Cultural accommodations in public schools: Weighing competing values

In this dissertation, I ask: How should schools within multicultural liberal societies respond to requests for cultural and religious accommodation? After an analysis of the ways in which liberalism and fundamentalism are philosophically at odds, I address three specific cases of accommodation that require school authorities to weigh the interests of fundamentalist parents against the future interests of children. The first case considers: What (if anything) does the state owe to Anabaptist children post-Yoder? Here I look at the "right to exit" to argue that the view of exit developed by group rights theorists is misplaced. Where exit is usually seen as an obligation that rests with the group, I argue that the state has an obligation to help children facilitate entrance should they choose to leave. The second case looks at arranged marriages for adolescent girls and asks whether or not the state should intervene on behalf of the children. Building on the Rawlsian idea of overlapping consensus, I develop a normative framework for thinking about when illiberal practices might be allowed. The last case looks at two requests for patriarchal accommodation within a school: one by fundamentalist Muslim girls and another by "mainstream" girls on a school swim team. Here, I argue that addressing patriarchy requires schools to consider the ways in which all children receive illiberal cultural messages. Further, when patriarchal accommodation is necessary, schools have an obligation to attend more closely to the education of boys.;Rather than think about what ought to happen within an ideal liberal society, this dissertation is a work of applied moral and political philosophy. In developing these cases, I draw upon social science research about immigrant and religious children and their experiences in public schools to show the ways in which the cultural specifics matter. Further, I make arguments with consideration for what ought to happen given real-life constraints like: poverty, hyper-consumerism, and racism.