a highly litigious nation, it is not surprising that education has inspired
many legal battles. Some of the most important judicial decisions of the past
several decades have involved elementary education. And the direct manner
in which the daily lives of ordinary Americans have been touched by those
decisions has given them a public visibility that other significant rulings of-
ten have lacked. It is telling that perhaps the most famous case of the twen-
tieth century is Brown v. Board of Education, in which the United States Su-
preme Court declared that the Constitution prohibited the racial
segregation of public elementary schools. ³ Although the Court incremen-
tally had paved the way for Brown in significant earlier decisions involving
higher education and would later hand down other important decisions re-
quiring desegregation of other institutions, Brown ignited more contro-
versy and inspired more resistance than did any other desegregation ruling.
Both proponents and opponents of the decision recognized that integration
of children in schools would transform racial attitudes in America, since the
integration of elementary and secondary schools would expose children to
the ideal of racial equality during their most formative years.

Less than a decade after Brown, the Court once again struck profound
chords in the American people when it ruled that the Constitution prohib-
ited public prayer and the reading of the Bible for devotional purposes in the
public schools. ⁴ Few decisions of the Supreme Court have received more at-
tention from ordinary Americans or have triggered more intense and wide-
spread outbursts of hostility toward the Court. During the 1970s, the con-
troversy over court-ordered busing of elementary and high school children
in order to achieve racial integration shattered the tranquility of many
neighborhoods and shifted the focus of racial tension from the South to the
North.

Most children since the earliest days of the Republic have attended public
schools, but a significant number have received instruction in private insti-
tutions. Although private schools have ameliorated tax burdens, they often
have encountered widespread hostility from Americans who have feared
that they foster elitism or fail to inculcate American ideals. And many Amer-
icans also have looked with disfavor and suspicion on parochial schools that
have been formed to help preserve minority ethnic and religious traditions.
The very word "parochial" suggests isolation from the mainstream of soci-
ety. Although the word is derived from the Latin parochia, meaning "par-
ish," and a parochial school literally is one that is operated by a parish, the
word "parochial" has secondary definitions of "provincial" or "narrow." For

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