a process that cannot and must not be completed:

Openness of thinking and feeling
The first key problem is to be found in a methodology of thinking, feeling and perhaps acting. Education means being curious and arousing curiosity, openness to questions and knowledge, a desire to engage with others and with oneself. A dialogue that leads to and results in what can be called a common practice of life. Education goes hand in hand with thinking in tensions and contradictions, with the willingness to engage with the unexpected, to understand the other and yet not to exclude it. It also means enduring the fact that lost and suppressed knowledge and skills must be scrutinised and not simply discarded, but always bearing in mind the demands that are associated with knowledge, reason and understanding; demands that cannot be enforced dogmatically, by force or even violence. Education has a tendency towards pragmatic serenity, then above all towards solidarity with one another, recognising lifestyles and ways of life. Seen in this light, education today is characterised by recognising the equality of all, but understanding their differences when they are desired by individuals or groups. Strictly speaking, education is characterised by a democratic attitude. In this sense, education means thinking about or organising life in such a way that people can participate in a common community and a cultural project equally and yet in their own particularities. A project that can be described as humanity, as a sensitivity to the fact that people are connected in a common destiny.

The natural foundations
of our existence
The second key problem is that their natural foundations must not be destroyed or damaged, the foundations that they find in their environment; natural foundations, as they must also understand them as a moment in their own existence. This indicates that education must provide access to medical and hygienic insight, an understanding of one’s own biological processes. Then also knowledge and understanding of the basics of one’s own metabolic processes, nutrition, the supply of food, which must not be grown in a destructive form. Education is knowledge about our nature, about water, food and healthy food (which in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America is often far better than in the northern world). Education combines technical and economic knowledge about the conditions, possibilities and limits of dealing with resources.

The cultural preconditions
of our existence
Education means the ability to engage with everything that is given as culture in the broadest sense of expression, and therefore also as forms of dealing with others and oneself – including the long stories that people talk about themselves, their origins and their future. Education is open to social storytelling, and to the idea of putting narrative into practice. It also means developing a feeling for the beauty of life in all its facets, for something good that appeals. Perhaps even for finding beauty. More than that: education means coming to a judgement to recognise beauty and goodness – to preserve and develop it, in the knowledge that beauty and goodness are different, but are nevertheless shared by many when they exchange ideas with each other.

Education as a concern
Education with a view to the natural, cultural and social preconditions and conditions of our existence requires the development of a mindset of care. Care, starting with compassion for other people and for nature, requires a gentle, protective, nurturing and encouraging approach to others – and obliges people to show special respect for those who care for the lives of others as well as for cultural and social goods. Education is care – as a gratifying achievement for humanity, an achievement that children develop from an early age. Competitive situations aimed at winning can destroy this elementary care; they should only be used with the greatest restraint and caution in all areas of education, with the intention of improving the happiness of all. As a concern for the common good.

This includes enabling people to gain the ability in their educational process to critically understand and assess living conditions and forms of society that jeopardise or destroy their own life conditions and opportunities. Here, too, the idea of care is a guiding principle.

Be able to speak
Speaking and thinking, speaking and feeling, speaking and acting are closely connected. The ability to speak for others and for oneself is the core of all education. Because it enables us to take sides with people, because it allows us to stand up for ourselves, for others and for the human world. Because it allows us to speak out, sometimes to free ourselves from taboos and sometimes to pave the way for reconciliation in conflicts by remaining silent. Learning to speak leads to the most important virtue of human life, to speaking instead of murderous conflict.

Whenever possible, people should have the opportunity to learn many languages, or at least to acquire one that enables them to make themselves understood in wide circles. Knowing a language that is the official lingua franca of a country also means being able to express one’s rights and defend oneself – even against the arbitrariness of an authority. It is therefore essential, especially for people in migration processes, that they are able to learn the language of the country that will become their home. At the same time, education means respecting all languages and recognising them both as a means of communication and in the special features and content that these languages communicate. They are part of the cultural heritage of mankind and at the same time enable us to gain a differentiated view of the world.

Gain, assess and apply knowledge
Today more than ever, education means gaining access to knowledge. Above all, however, it means being able to assess and apply this knowledge. This presupposes that all people at every stage of their lives have the opportunity to acquire reading, writing and the forms of maths that are indispensable for coping with life independently and leading a respected life that secures their livelihood. They must be able to acquire this knowledge and these skills not only mechanically, not only at the lowest level. Rather, the learning of these skills and abilities must be organised in such a way that the learning itself, and even more so the application, becomes a joy and a pleasure. In their educational process, people must develop the joy of learning, of knowledge and of their skills, with a view to others, to shared life processes.

Reading and writing, and sometimes arithmetic, are solitary processes, unlike storytelling, singing and playing together. But this loneliness demands that other people become aware of those who read and write, those who calculate, give them respect and recognition, open a space for them in which they can present themselves with what they have read and written, with what they have calculated.

