Education as a Human and a Citizenship Right - Parents' Rights, Children's Rights, or ... ? The Necessity of Historical Contextualization

This paper serves as an introduction to the three following papers by Roth, Wahlstrom, and Quennerstedt, analyzing the contextual background to the different treaties-the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child-and focusing on how the relations between parents' rights and children's rights in the matter of education were shaped during the various drafting stages. The paper forms part of a project that intends to study the meaning and consequences of the increased tendency to view education from a perspective of rights. More specifically, the project aims to focus on the implications of parental rights and to analyze potential contradictions between parents' and children's rights in education.