Saturday, October 06, 2007

What???

I ended up clicking on one link after another in Wikipedia and ended up at "compulsory education". This is part of what it says:

Compulsory education at the primary level was affirmed as a human right in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What???? How is a COMPULSORY thing a human right???? "Compulsory" and "right" do not go together. It can be one things for it to be compulsory for governments to OFFER education for human rights, but you can't require somebody to do something and pretend it's their right. Have a look at the Free Dictionary's definition of human right:

human right - (law) any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are
entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights
to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality
before the law)


See that? "Whose exercise a government may not interfere." "Freedom."

Bah.

2 comments:

Correne said...

Daisy, it's Wikipedia! You're allowed to change the article if you want to. Go ahead! Change it!

One Alberta Voice said...

I can't change it. It's NOT Wikipedia--it's the actual United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that says that primary education is compulsory!!!!!!!!!!