The Public, The Private And The Personal: Learning From A Father’s Educational Wisdom

Commentary and opinion from Contributing Author Chuck Small

​As the Supreme Court decides in two cases involving the relationship between religion and public education, I find myself hoping they have the insights and common sense that my Dad had.

As a counselor in an extremely diverse public high school, I’m grateful for what I learned in all my schools.

Between kindergarten and college graduation, I spent about as many years in Catholic schools as in public. 

My educational environments spanned urban and suburban; diverse and homogenous; single-sex and co-ed. At one school, we sang “Day by Day” in music class. In college, a dormmate asked me with a straight face whether Catholics were Christian. 

Dad was a high school graduate who went exclusively to Catholic schools.

He talked with me once about the money he spent on our tuition. If he wanted his children to receive a Catholic education, he would pay for that. But, he said, his responsibility as a tax-paying American was to fund public schools because they served the whole community. 

My dad, who died in 2019, understood the distinction. Alas, six years later, at least some of our Supreme Court justices don’t seem to get it.

Two cases before the court this term involve the relationship between religion and public education. 

In both, the court seems ready to compromise the common good of public education because of a notion that the systems are discriminating against people of faith.

To me, the more clear-cut case is Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. 

• In this case, the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and diocese of Tulsa are hoping to open St. Isidore of Seville, a virtual Catholic charter school.

As a charter school, St. Isidore would receive public funding.

State law requires charter schools to be non-religious, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that St. Isidore’s plans to include religious education would violate the law.

Last week, the justices reviewed the arguments in the case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sympathetic to the argument that St. Isidore’s was, according to the SCOTUSblog site:

“… simply seeking not to be excluded from the charter school program based on their religion.”

This would run afoul of the distinction my dad intuitively understood: Taxpayers fund a public school system for everyone. Those who want to pursue a faith-based education are free to do so, but not with taxpayer money.

To permit this not only would substantially weaken public school systems, as money would be siphoned to faith-based schools. It also would violate the separation of church and state by financially promoting the schools’ exercise of religion.

The second case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, is murkier.

• It involves the question of whether a public school system is required to allow parents to opt out of parts of their children’s instruction when that instruction violates their religious beliefs.

The Montgomery County, Maryland school district in the D.C. suburbs approved books featuring LGBTQ+ characters in its elementary-school language-arts curriculum.

Parents of several faith traditions – Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox – sought to have their children opt out of instruction because of their beliefs.

The system said there would no longer be an opt-out option because it wasn’t feasible. The parents sued, claiming a violation of their First Amendment rights to exercise their religion. I don’t necessarily find a problem with an opt-out option. (My school system has opt-out procedures in various situations.) And I don’t know if I buy the system’s feasibility argument.

From the outside looking in, I wonder if the parties could have settled this outside of court?

Decades ago, my communications law professor introduced me to the adage “Bad cases make bad law.” This seems a perfect example of that.

At the same time, I’m concerned about the implications of making the parents’ religious objections the persuasive argument. And I’m not alone – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson asked questions about the potential impact of a ruling beyond this set of particulars.

This case cuts to my core. I remember one of my toughest arguments with my father in the 1980s. California was proposing legislation to outlaw openly gay educators, and my dad was in favor of it.

“I can’t believe you,” I remember saying. “What if that teacher was me?”

I don’t remember my dad responding. I think the silence hung in the air.

I don’t want to see public school systems adjust curricula to be more hostile to LGBTQ+ people in the name of affirming parents’ religiously rooted objections.

Public schools have a responsibility to serve the entire community, which includes LGBTQ+ people. Families struggling with this are free to educate their children in home schooling or in private, faith-based environments with more restrictive curricula.

I do wonder what kind of messages the children of these parents are getting, not only about their faith traditions but about themselves.

What if they belong to the very community their parents want to shield them from?

Public schools have survived so much through the decades, so I won’t predict that the Supreme Court rulings in either or both cases represent a death knell.

But when it comes to the parents, I can only hope their journeys resemble that of my devout Catholic father. 

In 2011, decades after that bruising argument, he sent me a card when I graduated from my master’s program in counseling to enter a public school system. It read:

“Never underestimate the wonderful things you’re capable of
… the impact of your dreams and ideas, your uniqueness, and all you have to offer.”

“Congratulations.”

And beneath the pre-printed message? Two words in his own script. 

“Love, Dad.”

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