The Right to Education and the Spirit of Bandung: Critical Reflections

This article is a reflection on the social processes that had taken place sixty years after the 1955 unprecedented historical meeting in Bandung organized by the nations and peoples of Africa and Asia to declare their right to reclaim their independence, which subsequently took place over several decades until the 1990s. But Bandung claimed more than regaining political independence to the extent that this had to be complemented by the reconstruction of the concerned societies, economically, socially and culturally. The right to education is a fundamental human right, which is inseparable from economic development and people’s aspirations to a full and a wholly authentic democracy. Even in the real existing world governed by capitalism, development must be holistic as economic progress must mean progress of society and individuals, and access to, and the effective exercise of, all individual and collective rights, and in all domains of social existence, including education.