To whom do the children belong?

Children are given to parents, not the government. Under the U.S. Constitution’s First and Fourteenth Amendments, the right of parents to choose a unique education for their children should not be infringed. The Supreme Court of the United States has reaffirmed multiple times that parents have the Constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children.

The Meyer v. Nebraska decision (1923) affirmed the rights of teachers and parents could not be infringed under the Fourteenth Amendment. Contrary to a law forbidding foreign language instruction before ninth grade, Mr. Meyer was convicted by a Nebraska court for teaching German to a 10-year-old child. The U.S. Supreme Court found, “His right thus to teach and the right of parents to engage him so to instruct their children…are within the liberty of the Amendment.”

Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) affirmed the right of parents to choose private education for their children. “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments of this Union rest excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. [Compulsory public education] is an unreasonable interference with the liberty of the parents and guardians to direct the upbringing of the children.”

In Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943), the Court maintained that “freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion are available to all, not merely to those who can pay their own way.” The Court found it unconstitutional to regulate individuals (requiring them to pay for a license) practicing their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment protects education choice from prohibitively expensive or onerous government regulations.

Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) stated that parents have the right to educate their children according to their religious principles, allowing the Amish and Mennonite students an exemption from compulsory attendance laws after eighth grade, and by inference allowing their eighth-grade educated graduates to teach in those schools.

For many decades, public schools have taught the religion of secular humanism. In his dissenting opinion in Abington v. Schempp (1963), the case that banned Bible reading in public schools, Justice Stewart said, “[A] refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism.” Parents should not be trapped into sending their children to a school that teaches a religion or values antithetical to their own.

A parent’s right to direct a child’s education includes selection of the teacher, the method, and the location. Governments must not regulate to the point where options are unavailable or limited and expensive. Freedom-minded legislation is needed to bring laws more in line with such requirements and the U.S. Constitution.

___________________

Christy Oliver is the founder and director of Step Out Summit and Areté Press. She earned M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Animal and Range Science from North Dakota State University in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Subsequently, she was awarded a Congressional Science Fellowship. Christy was home-educated K-12 by parents who were pioneers in the homeschool movement of the early 1980s, and she started a microschool in Virginia where she taught for 11 years.

She is a guest author for American Experiment North Dakota.