U of Ideas of General Interest -- June 1999
Contact: Mark Reutter, Business & Law Editor (217) 333-0568; [email protected]
CHURCH AND STATE: Letting state fund religious education bucks consensus, scholar says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in upholding a law allowing some parents to use state vouchers to send their children to religious schools, challenges "a sound constitutional and moral consensus" that goes back to the 1920s, according to a University of Illinois scholar.
"This consensus has played a critical role in advancing understanding among people from very different backgrounds while enabling educational differences to flourish," says Walter Feinberg.
The U. of I. professor of educational policy studies provides a perspective of the religious and cultural controversies surrounding the public schools in his just-published book, "Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference" (Yale University Press).
In 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Oregon law that prohibited parents from sending their children to private and religious schools. "The law was the result of the xenophobic and anti-Catholic climate that followed World War I and was backed by the Ku Klux Klan," Feinberg said.
By supporting the right of parents to educate their children in Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, "the Court upheld the democratic values of freedom of association and religious expression, but did not go so far as to conclude that the state could provide enabling means for this right to be expressed," he said. Parents who wished to send their children to religious schools were obliged to pay the tuition or to receive grants from the schools.
The arguments for rejecting the Pierce consensus by Wisconsin's top court in April are weak, according to Feinberg. "The court mentioned that the vouchers would be used only to support educational programming, but anyone who has spent time in religious schools knows that the distinction between religious programs and educational ones is often hard to discern. In a private school that I observed, an otherwise scientifically accurate account of the development of life on earth was used to illustrate the wisdom contained in the Koran."
Feinberg rejected as misleading the argument that public schools have an unfair "monopoly" over education. In fact, they are fully accountable to the public unlike private schools. "Public schools are governed by local school boards, which are usually democratically elected. They have different academic programs and compete among themselves for teachers and administrators."
To speak of a government monopoly over schools, as some advocates of private-school vouchers do, "is like speaking of a government monopoly over Congress," Feinberg continued. "It makes little sense as long as the accountability to the larger public is adequate. If it is not adequate, then the solution is not to hand funds to private parties to run our schools and make our laws, it is to improve the level of accountability."
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