H. Martin Lancaster, President
The North Carolina Community College System
United States of America
September 6, 2001
Strasbourg, France
I was honored when my wonderful friend of many years and a member of your Court, Snejana Botoucharova, invited me to speak to this distinguished and august group. This ranks among the highest honors I have ever been accorded. I have followed with great interest the evolution and growth of your Court and the important place it fills in securing the rights of all Europeans. You have all my best wishes as you continue your important work.
Snejana has given me great latitude in the topic I will address with you. Though I am a lawyer by training and had a significant litigation and appellate practice while at the Bar, I feel that my life’s most important work has been my role as President of the North Carolina Community College System, the primary agency for workforce development in North Carolina. Accordingly, I have chosen to speak to you about education.
It is my sincere belief and the belief of countless others that the right to a basic education is a human right every bit as important as the right to participate in choosing those who will govern us, the right to exercise one’s religion of choice, the right to free expression and free assembly, and the right of a free press. But I would propose to you today that though the right to basic education is critically important, it is an empty right unless it encompasses the right to obtain an education in those job skills necessary to make for a productive life. Knowing how to read, write, and compute is essential, but that knowledge must be extended to useful skills if that education is to improve the condition of our people, their families and their communities.
My remarks today will trace the development of the concept of the right to an education, including skills training, in the United States and in my home state of North Carolina. I will then broaden this idea to Europe and to the world.
The basic legal framework of any country is articulated in its constitution. What the Constitution of the United States says about education is -- nothing, either in its original articles or in the amendments. The closest it comes is the Preamble's call to "promote the general welfare."
Since the national Constitution does not speak explicitly to the right of education, education since the earliest days of the United States has been a responsibility and expectation of the state governments.
The Constitution of North Carolina is and always has been straightforward about the basic right of the citizenry to education. Our state's first constitution following independence called for publicly supported schools and a state university. In 1795, the University of North Carolina authorized by that Constitution became the first publicly supported university in America to open its doors to students. In its current form, our state Constitution explicitly guarantees "a right to the privilege of education." In another section, our constitution says that "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, libraries, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
I want to call particular attention, however, to a section of North Carolina's constitution that would pass unnoticed, if you searched only for the words "schools" or "education." In a section that dates from 1868, North Carolina's declaration of rights states that "we hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness." Those of you familiar with American government will recognize the famous rhetoric from the Declaration of Independence. However, North Carolinians added an element to that familiar list -- "the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor."
It is that phrase that supports my assertion that the right to education is meaningless unless one is given the skills necessary to enjoy the fruits of their labor…indeed, the skills even to engage in productive labor.
Thus, for a very significant part of our history as a state, the people of North Carolina have enjoyed not only the right to education, but the right to higher education that goes beyond the basics to include professional and vocational skills.
I will not pretend to say, of course, that our boast of the right to education has actually guaranteed that all North Carolinians have had access to schools, colleges and universities since our state's founding. It is true that the University of North Carolina holds a place of honor among American public universities as the only one to graduate a student in the 18th century. It is true that in the 19th century, many communities did support public schools for basic education for children, and others benefited from church-sponsored and other private academies. Unfortunately, it is also true that for many years, the right to education applied largely to white males, not equally to women and to people of color.
It required the vision and determination of the governor of North Carolina elected in 1901, Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, to turn the abstract concept of the right to universal public education into an everyday reality.
During Governor Aycock’s four-year term of office, on average, more than one school was built every day, seven days a week. Governor Aycock made sure the schoolhouse doors were opened … literally…all across North Carolina.
North Carolina is still debating, however, just what the right to state-supported education means. Does the physical presence of a school building and teachers fulfill that right? Or is every citizen guaranteed a certain level of services, of money, of quality, regardless of where they live and how much wealth their communities command? North Carolina is wrestling with a massive court case on just that subject now. In the recent case of Leandro vs. the State of North Carolina [346 NC 336 (1997)], the North Carolina Supreme Court was asked to mandate the level of financial support for public education to be provided by the local and state governments to fulfill this right.
