The United Nations wants its member states, mostly dictatorships and repressive regimes, to clamp down hard on educational freedom under the guise of “human rights.” Concerned that students in private schools around the world are not receiving sufficient doses of globalist indoctrination prescribed by various global agreements, the dictator-dominated UN “Human Rights Council” passed a resolution this month calling on governments worldwide to “monitor” and “regulate” non-government education. Governments and dictators should also impose “standards” on private schools, the UN bureaucrats and government representatives said in the deeply controversial document.
Incredibly, the resolution even speaks of “protecting education from commercialization.” What it really means, of course, is protecting government-run monopoly “education” from competition by superior providers. After all, why would parents spend money on a private school if the tax-funded “education” provided by government was just as good or better? Obviously they would not. So what the UN pseudo-human rights bureaucracy is really saying is governments must prevent parents from choosing better alternatives. Of course, following the prescriptions outlined by Karl Marx, some members of the UN body actually ban any forms of non-government-run education already.
The disgraced UN council, composed of some of the most ruthless Communist and Islamist autocrats on Earth, regularly condemns freer nations — often for upholding actual rights instead of bogus UN-defined privileges mischaracterized as “human rights.” Continuing with its long tradition, the body urged governments to “fulfil the right to education” by, among other schemes, “putting in place a regulatory framework guided by international human rights obligations for education providers that establishes, inter alia, minimum norms and standards for the creation and operation of educational institutions.”
It was not immediately clear what sort of “standards” and “norms” the UN outfit had in mind — Common Core-style dumbing down and other UNESCO-linked demands, perhaps? Nor was it clear how usurping control over private and alternative schools to conform with purported “international human rights obligations” would contribute to a better education. In fact, proper education does not seem to be the goal at all, as made clear by a growing deluge of UN documents, resolutions, and other schemes demanding that schools worldwide indoctrinate children into new “values,” “attitudes,” “beliefs,” “sustainability,” and “global citizenship.”
The latest UN resolution on education, approved in Geneva on July 1, also calls for governments and dictators to start “monitoring private education providers” and “holding accountable those whose practices have a negative impact on the enjoyment of the right to education.” Setting aside the fact that education is a service and a privilege, not a right — real rights, by definition, mean freedom from coercion, not compulsory “services” from government — the resolution did not make clear what sorts of “practices” the UN and its members believe have a “negative impact” on “the enjoyment of the right to education.”
Also in the resolution was a call for governments to use tax funds to support “research” (read: biased “studies” touting government education) and “awareness-raising activities” (read: propaganda touting government education) on the issue. Supposedly, the “research” and “awareness” should help “better understand the wide-ranging impact of the commercialization of education on the enjoyment of the right to education.” Of course, a mountain of research on the topic is already available, and it shows that government-run schools exist to serve government — and that private schools, homeschooling, and other alternatives are drastically superior to “public” education, generally at a fraction of the cost.
The UN also “calls upon all relevant stakeholders [governments, the UN, government-funded ‘civil society’ groups, regional outfits such as the European Union, etc] to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda fosters the universal realization of the right to education, including by establishing education targets that are specific, measurable, realistic and relevant,” the resolution said. The document did not specify what sort of “education targets” it had in mind. But based on previous UN education schemes, indoctrination targets would have been a better term to describe the agenda.
Indeed, in the same resolution, the UN “Human Rights” Council applauded another UN organ, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has been at the forefront of pushing the extreme ideologies of globalism and statism through schools worldwide. “The UNESCO-led UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which began in 2005, was explicitly intended to instill in every human being ‘the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to shape a sustainable future,’” UNESCO chief Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian communist, boasted in a recent column. Read that again.
“What is needed now is a global movement, with every student in every country learning about sustainable development from well-trained teachers, equipped with the appropriate curricula and resources,” Bokova continued, with “sustainable development” meaning a radical redesign of human society toward collectivism, central planning, humanism, population control, and global governance. In the same piece, Bokova bragged that her agency, which she regularly boasts promotes global humanism, was also “promoting climate-change education in schools.”
As long as there are private schools outside the control of UN member governments and dictators, there will always be children whose “attitudes and values” are not shaped by the accelerating indoctrination efforts. Hence, under the guise of “human rights,” many of the UN’s most totalitarian and brutal member regimes demanded in the resolution that private schools be brought under government control. If private education negatively affects the “human right to education,” though, do privately owned grocery stores negatively affect the “human right to food”? Murderous communist dictator Raul Castro, whose regime sits on the UN “Human Rights” Council behind the resolution, may think so. But for anyone who appreciates liberty and prosperity, the answer is obvious.
If the collection of mass-murderers and tyrants on the UN council was not itself enough evidence of the UN’s warped view of “human rights,” a brief examination of its scheming provides plenty more. Indeed, the UN’s “human rights” are diametrically opposed to the unalienable, God-given rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, or even traditional Western notions of human rights. Under the UN’s version of human rights, “rights” come not from God, but from governments, treaties, and international organizations. They can also be restricted or abolished by government at will under virtually any pretext, as the UN’s own “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” openly admits. And in no case may those alleged “rights” be used contrary to the “purposes and principles” of the UN, according to Article 29. In other words, you have no rights under UN “human rights.”
But it’s even worse than that. Just this month, after celebrating as a hero a homosexual activist most infamous for raping underage boys, UN boss Ban Ki Moon claimed the U.S. Supreme Court’s attack on marriage, tradition, virtually every religion, states’ rights, self-government, and the U.S. Constitution was a “great step forward for human rights.” Other recent attacks on freedom under the guise of promoting “human rights” have included trying to criminalize free speech, attacking Britain for not providing large enough houses for welfare recipients, demanding more gun control in America, calling for parents to be jailed for smacking their children, and much more. Meanwhile, the UN continues to be embroiled in scandals, including widespread and systematic rape of young children by its “peacekeeping” forces.
Ironically, though, the UN resolution demanding government control over all forms of education would appear to violate the UN’s own “Universal Declaration of [pseudo-] Human Rights.” For example, that document clearly states in Article 26 that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” If parents have the right to choose what kind of education their children will receive, how can the UN “human rights” apparatus demand that governments decide what kind of education private schools of parents’ choosing will provide to children? The same article in the UN declaration also states that education “shall further the activities of the United Nations.”
While the UN resolution passed almost entirely unnoticed in the world press, it did have some supporters other than the mostly autocratic regimes on the UN “Human Rights” Council. A massive coalition of Astroturf “education” groups — some of which openly say they want government school to be made compulsory for all — celebrated the measure, too. “The rapid, unregulated growth of private providers of education is already creating — and enabling — violations of the right to education, threatening to erase the last 50 years of progress in access to education,” argued Camilla Croso with the Global Campaign for Education in a statement. “This resolution shows that States have realized that they must act now to regulate such providers — before it is too late.”
In the real world, however, the expansion of educational liberty and the diminishing role of government schools in some areas of the world ought to be celebrated. The UN and its member governments around the world have big plans to indoctrinate your children into becoming “green” and “global” citizens — and they openly boast about it. It is time for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN dictators club, defund it, and get the federal government out of aaalll education once and for all.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].
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