On The Citizens' Right To Education

Right to education is a fundamental right of citizen; it is the right for citizen to ask their government to provide the opportunity and facilities of education, and the right for citizen to make progress by study. It belongs to the category of social rights. Citizens have the right to obligatory education, education for the whole life, equal opportunity to education and right to an appropriate education. When they have obstacle to enjoy these rights, they are eligible to ask the government to help them to achieve their aims. Citizenship in ancient Greece was a kind of privilege; it reflected legal relationship between rights and duties in the domain of private law. This concept embodied some liberties in the end of the Middle Age in Europe. Citizenship in modern times reflected the legal relationship between public power and citizens?ˉrights in the domain of public law. Modern citizens make up modern states; they built certain legal relationship with their states, and become subjects of many kinds of legal relationship. The fundamental rights of citizens are the crucial rights the citizens ought to have, they reflect the fundamental relationship between citizen and their governments, and they are also restrictions on public power. Last but not the least, to protect the fundamental rights of citizens is the fundamental duty of government. Education originated from social labor. However, in the slavery and feudalistic society, education became the privilege of ruling class or the subsidiary of religion. When human history stepped into capitalistic society, a universal education of labors was required by the development of production force. At the beginning, receiving education is a duty in legislation, certain years obligatory education was a common character and driving force in the process of the industrialization and modernization of all western countries. With time gone, the meaning of education to individual struggle and a country?ˉs prosperity become more and more conspicuous, receiving education became a combination of right and duty in legislation. After the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ushered in a new epoch of citizens?ˉright to education in human history. In China, legislation regarding education only has a history for a hundred years. With the underestimation of the importance of education and the backward economy in modern China, the average educational level is still very low at present. It is an obstacle both to our country?ˉs prosperity and the improvement in human right condition. Though we have some insight into the importance of education, conditions of our people to enjoy their right to education is still not very optimistic. If only we consummate our legislation regarding education, enforce the implementation of educational acts and strengthen the remedies to this right, then our people can enjoy their right better and we can achieve our long-term strategy.