What applies to basic knowledge, skills, and abilities also applies to all advanced knowledge – in all fields of knowledge and learning. All people must have access to scientific knowledge at every stage of their lives in such a way that they can acquire, deepen and expand it. This applies to the natural sciences in all dimensions, it also applies to cultural studies and the social sciences, it also applies to artistic skills – and finally also to the available knowledge about our feelings.

To this end, it must be ensured that people have access to knowledge in all channels of knowledge transfer. The priority should continue to be books; people need libraries because, according to all available knowledge about learning itself, printed books and printed texts are the best way to acquire knowledge. Open access must always be guaranteed for all knowledge resources and yet the question must be asked whether and to what extent human life is being harmed or made contemptible in some channels.

Seen in this light, education involves people being able to communicate about knowledge and what they have read in joint discussions. Education includes the right and the duty to engage in open dialogue. Education has to do with discourse, admittedly in a concrete sense of the term, as dialogue or multilogue, from which no one may be excluded – unless he or she wants to prevent or prohibit this conversation with one another.

Religions
In many modern secular societies, religious orientations play a subordinate role. Religiousness and religions are at times disparaged and regarded as outdated. There is a tendency to banish religions from public life and declare them a private matter because religions appear irrational and far removed from science. Perhaps they are. But education must make this a topic: because people may not be able to live without religion at all, because religions are about providing an interpretation of origins and a horizon for the future. Religions also aim to bind people together and give them the opportunity to understand their own life situation. No one should therefore be attacked because of their religion – but education also includes not wanting to proselytise other people.

Political education
Education requires and includes that people regulate and determine the framework and order of their common life themselves. In this respect, education is always a political process, focussed on both individual freedom and independence on the one hand and on the shaping of a common context of life on the other. For this reason, education must always include the question of how this can be regulated, whether and how forms of rule can be organised in such a way that they remain available to those who submit to an order – if they want to do so themselves. Again, education is a democratic process, even if it remains a process in which each individual experiences him or herself in his or her own particularity and experiences it with others. And this takes place in formal, non-formal and informal education, for which places must always be available and must be made available.

Future – Education and
freedom belong together!
Article 26 needs to be reviewed to ensure that it also adequately reflects and captures the educational understanding of the „global South“, other cultures, societies and in the context of religions. This as well means that we must modify our own neoliberal understanding of education. This is and will be the greatest challenge for the future. It is an essential struggle for education in the face of the massive trivialisation of education and personal development geared towards neoliberal capitalism, global instabilities and the extreme increase in authoritarian societies and existing isms (colonialism, post-colonialism, imperialism, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and more). This review is also so urgently needed because education is not only trivialised, its content reduced to the simplest and often meaningless and increasingly often false information and disseminated, but because the necessary and required scientific knowledge and technical modes of action are increasingly less embedded in cultural, social and ethical considerations. All too often, comparative studies of education systems follow performance indicators in which marketability is perceived as the sole determining factor. Such observations and analyses – which are certainly relevant – must not be carried out in an exploitation-oriented manner but must focus on people’s entire way of life.

Ultimately, it is about shaping our societies and therefore also education, which goes hand in hand with freedom. Because education and freedom belong together. These increasing trivialisations could also be evidence in education that it is no longer about people in their „wholeness“ (sic!). And this is nothing new! Freire, Illich, Nyerere and others were already calling for this in the early 1970s. There is still a need for historical and contemporary liberation and peace education. Because the main aim of education is to liberate people through education. It is about passing on the wisdom and knowledge accumulated in a society from one generation to the next and preparing people for their future participation in this society in a spirit of freedom. And we must also ask ourselves whether there can really be a universally valid image of education.

Analytical thinking and the ability to make judgements, the knowledge of the complexity of nature and mankind are at the centre of education; this turns away from the destruction of the body and nature and its global exploitation of resources. To summarise, this means that this understanding of education includes education as world orientation, education as enlightenment, education as historical awareness, education as articulation, education as self-knowledge, education as self-determination, education as moral education, education as poetic experience and as passionate education. It is about an educational transformation combined with justice and dignity. This liberal education begins at birth and ends at death, for a lifetime. And that is also the beauty of education. Perhaps it is part of the centre of education to understand it as an aesthetic process, as the beauty of humanity.

Prof. Dr. Marlies W. Fröse,
Prof. Dr. Michael Winkler
Prof. Sanjoy Roy,
Zeynel Korkmaz,

India, Turkey,
Germany and Austria,
27th of August 2024

* This is a machine translation of our German draft with DeepL, i.e. the text has been translated automatically and has been checked and confirmed by a friend of us. We ask you to bear this in mind if there are any unsuitable formulations.