If you've been keeping up with my timeline, you may have noticed that while North Carolina has made major educational leaps in our history, we seem to have taken things a step at a time….with lots of distance between! We started with the University. We needed about a century to decide to invest massive public resources in schoolhouses.
And it took another half-century and more to fill in the educational gap that yawned as the industrial age took hold in North Carolina.
As were many southern states, North Carolina was founded on agriculture -- first the wealth of the pine forests of the east, then cotton, then the tremendous rise of tobacco after the Civil War. Textile mills and other industries moved south from New England in the late 19th and early 20th century, drawn by plentiful water power and a growing labor pool of people leaving the farms.
These industries began to demand skilled labor for their machines as well as unskilled workers on the line. And new industries focused on technology and research began to grow around the great universities.
Where could North Carolina's people prepare for the good jobs in those industries? For many years, the answer was nowhere. Basic literacy rates were fairly high, especially compared to those in other southern states. The universities opened the door to professions such as medicine, law, teaching, business, and engineering for the relatively small number of people seeking that level of education. But the farmer, the traditional factory worker and others unskilled in a higher level trade were consigned to working in the fields in production agriculture or in dead-end manufacturing jobs in tobacco, furniture, and textiles.
It was not until 1963 that the general population had made available to it programs and skills development that would prepare every working person for the better paying jobs being created in the 20th century. It required the vision of another great North Carolinian, Governor Terry Sanford, and his partner in education reform and advancement, Dr. Dallas Herring, the Chairman of the State Board of Education, to see that if North Carolina was ever to grow beyond agriculture and traditional industry, it had to make real the philosophy of total education.
I have always thought of Dallas Herring as North Carolina's Thomas Jefferson -- a Renaissance man, absolutely committed to the concept that a free, democratic society must have an educated, productive citizenry.
In those early days, Dr. Herring said, "the only valid philosophy for North Carolina is a philosophy of total education; a belief in the incomparable worth of all human beings, whose claims upon the state are equal before the law and equal before the bar of public opinions; whose talents (however great or however limited or however different from the traditional) the state needs and must develop to the fullest possible degree. That is why the doors of the institutions of North Carolina’s system of community colleges must never be closed to anyone of suitable age who can learn what they teach. We must take people where they are and carry them as far as they can go within the assigned functions of the system."
This became and remains the basic philosophy of the Community College System, which I now lead.
Another time, Dr. Herring said, "The state must be fair. It must be equitable in the provision it makes for the benefit of all its citizens. So let us tear down the fences, not with vengeance or with malice of any kind, but with determination to achieve the goal of total education."
From the beginning, the North Carolina Community College System has had as its mission to fill that great gulf between university education and public education, with the practical learning that prepares a person to work and be a productive member of society. This commitment to benefit every citizen through education compelled North Carolina to build a community college within easy traveling distance, in most cases less than 30 minutes, of every citizen in the state and to create a comprehensive curriculum that includes those basic skills that may have eluded a student in the public schools all the way through the first two years of university education.
Included within these parameters are one- and two-year technical and vocational programs that are considered terminal degrees and designed to specifically prepare a person for a career in a particular field. These may include technician jobs in the healthcare industry, biotechnology, information technology, telecommunications, or even agriculture.
Also included are most of the public service jobs like law enforcement, fire protection, emergency medical care, nursing, and the other health careers except for physicians. Increasingly mature people, as a part of their dedication to lifelong learning, enroll in one or more community college courses to upgrade the level of their skills that they may have received in a community college or university, sometimes many years ago. More than 100,000 students each year take various courses in computer applications to make them more efficient workers or professionals in their chosen field. Approximately 780,000 each year take at least one course at a community college. This translates into one out of every eight adults in the state.
Hundreds of thousands of students take a course every year or so just to keep their minds keen and to keep them abreast of the latest information in their field of work. Retraining aging workers who have grown tired of or bored by their old jobs or whose jobs have been eliminated by technology or industry closings has become an important mission of community colleges.
In addition, any existing industry in North Carolina that wishes to expand by adding new lines of production or new products and any industry that wishes to begin new operations in North Carolina can look to the Community College System to provide the initial training of their entire workforce at no cost to the industry and according to exact specifications of training needs as determined by the industry and provided by the community college.
