Published: April 1, 1996

Connections

Since their creation a century and a half ago, the free, common schools have rarely been free of controversy and often have been objects of parental suspicion and distrust. Battles over the state's authority to require communities to establish public schools and compel children to attend them raged across the land during the first half of the 19th century. Angry opponents argued that education was not a proper function of government and that it was an intrusion into the domain of parents. They feared the secularizing influence of schools that were largely expected to provide religious and moral instruction. And they objected to paying higher...