result. It is excerpted in Box 6 below, in the section which deals with the role of education in preventing violence. 4. Adaptability What children should learn at school and how the learning process should be organized is the source of never-ending challenge and change. The usual approach is to review the contents and process of learning from the viewpoint of the child as future adult, while the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that the best interests of the child be given priority. The choice in the Convention to refer to the best interests of the individual child highlights the need for the educational system to become and remain adaptable. The challenge is immense – the system of education is required to adapt to each individual child, against the historical heritage of excluding all the children who were deemed not to be able to adapt to the system of education as it was. The way in which children perceive their own community and the world at large is influenced by the presence and absence of particular people and phenomena within the system of education. Children with disabilities are often segregated into separate schools or denied education altogether, and also absent from school books. Differently, the head of state and/or government tends to be very much present in schools – each classroom may have his photograph and textbooks may devote considerable attention to his professional or private life. Neighbouring countries may be portrayed in a positive or negative life. Amongst the children themselves, many may be excluded from formal schooling. Domestic servants, which are prevalent throughout Africa and in much of Asia, are likely not be deemed school-worthy and school-going children will not perceive them as school-children but as servants. Moreover, an unusual term has been forged to differentiate between children by classifying some as ‘educable,’ excluding others. The criterion is fluid – children who may be classified as ‘noneducable’ may simply not understand the language in which they are addressed. Children with learning difficulties may be classified as ‘un-educable’ and prevented from learning rather than being helped to learn. The historical heritage of education has encompassed many different criteria and methods of exclusion. As mentioned above in the section on access to education, some of this exclusion has followed stereotyped features attributed to people who are female, or non-white, or foreigners, or indigenous. Another track, not much different substantively, has followed a division of humanity into able and disabled, excluding those classified as disabled from education. 4.1 Children with disabilities Conceptually the most far-reaching judicial interpretations of the meaning of the right to education have dealt with children with disabilities. It is indeed the best illustration of the strength and vigour of the notion of the rights of the child to see courts in a variety of countries affirming that education has to be adapted to each child rather than forcing children to adapt to whatever schooling has been designed for them. The requirement upon schools to adapt to learners with special needs has been subjected to a great deal of litigation. The Right to Education Primers No. 3 31