From their earliest days, North Carolina's community colleges have been controlled by boards of local citizens called Boards of Trustees who determine the worker training needs of their community and set local policy. As President, I do not dictate what programs will be offered at any college. The local leaders make that decision. Then my staff and I provide the resources and technical assistance to help those programs succeed.
North Carolina takes seriously its commitment to the education of the whole person and of every person. This commitment was evident in 1963 when the System was created and when most workers in North Carolina either worked on a farm or in a traditional North Carolina industry.
Due in large part to the role of community colleges, North Carolina’s economy today is more noted for healthcare, biotechnology, information technology, and telecommunications than it is for agriculture, tobacco, furniture and textiles, the mainstays of our economy for the first 200 years of the state’s existence. This evolution was made possible by taking farmers and factory workers from where they were to where they wanted to be, in knowledge-based jobs.
Our community colleges are working hard to help create the next "hot" industry through their exciting and valuable work with the state's energetic entrepreneurs.
You probably get tired of hearing about the "American Dream" -- but I can assure you that it's alive and well, and for many it's about being their own bosses, owning their own businesses, building that better mousetrap. Each of our 58 comprehensive campuses has a Small Business Center, which provides education and counseling for the farmers or factory workers or single mothers who want to take control of their own economic futures. Small Business Centers help aspiring entrepreneurs develop and refine a business plan, identify products or services that are in demand by others, find financing, develop marketing skills, and steer through the daunting bureaucratic maze of licenses, taxes, and environmental and worker safety regulation. In a given year, more than 50,000 people come to us for lessons in entrepreneurship. They bring with them an incredible amount of hope, energy and determination. They leave with the tools to make good decisions -- and we hope to turn their dreams into dollars.
And we don't fool ourselves at the North Carolina Community College System. Dollars matter. Do we talk about the good pay and excellent prospects for our graduates? Of course we do. Do we talk about low tuition, compared to private colleges and for-profit training schools? Of course we do.
But dollars…or francs…or Euros… aren't everything. They can't be. The opportunity to do productive work -- on the farm, on the factory floor, in the lab, in the classroom, in the office, at home -- is a necessary part of a satisfying life. And that's why access to the skills that open up that opportunity is a right--not a privilege. Likewise, the education received in our colleges prepares a person to better exercise the other guaranteed rights, including the very basic right of self-governance.
I have spent most of my time today describing how that right is interpreted and delivered in my own state, because that's what I know best. I am aware, however, that others espouse the same ideas.
In 1948, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, championed by President and Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Article 26 declared that, "(e)veryone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages …technical and professional education shall be made generally available ..." This Article further declared that "(e)ducation shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religions groups, and shall further …the maintenance of peace."
So from the very beginning of the United Nations, the international community dedicated to peace has established as one of its basic goals and stated as a basic right, universal education, including skills training. It was recognized that this is essential for strengthening and respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms and for maintaining the peace.
Ahmed and Carron, in their book, The Challenge of Basic Education for All (1989), stated that basic education is the minimum foundation for a self-sustaining process of learning that is necessary for the achievement of national aspirations. However, basic education alone is not enough. Instead, it must be the basis upon which acquired knowledge and skills can be developed.
So how are we doing, fellow citizens of the world, in answering the challenge? More than two centuries after saying we would provide universal education, North Carolinians are making significant progress in actually doing it, but we can do more. Many members of the European Union have had similar commitments and have had similar successes in preparing their citizens for a new, more vibrant, and more productive economy. The same is true of many of our counterparts in other parts of the world.
However, as this century begins, there are more than 100 million children in the world with no access to primary education. There are almost a billion illiterate adults, two-thirds them female.
That is far too many people to leave behind. Now all must commit themselves to making this commitment in words a commitment in action. Once that commitment is made, the benefits will follow…and those benefits certainly include financial ones.
Lawrence Summers, Secretary of the Treasury in President Clinton's Cabinet and former World Bank executive, has asserted that each year of additional education predicts a 10 to 20 percent rise in annual income.
