The following is published in response to an essay, by Rob
Reich, entitled Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority Over Education: The Case of Homeschooling. Roxanne has done a
masterful job.
Testing the
Boundaries of Parental Authority ... A Response
March 26, 2002
Dear Mr. Reich:
I have just finished reading the paper you prepared for delivery
at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association held
in San Francisco. It was indeed an eye
opener to say the least.
After having contemplated the implications of your political
"theory," I am very thankful that, as an American citizen, I can
appeal to this nation’s foundational documents that inherently protect me from
antithetical political theories such as yours.
Your ideas find no legitimate resting place in these founding documents
and no matter how philosophically they are espoused, they are none-the-less
illegitimate. Not only are your ideas
politically illegitimate, but the weight of the vast body of empirical evidence
(historical and modern) further crushes your case.
While inclusive of many specious arguments, your theory is one
that strikes most heavily at the very heart of religious freedom and
conscience. As a test for analyzing the
whole of your political thought, one simple quote from Thomas Jefferson,
destroys, at once, its foundation. Consider well his words,
to suffer the civil
magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to
restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition
of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys
all religious liberty.
At the core of it, you are held captive by statism. Your paper is the best presentation of a full
blown statist philosophy that I have encountered to date. On the other hand, I am a Christian who lays
claim to my protected religious freedom and admit to being held
"captive" (ethically servile) to a Christian philosophy of the state
and of education (a political theory from which you seemingly have been
shielded). The one advantage my position
has over yours is that, in spite of Supreme Court rulings which do not constitute
law, it is the position articulated in both the Charter of this nation, The
Declaration of Independence, and the Constitutions of both my state and this
nation. But, because you have succumbed
to the prevailing notion that "secular" education and ethics can be
"non-religious, " or "religiously neutral," you have run
over the very foundation of religious freedom guaranteed by all of the above.
Your "case" has failed to adequately deal with the very
foundational aspect of education known as its teleology, or purpose. Your arguments presuppose an agreement as to
the purpose of education but your view does not take into account the fact that
your view is not widely shared. It is at
this place of purpose that you will find the heart of the religious issue,
especially for the Christian. While it
is impossible to be comprehensive on this subject, the following two statements
present propositions that express well the antithesis between the two fundamental
views of purpose. Statist teleology: the state, or society, is the god in whose
image the citizen is to re-create himself.
Christian teleology:
Christ is God incarnate in whose image man is to be re-created.
In the statist perspective, the controlling idea is that it is
necessary for citizens to conform to society’s ideal for man and the state must
either train or oversee their training accordingly. The purpose of education is to effect an acceptable
integration into a society which is defined by man. This "adequate" and
"effective" integration is both the citizen’s and society’s most
important calling. You did well in
advocating this position in your paper, however, as I stated previously, the
Christian perspective stands in stark contrast to this in that man’s highest
calling is to glorify God in all that he does.
The purpose of education therefore is to, "enable the child to
shoulder the responsibilities and privileges of being God’s image bearer, and
to equip him for a life of service to God as His vicegerent on
earth." Thus, he is equipped to be
all that is considered a "good" citizen according to a standard
higher than his own or even that of society’s, which is God’s. That education also enables him to play his
many parts in society for the glory of God which in turn meets the standard of
"good" citizenship. You were
at least honest in that you described the very subjective nature of
"good." Your conclusion is
that it is wisest to put trust in man, in society, and in the state to be the
ultimate determiner of good and of "good citizenship." A Christian puts his trust in God’s revealed
Word to supply that determination.
Obviously, faith in man and the state resides at the bottom of
your political theory which necessitates the state having an inherent and
superior claim to a child that, authoritatively and jurisdictionally, supercedes that of the parent. When asked, "Who controls the
children,?" your answer is, "the state, by necessity, must have the
ultimate say and therefore, 'right' to control the children for the common good
of society." In his book, The
Christian Philosophy of Education Explained, Stephen Perks summarizes
this view well,
As the head and guardian of society, the state must care for,
mold, and discipline in terms of its own purpose those who will constitute the
society of the future. The child is the
creature of the state, and society is his true family. Hence, should the child’s genetic family
prove a hindrance to his development into an ideal member of the statist
society, its custodianship of the child must be suspended.
