The Right to Education Does Not and Cannot Exist

The advent of classical liberalism during the Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries popularized the concept of respect for individual rights. Initially, these recognized rights were purely ‘negative’. Negative rights refer to legal protections from certain actions. For example, the right to life is negative because it protects individuals from being killed. Towards the latter half of the 19th century, however, social liberalism started gaining traction and eventually took over the liberal movement. The basis of the ideology was that free markets needed to be regulated by the government in order to guarantee a number of ‘positive’ rights; this refers to rights that act as legal entitlements to be subject to certain actions from others. For example, the right to education is positive because it entitles individuals to be given an education by other members of society. In this article, I will explain why positive rights cannot exist, especially not in a system that values negative rights.

We must first define what a right is; put simply, in the context of government, a right is a legal entitlement. The right to life, for example, provides legal protection against the unwarranted or non-consensual taking of an individual’s life (i.e. murder) because it recognizes the idea that each individual owns his/her own life. This comes with an important implication; because it is a basic and universal legal entitlement, people do not have to give something away or pay a fee in order to ensure their right to life is upheld. To be required to do so would be to add a condition to the application of the right which defeats the purpose of a legal entitlement. This will become important later on.

So if there is a clear-cut definition for rights, why does the distinction between positive and negative rights exist and what exactly is it? Negative rights are those that outlaw actions whereas positive rights mandate actions. The example given in the previous paragraph of the basic right to life is an example of a negative right; it outlaws the ability to take others’ lives. On the other hand, the right to education – an example of a positive right – mandates that society provides education for individuals. As you can see, both types of rights are legal entitlements and yet they are fundamentally different.

Today, many developed nations have adopted a number of both positive and negative rights. This has been inspired in large part by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This all may seem righteous and good for the progression of humanity but it poses certain problems when one thinks about the way positive and negative rights interact.

For example, let us take Article 26 of the UDHR – the right to education. What does it mean to be entitled to an education? Presumably that, as mentioned previously, every individual can expect to be educated without having to give something up in return. However, we need schools, teachers, staff members, and a number of other assets to provide education and all of these things cost money. We now arrive at a dilemma; how do we pay teachers and buy the required assets to educate people without requiring those people to pay for their education? There are several proposed solutions to this of which all either ultimately make no sense and/or directly and egregiously contradict basic negative rights.

Firstly and the most commonly applied solution is that the government should pay for education so individuals do not have to. In this way, everyone can get an education for free and the right to education is upheld. This is an absurd distortion of reality; the government gets the money it spends by forcibly taxing individuals. In many cases, in fact, the government even runs deficits and incurs interest expenses, effectively taxing people in the future. Portraying public education as being ‘free’ is incredibly disingenuous; not only is it funded by money made through the labor of individuals, it is also taken by force.

In response to this, some may propose a system which requires individuals to pay taxes for education funding only if they can afford their own education. This would allow much of the middle and lower class to enjoy the benefits of education without having to pay for it. However, there are two problems with this. First, rights are expected to be universal entitlements; no one – not even the upper class – should have to pay to receive something they are entitled to. Secondly, the middle and lower class requiring taxation of the upper class to enjoy their basic individual rights is in contradiction with the negative right to one’s property (just as most forms of taxation are). Therefore, this proposal also fails to recognize education as a right.

It should be increasingly apparent at this point that as long as something needs to be paid for, it cannot be a right for one reason or another. The logical conclusion to draw from this is that the only way in which the right to education can be upheld is if it is truly free and the government did not need to pay teachers or buy land and other assets to establish schools. The government could rely exclusively on volunteers to obtain all necessary assets but this would likely result in a massive shortage of education. Therefore, although it might sound insane, the only reliable way to ensure the universal right to education is by forcing people to work at schools for no pay and seizing all of the other required assets. And it should go without saying but this would require a violation of basic negative rights on a widescale totalitarian-esque level.

We can derive an important conclusion from this thought experiment: commodities that require land, labor, and capital, cannot be rights. Either they are funded by the government which means they cease to be basic entitlements or the government begins using an egregious level of force. This explains the fundamental issue with positive rights; they require force to be enforced. Such a system can only be justified if a violation of a positive right (i.e. an individual not getting proper education) is elevated to the same level as a violation of a negative right (i.e. murder). Exploring in further depth the difference between forcing individuals to do the right thing and forcing individuals to refrain from doing the wrong thing would make for a potentially interesting discussion but it is one that I will delve into at a later time.

To reiterate, positive rights cannot exist, especially in a system that already respects negative rights. In reality, they are merely political tools used by politicians to gain popular appeal. We can debate the pros and cons of social programs and implement them but unless we find a way to deliver them at no cost whatsoever, they cannot, in good faith, be classified as rights.