It is difficult to imagine
a person in a better position to write a book on the immense, complex,
and heart wrenching matter of the denial of children's rights to
education. Katarina Tomasevski is presently the UN Special Rapporteur
on rights to education and she is charged with the exhausting task
of cataloguing and assessing the impact of abuses and violations
across the globe. Her latest book (adding to her full length treatments
of several other human rights issues) is a penetrating analysis
of a persistent and perplexing problem that affects millions of
children, their families, their communities, their societies, and
ultimately, she would argue, the future direction of human civilization.
Tomasevski has documented a powerful narrative about what could
be called a worldwide social and political epidemic.
The book is divided
into three sections, each intended to frame, and then answer a different
set of questions. Part 1, "Why the Right to Education?"
presents philosophical and historical contexts and important background
material, including the initial intergovernmental blueprint for
the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Importantly, this
section also addresses the question, "What is education for?"
from several perspectives, including the author's own. She carefully
notes the difference that can exist between education and schooling,
and between brainwashing and teaching, as she puts it, for freedom.
She believes that by protecting the right to education, other human
rights can be guaranteed to children, including the right not to
be exploited as laborers or soldiers. Part 2, called "Rupturing
the Global Consensus," is a discussion of the enormous obstacles
(including corruption) that prevent change on an international scale,
even when governments have repeatedly promised action on human rights.
Here, Tomasevski is at her fighting best, arguing passionately that
we pay an unacceptable social price by allowing the impoverishment
of education to continue at the expense of the world's children.
The title of the third section is "Putting Human Rights Back
In." For Tomasevski, this is a threefold demand: the topic
of children's rights needs to move from the margins of public consciousness
back into the center of public dialogue about discrimination and
assaults to freedom, back into decisions about school curriculum
and school policies, and finally, back onto the main stage of national
and transnational agendas. In this final section, she sketches what
she calls "mobilization for change." It is based, in part,
on examples of remedies from around the world that have effectively
ensured children's rights to education, even against enormous odds,
such as culturally entrenched attitudes about girls and women.
This is a gripping account.
It is one thing to be aware that all human rights are violated daily
and in vast numbers; it is another thing to be boldly confronted
with multiple cases, figures and tables that tell this story with
such intensity, authority and detail. Especially because children
are the victims, it is, at times, overwhelmingly shocking and sad.
There are occasional triumphs for the right to education, including
those of the human spirit, and less often triumphs of public policy
and government enforcement. But as Tomasevski writes in her introduction,
progress in protecting the right to education moves at glacial speed,
it is a matter of "chipping away" (p. 1). Tomasevski never
gives up on the possibility that the world could be a better place,
but one wonders how she can retain any sense of hope given the struggles
and defeats she daily witnesses. In fact, part of the book's value
is that it chronicles a chapter in the lifework of a truly remarkable,
perhaps indefatigable champion of human rights. Her contribution
has been important, and our students should know about her. In her
key roles as advocate, witness to violations and abuses, and policy
analyst, Tomasevski has watched the world history of children's
rights unfold. With this book, she extends her commitment to education
and human rights by explaining their relationship to each other,
to all of us, and to the eventual realization of global social justice.
By so doing Tomasevski further demonstrates her belief that education
transforms lives. If we learn what she knows, we cannot help but
act.
Teachers can act on
this knowledge in significant ways. Human rights education continues
to be a core component in social studies curriculum aimed at developing
a global perspective, and Education Denied presents important
lessons for classrooms. While the book is probably best used as
an authoritative background resource, secondary and some upper elementary
students could capably work with a number of concepts central to
Tomasevski's argument about rights-based education, as well as work
with the data she presents in the form of graphs and charts. Students
could also engage in independent research about positive education
initiatives in Canada and around the world using examples from the
last chapters as starting points. Although Tomasevski places her
discussion within the context of human rights history, she does
not set her arguments within the even larger political frame of
democratization movements since WW II. Teachers will recognize that
this larger context may provide students with richer understandings
of the right to education and its relationship to the realization
of social justice, everywhere in the world.