The “American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948), Article XII” affirms that, “Every person has a right to an education, which should be based on the principles of liberty, morality, and human solidarity.” Nevertheless, this is not the case; education is not a right but a privilege. There is a wide gap between the reality and the right to education. The impact that the students, family, and societal rights have on education evidences it. Students from well-off families normally have the choice to acquire a better education compared to those from poor families; because their parents want the best for them, they send them to private schools where they receive better and more quality education than that of public schools. The society believes that one way of education is better than another and it also influences the education that students receive.
In addition, the fact that education is a privilege is demonstrated in lack of choice among students and parents in access to public education. Policymakers usually have a difficult choice to send poor children to schools with wealthier children or give them an education with features of schooling for well-off students. Children are chosen from a pool of students to be enrolled in a charter school rather than a public school. Hochschild and Scovronick (2004) argue that the Americans would like all children to be given a real opportunity to learn and every learning institution to endorse the common good and foster democracy, yet they do not want to make this happen. If education were a right in the US, the poorest child would go to a serious private school or not because he has a brilliant mind and willingness to apply it independently, but because he wants to go to school.