This paper analyses the complex process of the social production of exclusion and its effects on the right to education. The author describes and interprets three dynamics that interfere in the enforcement of this right in Latin American and the Caribbean: structural poverty and inequity; sectorization and differentiation of the national systems of education; and the meaning of the right to education in a political culture that disdains human rights and reduces the value of schooling to its effects on the competition for the best positions in the labor market. The text aims to redefine the radicality of the right to education as a fundamental human right, as the bedrock on which fairer and more equal societies can be built.
Right to education; Social and educational exclusion; Human rights and education; Educational policy in Latin America; National educational systems