The enduring paradox of public education funding: State control versus ideological neutrality

“ Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. ”

“ But the reaction of political status upon the individual has another aspect no less important than this. Participation in the organized life of the community is a necessary part of that education which modern opinion requires for every human being. There are now living very few of those frantic Tories who believe that it is harmful to develop the minds of the poor, and every civilized State regards public education as one of its ordinary duties. ”

“ Whilst it is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people, and whilst it is evident that the means of diffusing and improving useful knowledge form so small a proportion of the expenditures for national purposes, I can not presume it to be unseasonable to invite your attention to the advantages of superadding to the means of education provided by the several States a seminary of learning instituted by the National Legislature within the limits of their exclusive jurisdiction, the expense of which might be defrayed or reimbursed out of the vacant grounds which have accrued to the nation within those limits.
Such an institution, though local in its legal character, would be universal in its beneficial effects. ”

“ Each citizen of a state promises, in the original compact, that he will promote, as far as lies in his power, all the conditions of the possibility of the state; hence, also, the condition just mentioned. This he can best do by educating children who may grow up to realize various ends of reason. The state has the right to make this education of children a condition of the state-compact, and thus education becomes an external, legal obligation, which the parents owe to the state. ”

“ Americans care about the quality of the secular education available to their children. They have considered high quality education to be an indispensable ingredient for achieving the kind of nation, and the kind of citizenry, that they have desired to create. Considering this attitude, the continued willingness to rely on private school systems, including parochial systems, strongly suggests that a wide segment of informed opinion, legislative and otherwise, has found that those schools do an acceptable job of providing secular education to their students. ”

“ It is the duty of the parent, the duty of the friend; but, above all, it is the duty of the public. This duty arises from the relations of men in every civilized state; but in a popular government it becomes a necessity. The people are the source of power—the sovereign. And is it more important in a monarchy than in a republic that the ruler be intelligent, virtuous, and in all respects qualified for his duties?
The institution here set up is an essential part of our system of public instruction, and, as such, it claims the public favor, sympathy and support. ”

“ If Catholics or Methodists or Episcopalians or Baptists can give a better and a cheaper education, we see no reason why the state should interfere with those who choose to avail themselves of it. Let the state set up any standard it may choose, or make it obligatory; Catholics will cheerfully come up to it, no matter how high it may be, provided equal rights are allowed to all. The government has a right to demand that its voters shall possess knowledge. It has no right to say how or where they shall acquire knowledge. The government is bound by public policy to promote education. ”

“ Some seem to imagine that their interest in schools, and of course their moral obligation to support them, ceases with the education of their own children. This is a great error. The public has no right to levy a tax for the education of any particular child, or family of children; but its right of taxation commences when the education or plan of education is universal, and ceases whenever the plan is limited, or the operations of the system are circumscribed.
No man can be taxed properly because he has children of his own to educate ”

“ Having recognized the value of educated citizens and assumed the task of educating them, the States now before us assert a right to provide for the secular education of children whether they attend public schools or choose to enter private institutions, even when those institutions are church-related. The Federal Government also asserts that it is entitled, where requested, to contribute to the cost of secular education by furnishing buildings and facilities to all institutions of higher learning, public and private alike. ”

“ Since the State has determined that the secular education provided in sectarian schools serves the legitimate state interest in the education of its citizens, it is contended that state aid solely to the secular education function does not involve the State in aid to religion. ”

“ No public money shall ever be appropriated for the support of any sectarian or denominational school, or any school not under the exclusive control of the officers of the public schools, nor shall any sectarian or denominational doctrine be taught, or instruction thereon be permitted directly or indirectly, in any of the common schools of this State. ”

“ Neither the Legislature, nor any county, city and county, township, school district, or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation, or pay from any public fund whatever, or grant anything to or in aid of any religious sect, church, creed, or sectarian purpose, or help to support or sustain any school, college, university, hospital, or other institution controlled by any religious creed, church, or sectarian denomination whatever ”

“ Or if a statute furthers both secular and religious ends by means unnecessary to the effectuation of the secular ends alone where the same secular ends could equally be attained by means which do not have consequences for promotion of religion-the statute cannot stand. A State may not endow a church although that church might inculcate in its parishioners moral concepts deemed to make them better citizens, because the very raison d'e tre of a church, as opposed to any other school of civilly serviceable morals, is the predication of religious doctrine. ”

“ To ask what interest, what objective, legislation serves, of course, is not to psychoanalyze its legislators, but to examine the necessary effects of what they have enacted. If the primary end achieved by a form of regulation is the affirmation or promotion of religious doctrine-primary, in the sense that all secular ends which it purportedly serves are derivative from, not wholly independent of, the advancement of religion-the regulation is beyond the power of the state. ”