The entire content of your paper could easily be similarly
summarized. Unfortunately, it is the
ethically servile, state-created citizen that no longer knows or understands
how this ideology is contrary to the principles that gave birth to this nation
and that govern a "free" people.
Thus, the state is encouraged by its own citizens to perpetuate its
claim and its control and therefore the state continues to produce its own
ethically servile advocates.
Of great interest to me is your position on servility and autonomy
which clearly demands an epistemological position that denies the existence of
absolute truth. My first impression of
the individual behind the ideas espoused in this paper,
is one who has himself been the victim of "ethical servility." The positions you take in order for some sort
of autonomy and freedom from servility to exist in children are irrational,
illogical and are unsupported by empirical evidence. Under your view, one can only conclude that
in order for full autonomy and freedom from ethical servility to exist,
an individual must be exposed to ALL that is knowable? However, you argue for some kind of
"minimal" autonomy by saying, in essence, that somehow it is the state
that can and must decide the limits of exposure in order to assure
"minimal autonomy". What is
produced then is simply a limited autonomy and "freedom from
servility" with the inputs/outputs ultimately controlled by the state
rather than by the parent. The end
result is the same — less than full "autonomy" and some sort of
ethical servility. If my children are to
be ethically servile, it is my fervent prayer that they be servile to truth —
objective truth. My children are exposed
to many worldviews but are taught that transcendent truth does exist and that
all worldviews which exist outside of that truth can be, and are, reduced to
utter foolishness and futility.
Favoring compulsory attendance laws, accountability laws for
non-public endeavors in education, and uniform academic and work skills and standards
for all children is itself the indictment of a statist view. And, allegiance to this view is tantamount to
embracing the notion that the state has a right to dictate a man’s conscience. That is a violation of the most fundamental
and sacred of all rights in a free nation — "conscience is our most sacred
property." You have determined that
it is the state’s right to control and shape opinion which reduces citizens to
property, to human resources, to be controlled and shaped by a false god – the state. This is evidenced in just one excerpt from
your paper, "Because the state must ensure that the school
environment provides exposure and engagement with values and beliefs other than
those of a child’s parents, the state should require parents to use
curricula that provide such exposure and engagement … they could allow their
children to take periodic assessments that would measure their success
in examining and reflecting upon diverse worldviews." I challenge you to be honest about the
definitional difference between an assessment and a test. Are you prepared to assess, to place value
on, the citizen’s worldview, his values, his opinions, his conscience? In 1792, James Madison spelled out the
important concept of conscience and its tie to liberty, when he wrote,
… a man’s land, merchandise, or money, is
called his property … a man (also) has a property in his opinions
and the free communication of them. He
has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession
and practice dictated by them. He has an
equal property in the free use of his faculties, and free choice
of the objects on which to employ them … In a word, as a man is said to have a
right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property
in his rights …. Government is
instituted to protect property of every sort … This being the end
of government … Conscience is the most sacred of all property…,
Article 1, Section 11 of my Washington State Constitution reads,
Absolute freedom of conscience in all matters of religious
sentiment, belief and worship, shall be guaranteed to every individual,
and no one shall be molested or disturbed in person or property
on account of religion.
And then there is George Mason from, The Biblical Basis of the
Constitution,
The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superceded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience
to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human laws which contradict His laws we
are in conscience bound to disobey.
You may define my claim to control my children’s education, or as
you stated it, my "interest in" their education, as self-regarding,
but R.L. Dabney better
described this tension between state and parent in 1860 when he said,
No parent can fail to resent the intrusion of any authority
between his conscience and convictions, and the soul of his child. If the father conscientiously believes that
his own creed is true and righteous and obligatory before God, then he must
intuitively regard the intrusion of any other power between him and his child,
for the purpose of causing the rejection of that creed, as a
usurpation.
Anticipating the kind of objection to parental claims such as
yours, he went on to say,
It may be objected that this theory makes the parent
sovereign during the child’s mental and moral minority. This affects the molding of the child’s
opinions and character, and because the parent is fallible, and may teach his
child wrongly, there ought to be a superior authority to superintend and
intervene. The answer to this is that
the supreme authority must be placed somewhere.
