Literacy as a Right and Political Act

Sor Juana used literacy—in multiple languages, across multiple genres—as her primary tool of resistance and self-definition. Literacy gave her authority and reach. For children's rights, literacy is not merely academic skill; it is political power. A child who can read can access information, understand their rights, and recognize injustice. A child who can write can document abuse, express their needs, and claim authority over their own story. A child who understands language can negotiate, argue, and refuse manipulation. Yet literacy education globally remains inequitable: girls, poor children, children with disabilities, and marginalized children are systematically denied literacy at rates that track directly to other oppressions. Sor Juana's life insists that this is not accident but mechanism of control. Children's rights frameworks must treat literacy not as a commodity but as an essential foundation for justice. This means ensuring all children—especially the most marginalized—learn to read, write, speak, and think through language. It means teaching critical literacy: how to question texts, how to recognize propaganda, how to use words as tools of liberation. Literacy is both a right in itself and a gateway to all other rights.