Parents’ Rights and Children’s Interests

When is a liberal democratic state justified in enforcing an educational policy on its citizenry? This question is especially relevant in contexts where religious minorities wish to receive exemptions from mandatory educational policies. Parents in such groups argue that these educational demands threaten the traditional ways of life of their communities, infringing on their parental right to raise their children as they see fit. Parents may also claim that their free exercise rights, as granted by the First Amendment, are violated by an educational policy that requires them to breach a religious command specifying a certain type of religious upbringing for their children. The customary way that both the courts and commentators have addressed this issue is to represent it as a conflict among four divergent interests: 1) The child’s interest both in an adequate education and in the maintenance of a stable family and cultural community; 2) the parents’ interest in controlling the upbringing of their children and in protecting their right to the free exercise of religion; 3) the community’s interest in preserving its identity; 4) and, the State’s interest, on the one hand, in educating its children in order to maintain an informed citizenry capable of participating in the economic and political spheres, and on the other hand, in the maintenance of diversity.While each of these interests appears significant and relevant to the enforcement of an educational policy, I will challenge the traditional way of addressing this problem as a balancing of these interests. Instead, I argue that the interests of children should be given primacy, and only after these interests have been addressed can the interests of others be given weight in determining and enforcing an educational policy.