|
|
|
Jewish World Review July 18, 2000 / 15 Tamuz, 5760
 |
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE U.S. Department of Education recently sponsored a conference in
Washington, at which I was privileged to speak, commemorating the 75th
anniversary of a Supreme Court ruling that (in my admittedly narrow view)
may well be the most important judicial decision in the history of the
United States. And, legal significance aside, looking back at the case of
Pierce v. Society of Sisters three-quarters-of-a-century later offers some
important insights into a subject of critical contemporary relevance.
At issue in Pierce was a 1922 Oregon law that required all elementary school
children within the state to attend public school. The good people of
Oregon, it appears, were concerned about the influx of immigrants into their
fair state - many of whom were of the Catholic faith and sent their children
to Catholic parochial schools. The anti-Catholic Protestant majority did
not take well to the prospect that significant numbers of future Oregonians
would be committed Catholics, and they recognized that the best way to
ensure that immigrant children would be weaned away from their parents'
despised religious lifestyle would be to insist that all children across the
state be educated exclusively in a public school setting.
The Supreme Court rejected this effort at what Yale Law School's Stephen
Carter has termed "Protestantism masquerading as patriotism." Citing "the
liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of
children under their control," the Court struck down the Oregon statute as
unconstitutional. In so doing, the Justices rebuked Oregon's heavy-handed
attempt to force all children into one cookie-cutter mold:
"The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union
repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children,
forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. A 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."
The Supreme Court's ruling in Pierce established the absolute right of
parents to educate their children in independent non-public schools. It is
unlikely that the Justices were animated by the vision of the cheder child
reciting his first Torah verses - but 75 years later, if Dr. Marvin Schick's
recent "Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States" for the AVI CHAI
Foundation speaks of approximately 700 Jewish elementary and secondary
schools across America, with enrollments of some 200,000 students - may
there be many more - we can directly attribute this tremendous growth of
Jewish education in the United States to the equal rights we as Americans
enjoy to educate our children in settings other than the local public
school.
What is especially noteworthy about the Pierce case is the recognition, both
by the Oregon law's proponents and by the Supreme Court, that public schools
are the most powerful agent of assimilation a society has to offer. Such
assimilation, the Court ruled, may not be compelled. But it is still
available to parents who choose it. And therein lies the lesson for our
time.
Historically, Jews have always been outsiders, never fully integrated in any
society in which they have lived. Jewish Sages over the ages have taught us
that this is as it should and must be, that remaining separate from the
surrounding society is ultimately the key to our survival within that
society.
But this lesson has not been easily absorbed. On the surface, it is
counterintuitive. After all, if Jews are the targets of persecution, and
even of holocaust, would not logic seem to compel a strategy of shedding the
identity of outsider, of assimilating into the broader majority culture?
Little wonder that so many Jewish immigrants to the United States, escaping
the ghettos and pogroms and concentration camps of Europe, and encountering
barriers to Jewish advancement in this country, were so anxious to ensure
that their children would be part of the great American mainstream. Little
wonder that they rushed to enroll their children in the very finest public
schools, where they would mingle with other children, be accepted by other
children, and ultimately become largely indistinguishable from other
children. Little wonder that the mainstream secular Jewish establishment
emerged as perhaps the most articulate champion of public education, the
most vociferous opponent of support for religious education.
The strategy of embracing public education as the assimilationist savior of
future generations of American Jews has worked all too well. Jews in the
United States, by and large, have overcome barriers of all types, to the
point where they have become accepted in virtually every nook and cranny of
American society. Anti-Semitism has not gone away, but on balance one would
conclude that American Jews are now insiders, no longer outsiders.
And, G-d forbid, they are at risk of disappearing. The American melting
pot, whose fires were stoked at the doors of the public schools, has robbed
the large bulk of American Jewry of the religious identity and heritage that
is our most precious possession.
The seventy-fifth anniversary of Pierce should serve as a reminder to the
larger American Jewish community that public schooling, whatever its
academic or other merits, is a tool of assimilationist destruction. To opt
for public education as opposed to religious education is, as the Supreme
Court wrote, to opt for "standardize[d] children."
All thoughtful Jews today must ask themselves: At this precarious point in
our people's history, are those the types of children American Jewry should
be
By David Zwiebel
David Zwiebel, an executive vice president of, and counsel for, Agudath Israel of America. Comment by clicking here.