“ Thus no funds or books are furnished to parochial schools, and the financial benefit is to parents and children, not be schools. [6] Perhaps free books make it more likely that some children choose to attend a sectarian school, but that was true of the state-paid bus fares in Everson and does not alone demonstrate an unconstitutional degree of support for a religious institution.
Of course books are different from buses. Most bus rides have no inherent religious significance, while religious books are common. ”

“ But the New Jersey legislature has decided that a public purpose will be served by using tax raised funds to pay the bus fares of all school children, including those who attend parochial schools. The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals has reached the same conclusion. The fact that a state law, passed to satisfy a public need, coincides with the personal desires of the individuals most directly affected is certainly an inadequate reason for us to say that a legislature has erroneously appraised the public need. ”

“ In 1930 the use of public funds to furnish nonsectarian textbooks to pupils in parochial schools of Louisiana was sustained, [37] and in 1947, as we have seen, the case of public funds for the transportation of pupils attending such schools in New Jersey. [38] In the former of these cases the Court cited the State's interest in secular education even when conducted in religious schools; in the latter its concern for the safety of school children on the highways; and the National School Lunch Act, [39] which aids all school children attending tax-exempt schools can be similarly justified. ”

“ A history class, a literature class, or a science class in a parochial school is not a separate institute; it is part of the organic whole which the State subsidizes. The funds are used in these cases to pay or help pay the salaries of teachers in parochial schools; and the presence of teachers is critical to the essential purpose of the parochial school, viz., to advance the religious endeavors of the particular church. ”

“ Frequently, parents know the teachers and visit classes. It is fair to say that no single agency of government at any level is closer to the people whom it serves than the typical school board.
I therefore view today's decision with genuine dismay. Whatever the final outcome of this suit and suits like it, the resolution of educational policy decisions through litigation, and the exposure of school board members to liability for such decisions, can be expected to corrode the school board's authority and effectiveness. ”

“ I conclude that, in using sectarian institutions to further goals in secular education, the three statutes do violence to the principle that
government may not employ religious means to serve secular interests, however legitimate they may be, at least without the clearest demonstration that nonreligious means will not suffice. ”

“ Society of Sisters: if the State must satisfy its interest in secular education through the instrument of private schools, it has a proper interest in the manner in which those schools perform their secular educational function. Another corollary was Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 281 U.S. 370, 50 S.Ct. 335, 74 L.Ed. 913 (1930) , where appellants said that a statute requiring school books to be furnished without charge to all students, whether they attended public or private schools, did not serve a 'public purpose,' and so offended the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ Speaking through Chief Justice Hughes, the Court summarized as follows its conclusion that Louisiana's interest in the secular education being provided by private schools made provision of textbooks to students in those schools a properly public concern: ' (The State's) interest is education, broadly ”

“ Underlying these cases, and underlying also the legislative judgments that have preceded the court decisions, has been a recognition that private education has played and is playing a significant and valuable role in raising national levels of knowledge, competence, and experience. ”

“ The same characteristic difference between the desire to adapt an institution to the encouragement of individual growth and the desire to compel individual growth to the efficient working of an institution peeps out, even where the practical proposals of the two parties appear to be identical. A Liberal supports State education because it puts the poor man into fuller possession of himself. A Tory supports it because an ignorant poor man is likely to be turbulent and to make attacks upon the institution of property. ”

“ The major reason offered by appellants for distinguishing free textbooks from free bus fares is that books, but not buses, are critical to the teaching process, and in a sectarian school that process is employed to teach religion. However this Court has long recognized that religious schools pursue two goals, religious instruction and secular education. ”

“ Let the state say distinctly how much secular education in the public schools it exacts, or judges to be necessary for its own ends, and so far as the Catholic Church has anything to do with the matter it can have it. The church will not refuse to give it in the schools under her control. She will not hesitate to teach along with her religion any amount of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, music, and drawing, or the sciences and the fine arts, the state exacts and provides for ”

“ The church does not educate for the secular order as an end, but for God and heaven; and it is precisely in educating for God and heaven that she secures those very virtues on which the welfare and security of the secular order depend, and without which civil society tends inevitably to dissolution, and is sustained, if sustained at all, only by armed force, as we have seen in more than one European nation which has taken education into its own hand, and subordinated it to secular ends. ”

“ The state, having no religious or spiritual function, can give only secular education, and secular education is not enough for the state's own protection or its promotion of the public good. Purely secular education, or education divorced from religion, endangers the safety of the state and the peace and security of the community, instead of protecting and insuring them. It is not in the power of the state to give the education it needs for its own sake, or for the sake of secular society. ”

