1998 is a good year to think about human rights. In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Fifty years ago the UN also asked every human on the planet  and every organ of society to "keep this Declaration constantly in mind."

The UDHR has 30 articles. Articles 2 through 21 list older or "18th Century" rights. They are political and legal in nature. They  transcend gender, race, color, national boundaries, birth or status.

The UDHR also has a second part (Articles 23-29) containing  recently
conceived "20th Century" rights.  Russia tried to take credit for creating
these new economic and social rights. But they are American, too. They read like President Franklin Roosevelt's political re-election platform  of 1944. 

The older rights have  a negative flavor. They tell us not to do this
or do that to other people. The newer rights encourage us to give
something positive to others. Thus Article 24: 

"Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays without pay."

The right to education is oddly worded. For one sentence reads like the opposite of a right or freedom.  It says that young children have a RIGHT to be FORCED TO  LEARN!  Here  is the complete text of article 26. Capitals are mine.

"--1. 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. 

--2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

--3. PARENTS HAVE A PRIOR RIGHT TO CHOOSE THE KIND OF EDUCATION THAT SHALL BE GIVEN TO THEIR CHILDREN."

"I am beginning to think...that if you have been a LIBERAL, if you believe that those who are strong must sometimes consider the weak,  and that with strength and power goes responsibility, automatically some people consider you a Communist."
 

Must government COMPEL parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to educate children? Families already educate. From whom else do children learn their mother tongue, their religion, their morals? What manner of adults have to be forced by law to educate their children? Are parents criminals? A charitable explanation is that Eleanor Roosevelt had in mind nations whose traditions opposed education of girls. Maybe her  goal was to make it easier for girls to go to school. Perhaps she reasoned  that compelling all children to be educated was a permissible means to a good end. The argument appears to be that  only governments are powerful enough to overcome traditional prejudices against girls going to school

Article 26 fires off a cannon to destroy a fly. For, read literally, Article 26 of the Universal Declaration  propels all governments everywhere into the elementary education business. Governments must not only enable voluntary education of the young but also ensure their involuntary education. And so is born the claim that every child has a RIGHT to be COERCED into education.

When I argue for a child's right to a free elementary education, do I
thereby  also concede that "he who pays the piper calls the tune?" No. That says  that government will do good only if its powers to coerce are thereby massively increased. If government can compel elementary education,  then what prevents government from dictating where and by whom children will be educated and what they must learn? Americans agree that a democracy needs literate, informed, educated citizens, and cannot  afford undigestible masses of ignorant  voters. Therefore, some argue, government MUST COMPEL the education of all younger children. But that conclusion does not follow from those premises.

In theory, a perfect human society would have no violence or compulsion. The fact, however, is that parents everywhere do compel their very young offspring to obey.  Adults, however, gradually ease up, case by case, as the young mature. At various ages society stops forbidding teens to marry, to drive cars or to consume alcoholic drinks.  At age 15 or 16 or thereabouts  our fifty states cease compelling children to learn. Governments also stop compelling parents to educate their offspring. Do the young therefore stop learning? I think not.

Americans seem to be of two minds on the subject of coercion. Some
Americans regard government by coercion as normal, as positively good for all of us. They get an emotional high from making other people do what enforcers consider right. They share a dark view of human nature: those only are good who are forced to be good. They believe that only under threat do we educate our young.

For other Americans, however, coercion is admission of failure,  a last
resort, something done reluctantly and only after prior thought on how to limit the downside. This second,  larger group of Americans might
paraphrase as follows Lincoln's explanation of his personal disgust with slavery: "As I would not be coerced, so neither would I coerce." 

Three and a half centuries ago, Sir William Berkeley was the  popular Royal Governor of Virginia.  Of him, his admiring contemporary, William Byrd,  wrote to a friend,  

"Our government is so happily constituted that a governor must first outwit us before he can oppress us.  And if he ever squeezes money out of us he must first take care to deserve it." 

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for Asheville TRIBUNE