ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 examined the state’s authority to regulate private schools. This chapter considers the limits on the state’s power to control the educational program of its own public schools.
The public school curriculum is society’s primary method of attempting to structure its future. Because of the perceived potential of schools to promote cultural, political, ideological, and even religious attitudes and behaviors, debate over curriculum is pervasive, ongoing, and acrimonious. To control curriculum is to decide how the young are to be instructed, what we would have them know and value, and ultimately, what we would have them believe.
