Equal opportunity for aesthetic development: The arts, the schools, and the law.
This study addressed the question of whether disparities in arts curricular offerings, as manifested in the presence, absence, or grossly disparate provision of arts in the schools, offends the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Further, the study considered whether children’s liberty and/or property interests in an arts education are denied without due process when the arts are summarily reduced or removed from public school curricula.
This study is a replication of a dissertation by Arthur E. Wise, completed at the University of Chicago in 1967. The present investigation sought to adjust Wise’s original focus (disparate treatment as manifested in gross disparities in per-pupil funding), and update his research in the light of more than two decades of education litigation.
Related subproblems addressed: (1) the legal relationships between “educational denial” and “educational inadequacy,” (2) the legal ramifications of state constitutional mandates for public education, and the degree to which curricular disparities may be allowed under such mandates, and (3) the evolution and potential impact of the definitions of “equal educational opportunity” since Wise’s study.
The design called for a review of related research literature and the identification and analysis of relevant case law. Standard law research tools, such as the Sherpard’s citators, the Westlaw data base, Corpus Juris Secundum, and the Key West Numbering system, were employed to identify 137 pertinent cases.
Legal reasoning, the philosophical methodology required for Wise’s study, was utilized in this study. This form of deduction required the development of a central thesis and a series of supporting syllogisms for this thesis or for the subproblems of the study.
The central thesis to emerge from the two decades of case law under consideration was that the disparate provision of arts education, as defined above, does not constitute a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, but may constitute a violation of the equal protection clauses and public education provisions of state constitutions in the United States. Nine syllogisms, the major premises for which emerged from case law precedents, developed this thesis or addressed the related problems.