Abstract
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (United Nations 1948: Article 26)
It is from this declaration that the tension between rights and obligations has arisen, for a right is an entitlement and not an obligation (McCowan T, Theory Res Educ 9(3):291, 2011). However, education (and we will discuss what this means as higher education) is assumed to be an intrinsic good for individuals, so education became an obligation, and was no longer an entitlement that all human beings have in order to fulfil their humanity. The discourse of rights dominates discussions of student engagement in the UK higher education system, and the obligation to use the secured benefits of these rights shifts from being a public good to a private good, confirming the shift to rights from obligations. Indeed, with regard to higher education, a system of rights seems to be forced by those in power on the youth of the country. Indeed, is this not the discourse of social mobility and access? It is the central platform of government policy, albeit often interpreted as consumer rights, and it is also evident in the growing literature on the rights of students: values for money; good teaching; facilities; well-being; and a good job. Less is said about whose function it is to provide these ‘rights’ and the obligation that they owe to, and are owed in their role as, academics, administrators and support staff. A recent display of unruly student behaviour by members of our most prestigious universities indicates a rather one-way enactment of rights. Indeed, in a more subtle and reflective discussion of student rights in his book Freedom to Learn (Freedom to Learn. Routledge, London, 2017), Macfarlane uses the word rights 85 times, obligations seven times and duty/duties eight times. I recognise the crudity of these measurements, but they do offer an insight into the emphasis on the notion of rights. In a manner similar to Guilherme (Power Educ 8(1):3–18, 2016), I will argue that higher education, if not education itself, is not a right but an obligation. However, unlike his reliance on Fichte’s notion of human evil for the emergence of right entitlements, I will argue from Simone Weil’s belief in human goodness.
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Gibbs, P. (2019). Duties Before Rights: A Notion of the University of the Future. In: Gibbs, P., Jameson, J., Elwick, A. (eds) Values of the University in a Time of Uncertainty. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15970-2_3
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