THE GOVERNMENT OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INTERSECTIONS AND (DIS) CONNECTIONS OF OFFICIAL NARRATIVES

Abstract

The central objective of this study is to establish a dialectical relationship between the hinged political orientations on how formal education systems should be designed and their contribution to the promotion and development of human rights. In a critical analysis and understanding of how these two aspects of contemporary western society intertwine and (dis) connect, we seek to interpret, within the framework of the main official (supranational and national) narratives - OECD, IMF, EU and government of Portugal), the following axes of analysis: i) How has it been (im)possible to reconcile the idea of education as a human right with the assumption of educating for human rights? ii) how can we characterize the relationship that has been normalized between education government, between an international / European perspective and national scale translations, and the development of human rights? iii) what is the articulation between an education that increasingly assumes a meritocratic and instrumental feature with the universalistic dogmatic conception of human rights? From the intersections and (dis) connections that we observe between the discourses defining the official (supranational and national) lines of education governance and the narratives that have dealt with the official and universal conception of human rights, we find diffuse tendencies between a consecration of education as a human right, weakly articulated with a governed education not so much for the development of human rights, but for the realization of knowledge, values and assumptions increasingly based on the meritocracy agenda and the individual role that each social actor must play.