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Religious Parents, Secular Schools: A Liberal Defense of an Illiberal Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Shelley Burtt
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Extract

How far ought good liberals to go in accommodating parents with religious objections to the public school curriculum? This article argues that liberal democratic ideals are best honored when we allow parents to structure their children's education in ways compatible with their religious beliefs. Both liberal and democratic theorists, as well as a number of recent judicial decisions, are criticized for opposing such accommodation and for arguing their case against religious parents on a distorted characterization of religious parents' goals. An account of religious parents' concerns that avoids privileging a secular worldview is presented and this account is used to argue for the political benefits of a broad “principle of parental deference.” In conclusion, a new account of where public schools ought properly to draw the line, detailing three exceptional cases in which parental religious concerns ought not to be accommodated, is offered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1994

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References

1. On the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conflicts, see Glenn, Charles Leslie Jr, The Myth of the Common School (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1988), chap. 6;Google ScholarKaestle, Carl, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983);Google ScholarRavitch, Diane, The Great School Wars, New York City 1805–1973: A History of the Public Schools as Battlefield of Social Change (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 3–76.Google Scholar

2. Notable cases include Davis v. Page 385 F. Supp. 395 (1974) (dismissing religious objection to use of audio-visual equipment in classrooms); Moody v. Cronin 484 F. Supp 270 (CD. Ill. 1979) (allowing religious objection to “immodest apparel” in physical education classes); Grove v. Mead School District No. 354 753 F.2d 1528 (9th Cir. 1985) (dismissing religious objection to use of the book The Learning Tree in English curriculum); Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education 827 F.2d 1058 (6th Cir. 1987) (dismissing religious objection to basal reading series); Smith v. Board of School Commissioners 827 F.2d 684 (11th Cir. 1987) (dismissing religious objection to Mobile, Alabama, public school curriculum as teaching “secular humanism”). The Supreme Court has also ruled on the efforts of religious parents to shape the public school curriculum to their liking; see especially Edwards v. Aguillard 107 S. Ct. 2573 (1987) (invalidating Louisiana statute mandating teaching of creationism as a “balance” to evolutionary theory).

3. For a more detailed discussion of the constitutional issues at stake, see Hirschoff, Mary-Michelle Upson, “Parents and the Public School Curriculum: Is There a Right to Have One's Child Excused from Objectionable Instruction?” Southern California Law Review 50 (1987): 871–959;Google ScholarDent, George W. Jr, “Religious Children, Secular Schools,” Southern California Law Review 61 (1988): 863–941;Google ScholarSmith, Norman B., “Constitutional Rights of Students, Their Families, and Teachers in the Public Schools,” Campbell Law Review 10 (1988): 353–409.Google Scholar

4. Both citations are from Mozert v. Hawkins, 1067, 1073.

5. This case is well made in Mozert v. Hawkins (Boggs, J. concurring), 1073–80 and James C. Harkins IV, “Of Textbooks and Tenets: Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education and the Free Exercise of Religion,” The American University Law Review 37 (1988): 985–1012.Google Scholar

6. See Lawrence, Bruce B., Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (New York: Harper and Row, 1989);Google ScholarNeuhaus, Richard John and Cromartie, Michael, eds., Piety and Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World (Washington, D. C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1987).Google Scholar

7. Mozert v. Hawkins, 1062.

8. Ibid., 1060.

9. Ibid., 1071, 1070.

10. Ibid., 1071.

11. My own experience in elementary school where I was regularly excused from biology and health classes at least suggests this possibility. See also the comments on the Mozert case in Moshman, David, Children, Education, and the First Amendment: A Psychological Analysis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

12. Mozert v. Hawkins, 1071.

13. Ibid., 1064.

14. Ibid., 1062.

15. Gutmann, Amy, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 287.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 45.

17. Ibid., p. 117.

18. Ibid., p. 103.

19. Ibid., p. 122.

20. Ibid., p. 30.

21. Gutmann, Amy, “Undemocratic Education,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 82. Cf. Gutmann, , Democratic Education, pp. 29–31,Google Scholar where the same point is made without reference to a specific case.

23. Versions of this argument can be found in Ackerman, Bruce, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), chap. 5;Google Scholar and Feinberg, Joel, “The Child's Right to an Open Future,” in Whose Child? Children's Rights, Parental Authority, and State Power, ed. Aiken, William and LaFollette, Hugh (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1980).Google Scholar

24. A separate issue that I do not address here is what ought to be done when children do not share their parents' concern about the public school curriculum. For a consideration of this circumstance, see Burtt, Shelley, “God at the Schoolhouse Door: Religious Parents and the Public School Curriculum,” forthcoming in Political Order. Nomos 39, eds. Shapiro, Ian and Hardin, Russel, (New York: New York University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

25. See notably William Galston, “Civic Education in the Liberal State,” in Rosenblum, Liberalism and the Moral Life (a direct response to Gutmann); Budziszewski, J., True Tolerance: Liberalism and the Necessity of Judgment (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992), chap. 5Google Scholar (arguing against Ackerman's ideal of a neutral education). Additional considerations are offered in Carter, Stephen L., The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (New York: Basic Books, 1993);Google Scholar and Burtt, “God at the Schoolhouse Door.”

26. For empirical accounts of teaching goals and practices at evangelical Christian schools that support the following points, see Parsons, Paul F., Inside America's Christian Schools (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987);Google ScholarRose, Susan D., Keeping Them Out of the Hands of Satan: Evangelical Schooling in America (New York: Routledge, 1988);Google Scholar and Wagner, Melinda Bollar, God's Schools: Choice and Compromise in American Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

27. Mozert v. Hawkins, 1062.

28. This claim is canvassed in Gutmann, “Undemocratic Education”; and Richard Ameson and Ian Shapiro, “Democratic Paternalism and Religious Freedom: A Critique of Wisconsin v. Yoder,” forthcoming in Political Order, eds. Shapiro and Hardin.

29. Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 139.Google Scholar

30. Triumphalism and its alternatives are discussed in Neuhaus, Richard John, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Public Company, 1986), chap. 7.Google Scholar

31. For a contrasting view, see Franklin, Bob, ed. The Rights of Children (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986), chap. 8.Google Scholar