A/HRC/11/8 page 7 15. While the transfer of proven practices from one State to another is neither always feasible nor always appropriate, the transmission of ideas and experiences across international borders should permeate, inform and enrich previously entrenched practices.3 It is in this spirit that the present report should be read. III. CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES AND ASSUMPTIONS A. Role of prisons v. “correctional” education v. the right to education 16. Education is deeply embedded in its location and context, and cannot be isolated from it. The role of education in places of detention must therefore be examined against the broader objectives of penal systems, which are inherently institutions of coercion, serving a set of complex and mutually conflicting objectives. They reflect, to differing degrees, prevailing societal calls for punishment, deterrence, retribution and/or rehabilitation - all carrying ambiguous connotations - and a managerial focus on resource management and security. Frequently aimed at the “criminality” of those detained, they demonstrate a concomitant reluctance to recognize their humanity, their potential and their human rights. 17. Where education is provided, this reluctance has been reflected in considerable confusion surrounding its nature and objectives, and in an oscillation between one and/or a combination of a number of, influential target driven educational models and practices. For the purposes of the present report, these are called the “medical”, “cognitive deficient” or “opportunistic” models. Briefly, the medical model tends to focus on and treat the perceived psychological deficiencies of the criminal; the cognitive deficiency model on promoting moral development; and the opportunistic model on linking learning with training for employment.9 18. Such models and resultant educational practice certainly contain some positive features. Estranged from them all, however, is the concept of the human dignity of all persons, a concept unambiguously and frequently referred to in various international, regional and domestic instruments. Human dignity, core to human rights, implies respect for the individual, in his actuality and also in his potential. As education is uniquely and pre-eminently concerned with learning, fulfilling potential and development, it should be a fundamental concern of education in detention,10 not simply a utilitarian add-on should resources allow it. It should be aimed at the full development of the whole person requiring, among other things, prisoner access to formal and informal education, literacy programmes, basic education, vocational training, creative, religious and cultural activities, physical education and sport, social education, higher education and library facilities.11 9 See also Collins M., “Shades of the prison house: adult literacy and the correctional ethos”, in Schooling in a Total Institution, (1995). 10 See also Morin, L., “Prison education: the need for a declaration of basic principles for the treatment of prisoners”, Yearbook of Correctional Education (1989), and Muntingh L., “Prisons in South Africa’s constitutional democracy”, CSVR, October 2007. 11 Economic and Social Council resolution E/1990/69, art. 3 (b).