The right to education as a democratic pillar and as a premise for the free development of personality

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of the notion of education from a legal and philosophical point of view. The author intends to demonstrate that, in our constitutional systems, education represents one of the most decisive factors in achieving complex and unavoidable goals: one of an individual nature (the integral development of the human person), the other of a collective nature (the construction of critical citizenship and, therefore, of an effective democratic system). After reflecting on the contributions on this subject made by some of the most relevant scholars (Jaeger, Freire, Galimberti, etc.) and institutions (UN, UNESCO, the jurisprudence of the Spanish Constitutional Court, etc.), the author analyzes the right to education from the perspective of its legal configuration as a fundamental social right and as an inalienable component of the right to a vital minimum. This allows him to recall that, in the field of human rights, the traditional contrast and hierarchy between civil and political rights and social, cultural, and economic rights has no reason to exist.