Education: Right or Privilege?

Modernity’s squeamishness with making definitive moral judgments means that the word “rights” is merely a substitute for sentiments, or feelings (aka emotivism). If I can take something I think is a good thing which should be widely disseminated and substitute the concept of a fundamental right, I have already won the argument.

Notice now how questions of feasibility, subsidiarity, and desirability have now been rendered secondary. “I have a right to x” is the ultimate trump card in public policy debates.

Never mind the destructive tendencies that can arise from the centralized administration of this right. If any district is not wholly in line with the vision of the anointed, then it is by definition illegitimate.

This battle obviously affects public attitudes towards education. No one disputes the value of education. But is education a right? Most do not even dispute individual state and local prerogatives to execute this function. However, that something is considered “good” but missing in certain instances does not mean that we must circumvent America’s federalist system of government to secure an abstract, undefined conception of educational “rights.”

The most troubling factor is not the mere usurpation of this function from its lawful possessors. The deeper problem is that normative claims with enough emotional force seem to bypass our collective rationality.

To gain ground in this debate we must question the automatic tendency of our culture to transfer normative goods into fundamental “rights” which the government must supply.