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<p>For decades now, the United States has been in an era of regressive structural reform of public education. One consequence of this trend is that the United States is now having to relitigate structural questions about public education that it has not asked in a long time. Is public education a basic institution that ought to have a corresponding fundamental right protected by the Constitution? Is it a mere welfare benefit that can be allowed to ebb and flow with political tides? Is it a common political good or a personal economic good – or both? A century after the various state governments achieved universal compulsory education within their jurisdictions, neoliberal reform has revealed that the United States has yet to offer, yet now must offer, definitive answers to these questions. I argue that this can be done in part by developing some assertions within extant Supreme Court jurisprudence that speak to public education’s meaning for individual persons and for American democracy entire, focusing on the hallmark <i>Plyler v. Doe</i> (1982) decision. <i>Plyler</i> clarifies two fundamental aims – call them <i>personalist</i> aims – that underwrite compulsory education in every state: first, to meet the special need of all child persons to grow up and incorporate themselves into American society; and second, to foster the intergenerational integrity of the democratic Nation. I conclude that <i>Plyler’s</i> personalism strengthens the theory that public education ought to have the status of a fundamental right.</p>

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The Personalist Aims of American Public Education (and What They Mean for the System’s Basic Structure)

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月3日

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  • Kelly Swope

摘要

For decades now, the United States has been in an era of regressive structural reform of public education. One consequence of this trend is that the United States is now having to relitigate structural questions about public education that it has not asked in a long time. Is public education a basic institution that ought to have a corresponding fundamental right protected by the Constitution? Is it a mere welfare benefit that can be allowed to ebb and flow with political tides? Is it a common political good or a personal economic good – or both? A century after the various state governments achieved universal compulsory education within their jurisdictions, neoliberal reform has revealed that the United States has yet to offer, yet now must offer, definitive answers to these questions. I argue that this can be done in part by developing some assertions within extant Supreme Court jurisprudence that speak to public education’s meaning for individual persons and for American democracy entire, focusing on the hallmark Plyler v. Doe (1982) decision. Plyler clarifies two fundamental aims – call them personalist aims – that underwrite compulsory education in every state: first, to meet the special need of all child persons to grow up and incorporate themselves into American society; and second, to foster the intergenerational integrity of the democratic Nation. I conclude that Plyler’s personalism strengthens the theory that public education ought to have the status of a fundamental right.