Abstract: According to the United Nations, education is a right to which all human beings are entitled. Since 2000, the UN has been promoting the Millennium Development Goal to achieve free universal primary education for all, regardless of gender, by 2015. If the UN is correct to suggest that education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights, then there is an important need to question the role that governments should play to support the institutional reforms necessary to achieve basic primary education for all. Moreover, there is an important need to question the role all individuals should play to ensure that the institutional structure dedicated to the provision of basic primary education is set up not only to provide children with access to a vague notion of education but to a notion of basic education that can provide children with the freedom to do something with that education once they have obtained it. Read a response to this article Tarc, P. (2013). Mobilizations of “Education as a Human Right in the 21st Century”: What Larger Conditions and Logic Are in Play? Democracy & Education, 21(1). Article 9. Available online at http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol21/iss1/9. Submit your own response to this article Submit online at democracyeducationjournal.org/home Human rights advocates claim that every child has a right to education. This claim is based primarily on two premises. First, rights advocates endorse the right to education because they believe that if children receive basic primary education, they will likely be literate and numerate and will have the basic social and life skills necessary to secure a job, to be an active member of a peaceful community, and to have a fulfilling life. Second, rights advocates recognize that, despite this recognition of education as a right by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for example, many children fail to benefit from even basic primary education. This gap between the positive recognition of the right to education and the negative reality facing many children has led rights advocates to conclude that education must be considered a human rights issue on par with the right to food or the right to freedom. And as such, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to achieve universal primary education by 2015 was established to fight for the right for all children everywhere, regardless of gender, to a complete course of basic primary schooling. This is a goal that the 2010 Education for All report clearly indicates has achieved some progress (Watkins, 2010). According to this report, the number of children out of school has dropped by 33 million worldwide since 1999, the gender gap is narrowing in many countries, and the adult literacy rate has increased (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2012). Nevertheless, in 2009 a total of 67 million children of primary school age still do not (or cannot) attend school (Naidoo, Saihjee, & Motivans, 2011; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2005; Watkins, 2010). The EFA team projects this number to remain unacceptably high at around 56 million by 2015 if the current status quo is maintained. Moreover, there are many who would suggest that while education is certainly important for children, it is not something that should necessarily be free, compulsory, public, or perhaps even a justified entitlement (e.g., Farson, 1974; Holt, 1964, 1967, 1974; Narveson, 2001, 2002; Purdy, 1992; O’Neill, 1988). This Sharon E. Lee is a lecturer in the department of political science and contemporary studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She teaches courses in social and political theory, social foundations of education, children’s rights, and theories of justice. Her research focuses on moral, social, and political philosophy especially as it relates to social institutions like education and to theories of justice and agency. She holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Waterloo.