{"id":17060,"date":"2024-01-20T13:51:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T18:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=17060"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:12:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:12:56","slug":"the-education-democracy-nexus-and-educational-subordination","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-111\/volume-111-issue-3-march-2023\/the-education-democracy-nexus-and-educational-subordination\/","title":{"rendered":"The Education-Democracy Nexus and Educational Subordination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many believe that American democracy is in critical danger. These heightened concerns about democracy\u2019s survival have spurred conversation about the role public education can and should play in American life. At the same time, a wave of legislation has emerged that not only threatens to minimize public education\u2019s democratizing and equity-enhancing functions, but also threatens the very franchise of public education itself. These attempts, ranging from the regulation of discussion of racial, gender, and sexual identity to wholesale attempts at privatizing the public education institution, signal a turn toward a private-facing agenda: one that aims to deploy public education in efforts to subordinate non-power groups and entrench social hierarchy. This is ironic given the ways in which the Supreme Court, and federal courts interpreting its jurisprudence, have long deployed rhetoric that purportedly carves out a special place for public education. Indeed, the Court has routinely lauded education as, for example, a \u201cmost vital civic institution for the preservation of a democratic system of government.\u201d But a closer examination paints a different picture: rather than bolstering the project of public education, the Court has over the past century worked to hobble the common school enterprise. And even at its high-water marks of protecting education\u2019s theoretical democratizing, anti-subordinating, and equalizing functions, the Court\u2019s education jurisprudence often has had a subordinating impact\u2014or explicitly been motivated by a subordinating agenda. In this way, over time, the Court has rejected a vision of education as an integrative, public-good-serving investment, and has instead embraced education as a consumer commodity prioritizing private preferences. Rather than work to preserve education\u2019s equity-enhancing functions, the Court has, in practice, centered a different set of principles: namely, co-opted ideals of religious liberty, parental autonomy, and school choice. In this way, the classroom has served as a fertile site for debates about authority, indoctrination, and values\u2014debates that have consequences beyond school walls. <\/em><\/p>\n

This Article argues that although it has become increasingly clear that public education is essential as a tool of anti-subordination, equity, and democracy, federal courts are unlikely to act in accordance with this principle. And for those seeking to make good on education\u2019s public-facing functions, there are potentially more viable\u2014or feasible\u2014avenues of relief, in particular, a turn away from judicial supremacy and toward movement lawyering aimed at legislative and curricular reform. <\/em><\/p>\n

Continue Reading The Education-Democracy Nexus and Educational Subordination<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nMillat-Final-PDF<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many believe that American democracy is in critical danger. These heightened concerns about democracy\u2019s survival have spurred conversation about the role public education can and should play in American life. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10024,"featured_media":0,"parent":17050,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-17060","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17060"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23236,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17060\/revisions\/23236"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}