Open Ed - Week 1

In your opinion, is the "right to education" a basic human right? Why or why not? In your opinion, is open *access* to free, high-quality educational opportunity sufficient, or is it necessary to *mandate* education through a certain age or level?

The "right to education" as a basic human right is a sticky situation. The readings for this week introduce this idea as one that is important to consider. I believe everyone should have the right to be educated, but how to do this throughout the entire world is complicated for many reasons (one of these reasons being that the people of the world do not all agree on what a basic right is). As Tomasevski says we must look at the economic, political, and cultural impacts this question opens. Of course one of my first reactions to this question is that everyone in this world deserves to be educated, but educated in what? Their culture, the world, politics, reading and writing (in what language?), some curriculum that has been developed? Of course I think that all people deserve the opportunity to learn about as much as possible and have access to this education as a choice, to me that's the key. I do believe education opens the way for freedom. But at the same time, I also realize that anyone who thinks otherwise is going to fight hard to not allow people to have the choice to have this right.

So now open "access" to educational resources and opportunity. This is a great step to distributing educational content, and from my experiences in education and my choices in continuing educational opportunities I believe that mandated education is probably a good idea to a certain age (but I don't feel expert enough to determine that age). How that education is delivered should probably have options (public school, home school, etc.). I think that people can either catch on to wanting to continue to learn in various ways, or they become satisfied with their educational level. Personally I want people to become charged by education and incorporate it into their everyday life (life-long learning). So opening up access to educational content and opportunities is important and essential to this idea.

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