Cross Purposes: Pierce v. Society of Sisters and the Struggle over Compulsory Public Education

CHAPTER 5. Who Owns Your Child?

CHAPTER 5 Who Owns Your Child? Archbishop Christie, Wooten, and the leadership of the Lutheran Schools Committee argued that Oregonians would oppose the School Bill if they could be persuaded to see compelled public education as a draconian government intrusion that threatened personal liberty. Their efforts bene‹ted signi‹cantly from the work of the Non-Sectarian and Protestant Schools Committee, a cooperative af‹liation of secular school principals, Episcopalians , Lutherans, Adventists, and other prominent Protestants. This group mounted a high-pro‹le attack on the School Bill that employed some of Oregon’s most prestigious citizens. Members of its executive committee included a former Portland city commissioner, a former president of the Oregon Bar Association, and leading private school educators. The committee coordinated a large speakers’ bureau, consisting of over ‹fty opponents of the School Bill, and funded an extensive advertising campaign. The Opposition Rallies around Parental Rights School Bill opponents united in their conviction that compelled public education violated fundamental liberties. Their strategy centered on reminding voters that protection of individual liberty and religious freedom formed the essential core of American democracy. Dudley Wooten remained insistent that the Catholic campaign focus on 43 parental rights. His conviction caused considerable debate among the Oregon Catholic leadership, some of whom pushed for a strategy stressing religious liberty. Wooten strongly disagreed; he argued that appeals to religious liberty risked alienating Protestant majorities. By contrast, every voter could identify with the protection of parental prerogatives. Wooten prevailed. The Catholic campaign narrative challenged the Masons’ call to nationalism ; it countered the image of an all-powerful state with that of parents proudly standing for the right to educate their children in the school of their choice. The Lutheran leadership, with guidance from veterans of the Michigan campaign, had every incentive to re-create the successful Michigan strategy, and they, too, made parental rights the centerpiece of their campaign. Their submission in the Voters’ Pamphlet pitted state power against parental prerogative , with a series of questions beginning with, “Who owns your child? The state? Who feeds and clothes your child? The State?”It charged that the School Bill, if enacted, “will deal a terrible blow to your constitutional rights, con‹scate your parental authority and undermine your personal liberty .”1 Each of the remaining six negative arguments in the Voters’ Pamphlet, ‹led by diverse religious and nonsectarian groups, championed the signi‹cance of parental rights in a democratic society. Campaign literature stressed the link between parental rights and American fundamentals. One ad, captioned “In Justice to American Principles,” asserted that the right of parents to choose a school for their child is one of the “inalienable rights” protected by the Declaration of Independence. Another , entitled “A Mother’s Guiding Hand” and depicting a mother reading to her children, proclaimed, “Yours is the child. Yours is the right and duty to have a direct hand in guiding and educating,” and warned that the School Bill would destroy maternal dominion. Ads from the Catholic Civic Rights Association invoked a higher authority in the struggle between parents and state, insisting that “God gave parents their children”and that “governments cannot rightfully take them away.”2 Pamphlets, popular campaign tools, offered detailed analysis of how the School Bill threatened parental authority. Wooten’s pamphlet 24 Reasons argued that the initiative represented another step in the “weakening and ‹nal destruction of the duties and obligations of parenthood.” It described the encroaching presence of the state in family matters as an alarming development , given that experts deemed the “decay”of parental authority as one of 44 cross purposes the “greatest evils extant in this country,” contributing to juvenile delinquency and crime.3 The opponents’ vigorous assertion of parental rights obscured the absence of legal precedent for their claim. The Constitution contains no references to parental authority, and there was no Supreme Court decision holding that the Constitution protected the rights of parents to control the education of their children. The tenets of a number of religions, including Catholics, Lutherans, and Adventists, recognized the right and duty of parents to care for and educate their children. The establishment of parochial schools occurred, in large part, to assure the ful‹llment of these obligations in a manner consistent with church doctrine. The protection of parental rights in secular law fell far short, however, of the status of an “inalienable” fundamental right as claimed by School Bill opponents. Advocates who argued...