rights violation infrequently. The focus on indigenous and minority rights has prioritized the language of instruction, which often makes education unacceptable if the language is foreign to young children (and also often to the teacher). The prohibition of corporal punishment has transformed school discipline in many countries further broadening the criteria of acceptability. The emergence of children themselves as actors vindicating their right to education and rights in education promises to endow the notion of acceptability with their vision of how their rights should be interpreted and applied. • Adaptability has been best conceptualized through the many court cases addressing the right to education of children with disabilities. Domestic courts have uniformly held that schools ought to adapt to children, following the thrust of the idea of the best interests of each child in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This reconceptualization has implicitly faulted the heritage of forcing children to adapt to whatever schools may have been made available to them; the school effectively had a right to reject a child who did not fit or could not adapt. Moreover, a conceptual dissociation between ‘school’ and ‘education’ has taken place in attempts to provide education to imprisoned or working children. They can seldom be taken to school and thus education has to be taken to wherever they are. The inherent balance between rights and duties, freedoms and responsibilities orientates law in general and thus also human rights law. Children cannot have a right to free education unless the government is able to raise revenue, which means that companies and individuals have to pay tax. Unless parents accept that their children have a right to education, education will not be compulsory. Why law is important becomes clear if one considers how education can be provided: it can be delivered by religious institutions, with an implicit (or explicit) purpose of proselytizing; it can be perceived as a gift by a country’s political leaders or aid donors. Such models do not make education sustainable (proselytizing is often resisted, a gift can always be taken away) while beneficiaries are not treated as subjects of rights but rather as objects of charity, aid or political patronage. Legal underpinning of education is routinely absent from such models. There is no legal right to aid nor a legal obligation to provide it. As one purpose of law is to ensure security and predictability, it defines who is entitled to what, who is obliged to do what, and what happens if the anticipated behaviour does not ensue so as to correct departures by any actor (including the government) from the required conduct. Domestic law on education routinely defines education as compulsory for children aged 6–15, and lays down the corollary obligation of the government to make education available and free of charge. Otherwise, education would be compulsory only in theory. Children have a duty to attend school because education is defined as a public good. It is imposed upon children so as to enable them to become economically self-sustaining, to enable them to understand the country’s language, past and future, to create an understanding of the chosen domestic ideology, religion or political doctrine. It should also teach children about human rights, but this is seldom translated into practice. Some Right to Education Primers No. 3 15