Religious School Choice: A Critical Pragmatist Response to a Democratic Dilemma

• In Event: Critical Pragmatism, Tensions, Limits, and Activism: Contemporary Expressions of Deweyan Scholarship

Abstract

Religious school choice poses a democratic dilemma for America today. The United States Constitution protects the free exercise religion while guaranteeing Government will never establish a state religion. For most of the 20th century, this has been interpreted to mean that public funding should only support secular schooling. So, religious private schools should not receive public funding. Recently, however, this legal wall separating Church and State has thinned, resulting in public funding for schooling practices that are inconsistent with the democratic aims of schooling (Dewey, 2008). This paper draws on Alison Kadlec’s (2007) critical pragmatism to respond to this dilemma.

Author

• Kathleen M. Sellers, Duke University