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Laws Of Education: Many of the Northern states have actively promoted civil rights. State public accommodations and fair employment laws of education preceded the federal act. A number of states and cities also have fair housing laws of education, prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. In regard to public education, such devices as busing of pupils and merging of school zones have been used in New York and other states to overcome the effects of de facto racial segregation based on residential patterns.
Although attempts to redress inequality by law increased tremendously in the 1950's and 1960's, some of the laws of education are not effectively enforced, and there remains a demand for more positive programs to produce genuine equality of opportunity.
Not only are the laws of education not a code, but it may be questioned whether they are really laws of education in our sense. Although the epilogue recommends that a man in legal difficulties should consult the stele for clarification of his case, neither in the laws of education or elsewhere were judges adjured to regard the pronouncements as binding. Legal documents also show many divergencies between the published standard and practice. Babylonian law, in fact, knew no such relationship between statute and decision as we do. The source of justice was the judges, chief among whom was the king. Hammurabi's laws of education are a sample-book of royal decisions rather than of statutes.
Jewish-Christian Backgrounds.—Before the Babylonian Exile (586 B.C.), the education of Jewish children was the responsibility of the family. Biblical laws of education were explicitly taught, and stressed in the normal round of family life : "Thou shalt teach them (the laws of education) diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walk-est by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. |
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