Notes on the idea of a right to education: from political philosophy to today’s Chile

Abstract

This article examines the idea of a right to education, particularly focused on determining to what extent the idea of a right to education is related to the idea of the public sphere, and the consequences that come from this relationship when thinking of educational public policies in today’s Chile, at the primary, secondary and university levels. To this end, the author reviews political philosophy, from the French Revolution up to the twentieth century –from Condorcet, including Kant and Hegel and finishing with Michael Walzer– resuscitating a school of thought that ties education to the public sphere and which recognizes that citizens have a right to educate themselves and that the State has certain obligations in this field. The author then applies this perspective to analyze the Chilean educational system imposed by the military dictatorship and still in place today. This allows the author to question ideas such as the school vouchers system and to evaluate the possibility of extending the model of free public education to the university level.