Education Law - An Overview

Education Law takes care of any legal issues around education. There are many areas of education where law dictates how things work. Here we take a brief look at some areas that are covered by education law.
EMPLOYMENT
Just like any other business anyone who works for an educational institution, such as a school, college or university, must act and be treated according to the normal employment laws.
EUROPEAN LAW
There are European laws that dictate certain areas of education law. This is likely to increase in the near future, with the Lisbon Treaty going through. This means that many of the education laws are likely to be uniform across Europe.
INSTITUTION RESPONSIBILITIES
There are certain responsibilities set out by law that educational institutions must abide by. They have a duty to teach certain things (depending on the type of institution) and sometimes they have certain procedures which they must follow. For example secondary schools must teach certain subject, such as English, Maths and Science.
TRAINING
Anyone working in education must be trained sufficiently to fulfil their specific role. School teachers have to have formal training, both to make sure they have the skills to teach children and to make sure they know their subject areas sufficiently.
CHILD CARE
Educational institutions have a duty of care. Those looking after children must be deemed fit to take on such a role. This can include background checks so everything possible is done to make sure children are safe in their care.
SPECIAL NEEDS
Institutions have a legal obligation to meet the needs of those with special needs to make sure that they are given the same opportunities as others.
HEALTH & SAFETY
There are health and safety guidelines that must be followed. Premises must be deemed safe for purpose. Compensation might be payable if an institution is found to be liable for an injury that has occurred while the victim was at the premises.
DISCRIMINATION
Students (and teachers) cannot be discriminated against for any reason. Everyone must be treated equally irrespective of gender, age, race, sexuality or religion.
FINANCE & FUNDING
Certain rules apply as to how different institutions can acquire funding. For example, states schools have to be free for all. Different regulations apply to state and private institutions, as they do depending on what type of institution they are (e.g. schools and universities are treated differently).
STUDENT ADMISSION
This is an area that has been much debated recently. Rules that decide who has the right to attend a specific school are set out by law, something that is based on the geographical areas in which they live. Many parents have been known to dispute these decisions.
STUDENTS TAKING ACTION AGAINST EACH OTHER
Although rare, there are some occasions where students have taken legal action against each other using education law solicitors, with the most common reason being that they have been bullied by the student in question.
DISCIPLINE
There are laws stating forms of discipline that can be carried out. In the past physical punishment was legal but this is no longer the case. There can also be disputes where children have been excluded from school.
POSSESSION OF SUBSTANCES
Certain substances are banned by law from premises. Illegal drugs are obviously not allowed, but cigarettes and alcohol are also not deemed acceptable at certain premises. This mostly applies to schools.
SEARCHING
Students are allowed to be searched on occasions but only when there is sufficient suspicion that they have broken rules. This can include searching pocket, bags and lockers.

Legalism Creates Lawbreakers, Not Resourceful Citizens

Rather than educating and cultivating the people, or allowing the "hawkers" of particular theories to create particular desires to indoctrinate the people the sage ruler trusts the people's ability if they are provided with the two concerns of government: food and health. Hawkers, scholars representing themselves as having true knowledge of the Way, are to be kept "at bay," seemingly from both the people and the ruler. In other chapters, the sage ruler of the Daoist state places himself below the common people so that they uphold him, yet do not find him burdensome; he puts his concern behind that of the people so that their way is not blocked, and they regard him as harmless. In his refusal to contend, no one contends with him. This model of governing places authority in the ruler's potential or possibility, which allows space for the heart of the people and so unites the sage ruler and the people. As Hans-Georg Moeller writes, "The sage-ruler takes on the place of emptiness or non-presence while Shoes Online the people take on the place of fullness or presence". The Daodejing imagines an agrarian Utopia where the farmers' bellies are full and they need not struggle.

The Daodejing also addresses the deformities of Legalism, offering a wonderful tautology: that the more laws, the more lawbreakers. Still, more than through any particular skirmish, it responds to Legalism through its radical emphasis on the failure of human striving, defining, and controlling. As soon as humans know beauty, they know ugliness, for being and non-being entail each other. As much as a Legalist might want the laws to rule, and as much as a Confucian might want ren to be cultivated, their privileged concept entails the opposite; and the possibility of the opposition, however repressed, never disappears. Eighty-one chapters on diversity in themselves are a response to those seeking stability. How might the refusal of Cheap Shoes struggle and control, deliberation, and persuasion be useful to a ruler How are the various lacks, binaries, and tautologies of Daoism persuasive Unlike the reverence for tradition and self-cultivation that the Analects requires of the ruler, unlike Legalism's sterile set of laws, the Daodejing offers a corrective vision of how a state might work. Rather than ask for a leader's constant, striving presence committed to a particular virtue, the vision is persuasive in that it argues for opening up possibilities by refusing Confucian nostalgia and Legalism's external controls. In its offering of future potentials, the Daodejing engages Otherness. It opens up the possibility of difference in the natural order and, in doing so, recognizes the ruler and the people as capable of finding their way through time. Its optimism about human potential contrasts with its caustic attack on Confucian tradition, simply "hawks" "veneer." Legalism, on the other hand, creates lawbreakers, not resourceful citizens.

The Daodejing's innate ambiguities and openness acknowledge the gulf between human beings and demonstrate the natural bridging that humans do through interpretation. Perhaps the Daodejing does not offer a handbook to an emperor, but it offers a corrective response to the rules and strivings toward stability of Confucianism and Legalism. It does this in its acknowledgment of diverse meaning and of the human willingness to interpret and discuss paradox and radical ambiguity. Further, the Daodejing offers more than the tolerance of diversity; after all, tolerance, too much like pity, comes from a place of privilege. One can tolerate only if one has the choice not to tolerate, not to engage, not to acknowledge. Instead, the Daodejing aims at radical equality and openness to organic change and possibility: the high might be low; what is sound harmonizes with silence. The strivings of persuasion are not significant in a world of constant shifts, gaps, and absences. What difference is there between yes and no? And paradoxically implied in this last question, what point is there to naming, dialogue, or persuasion