Amending the Education Clause of the Colorado Constitution
Right2Learn believes that everyone deserves an education that affirms their human dignity and worth.
A research group now in its 16th year of existence, we study how a person’s sense of value is generated via their personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate their mind, humanity, and potential.
As an organic expression of our scholarly commitment, we are leading a campaign to amend our state’s 145 year-old education clause and replace it with the language of human dignity. Together, we are fighting to secure a fundamental right to education that centralizes our inherent worth as human beings.
Amending the education clause will open the door for Colorado educators and parents to strengthen our communities, by cultivating spaces that empower students to unlock their potential, and see and consciously care for one another’s humanity. Together, we can realize meaningful change that fulfills the promise of freedom, justice, and peace for current and future generations.
The Education Clause of the Colorado Constitution
As It Is
Since 1876
“The general assembly shall, as soon as practicable, provide for the establishment and maintenance of a thorough and uniform system of free public schools throughout the state, wherein all residents of the state, between the ages of six and twenty-one years, may be educated gratuitously. One or more public schools shall be maintained in each school district within the state, at least three months in each year; any school district failing to have such school shall not be entitled to receive any portion of the school fund for that year.”
As It Could Be
Post CO Legislative Council (November 12th, 2021)
R2L Candidate Amendment
“Education is a fundamental right held by all human persons; it is a means for achieving social equality and necessary for the fulfillment of freedom, justice, and peace. The Colorado General Assembly shall protect, respect, and support this right. Public schools are sanctuaries, spaces where the inherent and inalienable dignity of the human person is inviolate, spaces where compassionate guidance abounds. In its effect, education for human growth and dignity strengthens the individual and community, it fosters agency rather than servitude, and promotes solidarity among all human persons. Furthermore, education enables the actualization of human potential through the arts, sciences, and humanities.
The Colorado General Assembly shall create and maintain public schools as safe and healthy spaces where all human persons will experience their inherent dignity and understand the rights flowing from it. Guided by the principles of integrity and equity, the Colorado General Assembly shall ensure that all public school students have ongoing and diverse opportunities to meaningfully participate in their education. As a paramount requisite of education, meaningful participation fulfills the promise of the public schools as havens for learning and growth, crucibles for inquiry and experimentation, forums for dialogue and dissent.”
