It has been 100 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark parental-rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. In Pierce, the Court invalidated an Oregon law requiring parents to educate their children in public schools. “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only,” the Court held. “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” That right includes the parents’ right to “direct the upbringing and education of [their] children” by educating them in private schools.
In the decades leading to Pierce, battles over parents’ right to carry out this duty by deciding how, where, and what their children would be taught were waged on two fronts: The first front centered on public schools and, specifically, parents’ demands for accommodations to and exemptions from curricular material and school policies that they found objectionable on religious grounds. The second front focused on parents’ ability to choose private, religious schools for their children, and their demands that the state subsidize those choices. Public school proponents believed — and vehemently argued — that public school accommodation and private school subsidization would undermine the government’s ability to form good citizens through the medium of public schools.
Comments