For 2305 students as we start wading into the U.S. Constitution.
The Texas Constitution has such a right. The lack of one - the author argues - has consequences for the level of education in the nation.
- Click here for the article.
Every country that bests us in the education rankings either has a constitutional guarantee to education, or does not have a constitution but has ensured the right through an independent statute. Each has constructed law around education as a fundamental right of citizens, at least until the age of adulthood. Finland, the world leader, succinctly asserts, “Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge.”(Chapter 2, Section 16). South Korea’s Article 31 on Education has six sections. Switzerland’s constitution mentions education more than two dozen times. For countries with no formal constitution, many have included the right in supplementary documents like the Human Rights Act of the United Kingdom (1998) or the Australian Capital Territory Human Rights Act (2005). Others still, like New Zealand, form the basis for the right to education by incorporating international laws like the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, whose Article 13 provides expansive assurances of education. In addition, each of these countries—well, almost every country in the world—is also party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely accepted human rights treaty in history. The convention, which prohibits among other things the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of children, vigorously asserts the right of a child to education. Of UN members, only Somalia and the United States have not ratified that agreement.
There simply hasn’t been a movement in the U.S. to establish the rights of children in respect to equal, free, and adequate education. One of the few pending constitutional amendments (meaning approved by Congress but not by 3/4ths of States) is the Child Labor Amendment of 1924, limiting and prohibiting labor for those under 18. Though the amendment failed to gain ratification from enough states, including Louisiana who rejected it multiple times, child labor was effectively nixed by FDR in the Fair Labor Standards Act, 14 years later. When it comes to the rights of children in education, traditional interpretation has deemed the 10th amendment sufficient to shift responsibility to the states, and the 14th amendment adequate to ensure fairness. The Supreme Court decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), though, ran directly counter to that logic, denying appellant claims that unequal education funding violated a fundamental right and the Equal Protection Clause. Even as America assumes the responsibility for education rests somewhere, its clear that the right to that education has clearly fallen through the cracks.
