Mozert v. Hawkins County Public Schools (The Tale of the Troubling Textbook) - Part Four
Good Evening, I'm Pierce Lively...
If you’re interested in far more concise case summaries accompanied by pithy-but-97%-sociopolitically-fair-and-balanced insights, check out “Have To” History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases. If you’re specifically interested in the “wall of separation” as applied to public education, well… I’m working on that one. Along the way, however, I’ve indulged myself in the minutiae of a case from Tennessee which took up about half of the 1980s bouncing around the courts. It was called Mozert v. Hawkins Board of Education, and its life ended in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1987.The case centered around the question of whether the district violated the free exercise rights of a small group of fundamentalist parents when they refused to let their children opt out of reading from the same literature textbook as everyone else. The parents found the stories offensive – at least collectively. The textbook’s editors seemed to have intentionally woven a doctrine of tolerance for other cultures and faiths, a belief in imagination and questioning our own assumptions, and getting along with the rest of the world – heresies unacceptable to these devout.
In Part One I covered the origins of the case and the district court’s initial dismissal of CONTINUE READING: Mozert v. Hawkins County Public Schools (The Tale of the Troubling Textbook) - Part Four | Blue Cereal Education
