Is literacy a right?
Sure. Why not?
Is there a right for the state to do everything possible to ensure that a student is compelled to accept literacy? No.
What do you need for literacy?
Somebody to teach you how to read, something to read. Desks? No. Nice, clean facilities? No.
The new school near where I lived opened in 2006; summer 2007 it was declared a failing school. Every student got a computer, great Internet access, videoconferencing in every room, full set of AP biology/chemistry/physics/environmental science labs, new everything. Four years later it was still a failing school, they hadn't had an AP science class since they opened, and the lab equipment was trashed and a few classrooms had fire damage.
Last year I went to a middle school built in the '50s and updated in the early '70s that had a leaky gym roof and a color scheme that would make happy, smiling people morbidly depressed. It was a top ranked magnet school.
The school is the students. Teachers can help or hurt, but seldom actively hurt.
Moreover, often the facilities are a consequence and not the cause of the problems. Did they have enough desks to start with? Because I know some students find it funny and empowering to destroy things. I've "lost" desks because students made them unusable; I've seen bathrooms rendered filthy on purpose by students who want to "get back" and society because they have crappy parents or because they have merely adequate living conditions. 0
You can't force a kid to learn. You can do everything to help those who want to; you can compel those who are only mildly averse to the idea. You can wheedle and cajole some, you can punish others or threaten them with low-pay and a crappy life. But ultimately, if a kid refuses to learn, he won't. I've seen them refuse to learn because they were getting back at parents, because they refused "white" learning and didn't want to be seen as a traitor to their community; because they rejected ungodly learning; or because they wanted to show that they were properly defiant or because the voices in their head said not to learn; or they wanted to drop out because they wanted that awesome minimum-wage job. Others saw no point in learning for months because they knew that on their 18th birthday they'd be moving out from home and needed to get a job to fund their apt. and new awesome lifestyle.
Their parents, however, very often said it was the teacher's job to make sure that these kids learned. The sane parents of those kids just looked on at the train wreck and knew where to place the blame.
Then there are the kids who are just screwed. The kid whose parents divorced when she was 14, whose mother/guardian died when she was 15, whose father abandoned her 3 months later and whose aunts and uncles don't want her as she bounces from Waco to Houston to Dallas to Killeen to Houston in 3 years. The kid who transfers to Texas from Idaho and whose mother pulled him out of school at age 10 and who now, with his father at age 16, was "homeschooled" and stuck at a 3rd-grade reading level--and whose teachers are now called "failures" when he fails the 10th-grade standardized test.
It's like saying you have a fundamental right to free speech. But if you're mute, you don't have a right to have the government make you able to speak, and if you don't want to speak the government isn't compelled to speak for you or make you speak.
On the other hand, if you can blame somebody else and say you're the victim, that's all the rage.
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tRump
