Freedom of Religion and Public Schooling.

• Author: OTTESON, JAMES R.

One may object to government support of education on various grounds. Here I consider two such grounds that have to do with moral consistency. First, state intervention in education, whether in the form of monetary subsidies, compulsory attendance laws, or national curriculum standards, entails violating a moral principle--freedom of conscience--that most people hold inviolable in another application, namely, in relation to religious practice. If one holds the moral principle in question to be inviolable in religious matters, then one should also hold it to be inviolable in educational matters., because the cases are analogous. Second, the same arguments typically raised against state intervention in religious practice can also be raised against state intervention in educational practice. I conclude that because, for moral argument, the cases of religion and education are essentially the same, consistency requires people who oppose state intervention in the one to oppose state intervention in the other.

Freedom of Conscience Covers Religion and Education

I suggest that the case of government support for education is analogous to the case of government support for religion, and therefore the moral acceptability of the one is the same as that of the other. My suggestion hinges on the claim that both cases fall under the rubric of freedom of conscience, and hence both should be protected on the moral principle that everyone's private conscience is inviolable and ought therefore to be safeguarded.

One of the central freedoms protected in the classical liberal scheme of rights is freedom of conscience; indeed, many of the other protections are means to the end of protecting freedom of conscience. Private property rights, for example, can be defended not by arguing that there is something inherently special about the things owned, but rather by arguing that allowing individuals to maintain personal jurisdiction over a specified domain of things (beginning usually with themselves(1)) enables them to act on their beliefs about the good life without interference from others. Actions are, after all, the product of beliefs about the world, and so the liberal claim that all people should enjoy this liberty of action on private property is just an extension of the belief that people are alike in having action-guiding private beliefs. It can then be argued that the beliefs themselves should be protected because a person cannot live a truly human or truly happy life--however one ultimately fleshes out the details of such a life(2)--unless he is allowed to hold and act on his own beliefs. Because private property is necessary for maintaining and acting on one's private beliefs, it is protected as a necessary means to the end of protecting one's private conscience.(3)

A word is required about the connection between protecting one's freedom of conscience and the ability to lead a truly happy life. One might think, for example, that it is possible to be happy without exercising one's freedom of conscience: perhaps one merely accepts the beliefs of one's parents without examination, and is perfectly content to do so. Two things should be said in response. First, people who accept the beliefs of their parents, even if uncritically, are still enjoying freedom of conscience. One does not have to examine one's beliefs to be free to hold them, just as one does not have to cultivate one's land to enjoy private ownership of it. Having the freedom to uncritically hold one's parents' beliefs is having freedom of conscience, because one retains the freedom to believe something else if one should so choose. Second, the relation between freedom of conscience, on the one hand, and that freedom's being a necessary condition for leading a truly happy life, on the other, should be specified in this way: the latter is the bedrock moral principle, the former the bedrock political principle that rests on the moral principle. One cannot directly legislate that people lead a truly happy life, but one can indirectly legislate it by establishing certain protections that allow a person to develop and lead a truly happy life on his own. The most fundamental such protection, I maintain, is the protection of one's freedom of conscience.

Several other political principles follow from the foundational protection of one's private conscience. Arguments for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association can all be plausibly construed as the claim that the private consciences of individuals must be protected and that these various freedoms are necessary for such protection. Even rights that go beyond these so-called negative rights are typically defended for the same reason. So, for example, state-provided universal health care has been defended not because even health itself is inherently good but because it is a necessary prerequisite to leading a happy, flourishing life.(4) The connection between the two is thought to be that good health grants a person, first, the peace of mind to work out, adopt, and maintain private beliefs about the good life and, second, the soundness of body to act on those beliefs. Again, however, because the actions depend on the beliefs, the creation of a sanctuary for private beliefs is the ultimate end of supporting universal health care.

These examples license our drawing the general moral principle that most Westerners already hold dear: because of the crucial role one's private conscience plays in leading a truly happy life, it must be protected against interference; and the political structures necessary for its protection ought to be constructed. Although I subscribe to this principle, I shall not try to defend it here any more than I already have by suggesting its plausibility, but it is already widely accepted. It is explicitly at work, as previously noted, in the widespread belief in freedom of the press. Since Milton's first statement of the argument in his Areopagitica of 1644, the claim has been that ideas are crucially important to living a flourishing life and therefore freedom of the press must be protected as a necessary means of the expression of privately held beliefs.

More to the point here, the same moral principle undergirds the nearly universal belief in separating church and state: a,,; a matter of private conscience, religious practice(5) must be protected; and this protection entails disallowing state intervention in religious matters. Religious practice arises from deep-seated private beliefs that, like any other such beliefs, must be protected as a matter of private conscience. Indeed, one's religious beliefs, whatever they may be, are among one's most fundamental beliefs, setting parameters for many others, including in particular one's beliefs about how one should live and what constitutes the good life. Thus, even among already safeguarded beliefs, religious beliefs enjoy a privileged place. It is for this reason that such beliefs are protected and that among those protections is the disallowance of government support or regulation of private religious practice.

Educational practice is analogous to religious practice: one's decisions about how to educate oneself and one's children also arise from deep-seated beliefs about how one should live and what constitutes the good life, beliefs that therefore fall under the scope of the moral principle enunciated earlier and hence should be safeguarded in the same way one's religious beliefs are. This protection disallows state intervention in educational practice, including subsidies drawn from taxes, compulsory attendance laws, and curriculum standards--just as, in the case of religion, it includes protection against religious subsidies drawn from taxes, compulsory church attendance, and state-prescribed religious ceremonies, rites, or doctrines. The same moral principle that debars the government from regulating or supporting any church or religious sect debars the government from regulating or supporting any school or other educational facility. Hence, what is now called "public schooling" should be...