At a national level, raising the average level of educational attainment by one year for the population in general can result in a three percent rise in gross national product.
Education and skills training do not just provide income for income's sake alone. This knowledge and skills training provides more than just survival, but also a healthy and fulfilling life. As persons rise above mere survival, they are able to live healthier lives and produce healthier and ultimately better educated children. They demand and through their collective efforts are able to have improved water, sanitation, and other public infrastructure.
In Europe, for the production worker and technicians, apprenticeship training has provided the avenue to a successful work life. However, my understanding is that this model is expensive and does not take into account the growing loss of old jobs and long-term relationships between workers and companies in a new global economy. To begin an apprenticeship at age 47 when one’s job is eliminated is not an appealing option.
Your countries, like North Carolina, need a mechanism to retrain aging workers in new skills to make them productive again. I propose that the only way to do this is to create a community college-like system that trains these people for jobs being created today – community colleges controlled by local leaders who decide what programs are necessary to meet the workforce and economic development needs of the community.
You would be wise to look at small business development, too. Just as in North Carolina, many people do not work for wages, but are self-employed in small enterprises. Countries need to become committed, not just to basic education, to skills training, or university education, but to giving the small businessperson, the entrepreneur, the training they need to succeed. The North Carolina model is a good one that can easily be replicated in communities all over the European Union.
Increased education improves income and increases wealth and that in turn contributes to a higher standard of living and better health. But perhaps most important of all, especially from a human rights perspective, education provides citizens with the tools for resisting totalitarian and repressive governments and economic exploitation.
I return to the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
A more contemporary statement of that belief comes from Joel Spring in his book, The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition and Guidelines. Spring makes clear that the right to education must be protected not just to the majority in any country, but the cultural and racial minorities as well. The right to education for indigenous and minority cultures must be a part of the basic framework for universal education.
For children to be able to benefit from education, there must likewise be a commitment to adequate nutrition, healthcare, and housing and the right to protection from exploitative labor and physical abuse. Clearly, these rights in addition to education must be met before a child can exercise the right to education and fully benefit from it.
As we provide to our children and ourselves the right to education and the right to be educated and reeducated throughout our lives, we ensure the exercise of freedom of ideas and expression and the freedom of access to information.
The right of freedom of expression and freedom of access to information are hollow rights indeed if we do not provide through education the ability to articulate those ideas and expressions and provide the knowledge and literacy to access and benefit from the information freely provided. This time, I'll mine some European wisdom, with the words of Epictetus: "Only the educated are free."
I will close today with some thoughts from the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in Thailand under the sponsorship of the United Nations. The preamble to the document that was produced from that conference states better than I ever could the justification for education for all:
"Recalling that education is a fundamental right for all people, women and men, of all ages, throughout the world;
Understanding that education can help ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous and environmentally sound world, while contributing to social, economic and cultural progress, tolerance and international cooperation;
Knowing that education is an indispensable key to though not sufficient condition for, personal and social improvements;
Recognizing that traditional knowledge and indigenous cultural heritage have a value and validity in their own right in a capacity to both define and promote development;
Acknowledging that, overall, the current provision of education is seriously deficient and that it must be made more relevant and qualitatively improved, and universally available;
Recognizing that sound basic education is fundamental to the strengthening of higher levels of education and of scientific and technological literacy and capacity and thus self-reliant development;
Recognizing the necessary to give to present and coming generations an expanded vision of, and a renewed commitment to, basic education to address the scale and complexity of the challenge;
Proclaim the ‘justification of education for all’."
The document goes on to declare that "every person-child, youth and adult-shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet there basic learning needs. These needs comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) and the basic content (such as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning."
That conference had a rousing theme song, the tune of which I do not know nor would I attempt to sing it. However, its lively words are a call to action we all should heed:
Education is the right of all
For you and for me
It’s action time and time is now
Let’s all heed the call
Join us, come with us
We are on our way
To education for all.
Thank you.
RETURN TO TOP OF CURRENT PAGE
Last modified: Friday, May 20, 2011 01:56:22 PM
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.