God has indicated that, on the whole, no place is so
safe for it as the hands of the parent who has the supreme love for the child… But may parents nevertheless neglect or
pervert the power? Yes, but does the State NEVER neglect and pervert its
powers? There is no doubt that God
has deposited the duty in the safest place.
He also said,
The competitions of the State … for power over education have been
so engrossing that we have almost forgotten the parent, the … rightful
competitor. And now many look at the
parental claim almost contemptuously.
Yes, it is clear from our own national history that there is
nothing new among men and nothing new under the Sun. Simply put, ideologists fear the basic
concept of freedom of the mind from government interference. Recognizing the full authority of parents
over their children’s education is dreaded only by those who feel they have
something to lose. Your call for
regulation and control of parental influence, under the guise of balanced
interests, is premised on fear and you resort to a kind of cowardice that calls
on the power and aid of the state. You
stated in your paper, "Given pluralistic conception of the good life;
there will be no readily identifiable consensus about the best interests of the
child in all cases." If that is
true, then your position hides behind the state, certain it serves "the
common good," but fearful that it may find disfavor. Therefore, you choose for the conscience of
the men to be dictated by force of the law.
From his essay, The Law written in 1850, Frederic Bastiat pointed to those who view the state as ethically or
morally superior,
while mankind tends
toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind is drawn toward
vice, the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this is the true
state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their
own inclinations for those of the human race.
Out of fear, the humanist says,
We believe … that traditional
dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or
creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species …
We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural …
as non-theists, we begin with humans, not God, nature, not deity … No deity
will save us; we must save ourselves…
and has nothing in which to place
his trust but man himself. He denies the
existence of a Sovereign God who superintends His creation and therefore
philosophically justifies the use of force in order to "save
himself." This, I believe, is the
real basis of the "common good theory" and describes well the motives
of those who purport that it is the state who must
fulfill the role of savior.
You believe that the state has jurisdictional authority to extend
to parents the "right" to educate their children, and that they must
be held accountable to the state’s definition and idea of education in order to
keep this right. My final questions to
you are, from what source does the state derive
this power or this authority? From what
source did our Founders believe government’s power and authority was
derived? I have certain rights endowed
by my Creator and this government was instituted to recognize and protect
those rights, not usurp them. I
can think of no greater threat than to think that a state, hostile to religious
conscience, has an assumed authority over the homes of American families or
over any child’s education. Do you
really think that what you are calling for has any semblance to liberty? Tyranny over the minds of men by the state is
not how I would define liberty nor is it any reasonable method to
"secure" a future society. As
James Madison said, "We have staked the whole future of American
civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all political
institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity
of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to
the Ten Commandments of God." This
reveals the foundation of our nation’s political theory; it was not coercion,
by state control that was deemed necessary or wise. In the public square we see, "In God we
trust," not, "Of the state, by the state and for the
state". The latter is far removed
from the principles of good government that were once instituted to protect
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It declares that the state is indeed the great idol of modernity.
What you are calling for will cause more division and strife than
I believe the state or the advocates of this position are prepared to
handle. The implications of your position
run deep and will serve to create a cultural war unlike any other we have
experienced to date. That is exactly
where I believe this kind of tyrannical, political nonsense will land us
because parents are only now freshly off their last battlefield and they will
not concede easily. As you acknowledged
in your paper — home schooling and private school parents and advocates are
numerous, committed and well organized.
And, they are likely to be joined by multitudes of Americans who do not
yet believe that tyranny over the mind (balanced interest between state, child
and parent) is a principle that should ever be embraced. Freedom of religion and freedom of conscience
is still deeply ingrained in American society.
Mind well those things for which you advocate — for what many men
in America today fail to realize is that the liberty they possess to express
their own convictions is indeed the fruit of convictions which may not be their
own and of things which they do not grasp.
That liberty will not be sustained by theories that are
antithetical to the Foundation. The
consequences suffered will be suffered by all.
There is fruit without the Root, but that fruit is very bitter indeed.
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