Blame The Amish… New Attack On Parental Rights In Education

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

We know and have long encountered efforts by the Secular Left to erode parental rights over their children’s education. We see that played out nearly everywhere today, from the promulgation of rules for “open” shower facilities, to the recognition of deviant behavior as legitimate lifestyles, to the Marxist indoctrination of students, to claims that America’s white male racist history is oppressive to all others.
The progressives have made major inroads into the control of the nation’s educational apparatus. What has limited their further success has been the resistance of concerned parents who have raised the stakes by confronting the left at local town meetings, legislative assemblies, and in the courts. With the help of the numerous nonprofit law centers such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Thomas More Society, and the Pacific Justice Institute — just to name a few — parents have been able to put a stop or at least slow down further infringement on their parental rights.
Of course the left, much like the mythical Hydra, has many heads from which it can continue its attack, as it has done to home-schooling and parochial learning centers, all with the aim of limiting parental involvement through the adoption of standards and curricula that suit their purposes.
Most recently, some states and local school boards have forced their gender self-identification theories into the curriculum for students as early as second grade; some even to kindergarten. In other districts Planned Parenthood has been allowed to “teach” classes in human biology and reproduction.
But courts, unfortunately for the left, sometimes get in the way by upholding the rights of parents to have some input into the system. Some provide parents with advance notification of certain topics with the opt-out right to remove their children from certain class presentations. Others have put a halt to some of the more extreme educational theories of the left, thus turning at least partial control back to parents.
Letting parents have any say over their children’s education is, of course, anathema to the left. Thus they have now gone to war with the leading case standing for religious-parental rights in education: Wisconsin v. Yoder.
In case you have forgotten, Yoder is a 1972 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Amish parents’ right of free religious expression. That case is now, according to some, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the left’s complete takeover of education.
Wisconsin had a compulsory education law that required parents to keep their children in school until age 16. The Amish objected to the law, citing their belief that children only needed an eighth-grade education and refused to send their children to school beyond that point. They claimed that further education was unnecessary for their simple way of life and that the introduction to modern ways and society jeopardized the children’s eternal salvation.
The Amish, in general, do not believe in integration with modern society, instead relying on their own communities for support. They eschew modern conveniences, teach their children in their own schools until eighth grade, when the student then transitions into vocational education under the tutelage of their elders. They do not vote or take part in the government in any way, refuse public assistance, but do pay their taxes and are law abiding.
After several parents were arrested for failure to comply with Wisconsin’s compulsory education law and fined five dollars, a Lutheran minister came to their aid and eventually took the case to the United States Supreme Court which held that the religious beliefs of the Amish trumped the compulsory education law and it was, therefore, unconstitutional as applied to the Amish.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger said:
“We can accept it as settled, that, however strong the state’s interest in universal compulsory education, it is by no means absolute to the exclusion or subordination of all other interests. . . . A way of life, however virtuous and admirable, may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation of education if it is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the Religion Clauses, the claims must be rooted in religious belief….The record in this case abundantly supports the claim that the traditional way of life of the Amish is not merely a matter of personal preference, but one of deep religious conviction.”
A win for the Amish and religious freedom! But that victory is now being attacked by the secular progressives as a hindrance to their control over your child’s education. To that end, an organization, the Amish Heritage Foundation, founded by Torah Bontrager, who left the religion at age 15, is now working to overturn Yoder and its progeny. Allies of Bontrager have filed suit against Rhode Island, claiming that it is failing to prepare students to be informed citizens — one of the claims the state made in Yoder — and asking the court to declare that failure to provide such education is a constitutional violation. If they win the result could lead to the crippling of Yoder.
Bontrager’s organization says on its webpage that its purpose “is to ensure that children and women are empowered to choose their future. We engage with and contribute to the global community, guided by enlightenment principles.”
That sounds all good and well until you understand what the organization means by “enlightenment principles.” It is explained thusly:
“Enlightenment philosophy tends to stand in tension with established religion, insofar as the release from self-incurred immaturity in this age, daring to think for oneself, awakening one’s intellectual powers, generally requires opposing the role of established religion in directing thought and action.
“The faith of the Enlightenment — if one may call it that — is that the process of enlightenment, of becoming progressively self-directed in thought and action through the awakening of one’s intellectual powers, leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence.”
Get that? I think we know where they are going with this, and if they win you could lose more and more control over the religious upbringing of your children.
I need to thank The Federalist and contributor Jeff Ditzler for bringing this to my attention. As a side note, I read the petition for the Rhode Island case and it contains some interesting allegations, many that I see may be valid. The results, if it prevails, could be beneficial to many, and defeat for some. Oral arguments were pending as of this writing; I will follow up.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)