Affirming the Need to Grow Up

There is no fundamental right to education in the United States (Rodriguez, 1973), but there is a movement to force the federal courts to affirm one (Robinson, 2019). Advocates seek to push federal law beyond its equal protection of the child’s access to state-regulated schooling toward a full-fledged right to an educational minimum that facilitates the person’s incorporation into American society. Arguments for the right vary, but their common aim is to construe education as a “rights multiplier,” i.e., a positive fortifier of political rights like self-government and liberty. If one can prove that some educational minimum is a prerequisite without which the very idea of a free and orderly society is moot, then one can demand that the federal government guarantee it. This paper critiques the “rights-multiplier” theory for understating how the basic need that education addresses – the individual’s need for incorporation into democratic society, the need to grow up – is multifaceted and lifelong.