“ The fact is, though statesmen, and [10] especially politicians, are slow to learn it, and still slower to acknowledge it, the state, or secular society, does not and cannot suffice for itself, and is unable to discharge its own proper functions without the co-operation and aid of the spiritual society. Purely secular education creates no civic virtues, and instead of fitting unfits the people for the prompt and faithful discharge of their civic duties, as we may see in Young America, and indeed in the present active and ruling generation of the American people. ”

“ Both the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania statutes prescribe extensive standardization of the content of secular courses, and of the teaching materials and textbooks to be used in teaching the courses. And the regulations to implement those requirements necessarily require policing of instruction in the schools. The picture of state inspectors prowling the halls of parochial schools and auditing classroom instruction surely raises more than an imagined specter of governmental "secularization of a creed." ”

“ What one finds everywhere throughout America is as follows: The Catholics are maintaining a rival system to the public schools; they are running an enormous business, spending tens of millions of dollars, and they take toward the public schools precisely the attitude which business rivalry engenders in every human group. They say in their propaganda literature that they wish to be “fair” to the public schools. But just what can be the meaning of this word, to men who regard secular education as destructive to the souls of the children who receive it? ”

“ On the 8th of June it adopted an amendment to the article in the Constitution of 1876 reading as follows: See, (in this Volume) CONSTITUTION OF TURKEY. "Islam is the State religion. "The State, while safeguarding this principle, guarantees the free exercise of all cults recognized in the Empire, and maintains the religious privileges granted to divers communities, provided public order and morality be not infringed." On the subject of education the Constitution was amended to read: "Education is free. "All schools are placed under the control of the Government. ”

“ A South Carolina law, pertaining to the general duties of the state superintendent of education, accepted the phraseology [Pg 41] common to many laws regarding textbooks in forbidding “partisan” books or instruction. [124]
Partisan textbooks were also excluded from the schools of Alabama, Kansas, Arizona, Washington, and California. [125] In Idaho and Montana legislation stipulated the rejection of all books which would propagate “political” doctrines, and in Texas it provided that nothing of a sectional or partisan character should be included in the uniform series of textbooks selected. ”

“ Missouri directed, in 1897, that a state commission should select the textbooks in United States history and civil government. [111] Arkansas delegated the task of choosing a history of the United States to the state superintendent of public instruction, [112] as well as providing, in 1899, that there be included among the textbooks of the schools, the history and civil government of the state and nation. [113] In Idaho, the county superintendent selected the textbooks in “history,” and in California the duty devolved upon the state board of education. ”

“ All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the [Pg 202] ”

“ The Massachusetts system of education is a noble tribute to freedom of thought. The power of educating a people, which is, in fine, the chief power in a state, has been often, if not usually, perverted to the support of favored opinions in religion and government. The boasted system of Prussia is only a prop and ally of the existing order of things. In France, Napoleon makes the press, which has become in civilized countries an educator of the people, the mere instrument of his will. Tyrants do not hesitate to pervert schools and the press, learning and literature, to the support of tyranny. ”

“ The State may not arrogate to itself the right to plan education and culture in accordance with any philosophical, aesthetic, political, ideological, or religious guidelines. (3) Public education is non-denominational. (4) The right to establish private and co-operative schools is safeguarded. Article 44 Right to Travel and Emigrate (1) The right of all citizens to travel and to settle freely anywhere in national territory is safeguarded. ”

“ As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; ”

“ And, after all, if we concede to the State power and wisdom to single out 'duly constituted religious' bodies as exclusive alternatives for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to also uphold the power and wisdom to choose the true faith among those 'duly constituted.' We start down a rough road when we begin to mix compulsory public education with compulsory godliness. ”

“ And those who advocate a system of free education in high schools put the matter where we have put the rights of property and liberty, where we put the institutions of law and religion—upon the public judgment. And we will stand there. If the public will not maintain institutions of learning, then, I say, let institutions of learning go down. If I belong to a state which cannot be moved from its extremities to its centre, and from its centre to its extremities, for the maintenance of a system of public instruction, then, in that respect, I disown that state ”

“ It is its business to protect us in the free and full enjoyment of our religion, not to engage in the work of unmaking our children of their Catholicity. The case is one of conscience, and conscience is accountable to no civil tribunal. All secular authority and all secular considerations whatever must yield to conscience. In questions of conscience the law of God governs, not [102] a plurality of votes. The state abuses its authority if it sustains the common schools as they are with a view of detaching our children from their Catholic faith and love. ”