The Fundamental Role of Parents
Among the dozens of Executive Orders President Donald J. Trump signed during the first few weeks in office were two Executive Orders: Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families and Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12. The first aims to expand educational freedom and opportunity for families, and the second addresses discrimination and protecting parental rights.
Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families recognizes that parents, not the government, play a fundamental role in directing the upbringing and education of their children. It establishes that it is the policy of President Trump’s administration to allow families “to choose the best educational setting for their children” and pledges “to support parents” in their fundamental role.
The Order’s primary focus is on broadening school choice, including public charter schools, private school options, and alternatives such as homeschooling. Its goal is to empower parents to choose the educational environment that best meets their child’s needs. Though President Trump’s Executive Order does not yet commit federal money to private schools, the tenor of the mandate expresses an effort at universal vouchers. Though the decisions to implement vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, or education savings accounts (ESAs), etc., still resides with individual states, the Order establishes a process that encourages and enables the states in their efforts to assist parents in the education of their children. There also are a number of components of the Order that could have implications for afterschool and summer learning programs, requiring some adjustments as monies are redirected.
Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M. of the Diocese of Trenton, lauded the Order for recognizing “that parents are the primary educators of their children.” Bishop O’Connell, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, welcomed the Order’s potential impact one that “takes meaningful steps to expand educational freedom for families across the country.” The bishop said, “this Order affirms families who seek to choose faith-based educational options.”
The second Executive Order, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12, aims to end the efforts of schools to “indoctrinate children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.” Its purpose is to ensure schools that receive federal funding “comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in various contexts and protecting parental rights.” The Order primarily addresses gender ideology and “critical race theory,” prohibiting “discriminatory equity ideology” in public schools. It also acknowledged the struggle parents have faced in bringing up their children and in defending them from ideologies they disapprove of. It also prohibits the use of federal funding at public schools to “socially transition” minors from one gender to another.
It is good to see emphasis being placed on parental rights and the rights of children, education reform, religious freedom, and the recognition of biological sex. Government plays a pivotal role in creating safeguards that empower parents to make decisions regarding their children’s education that align with their beliefs, including the choice of religious schooling.
Because the freedom to educate children ultimately belongs to parents, “Government, in consequence, must acknowledge the right of parents to make a genuinely free choice of schools and of other means of education” says Dignitatis humanae.
It emphasizes that:
The use of this freedom of choice is not to be made a reason for imposing unjust burdens on parents, whether directly or indirectly. Besides, the right of parents are violated, if their children are forced to attend lessons or instructions which are not in agreement with their religious beliefs, or if a single system of education, from which all religious formation is excluded, is imposed upon all (no. 5).
Impact of Catholic Education
The Catholic Church in the United States has a long and rich history, dating back to the arrival of Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first Catholic school in the U.S. was started by Franciscan friars in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1606. The first school in the English-speaking colonies was St. Mary’s, which was founded by Jesuit missionaries about 1640 in Newtown, modern-day Maryland. Ursuline Academy of New Orleans, founded in 1727 by the Sisters of the Order of Saint Ursula, is the oldest Catholic school for girls in the United States. And one of the first Catholic schools in Pennsylvania was St. Aloysius Academy, established in 1743, which was open to both Catholic and non-Catholic children and focused on reading, writing, and spelling. About 1782, St. Mary’s parish school in Philadelphia was founded and had paid faculty, a set curriculum, and methods of pupil assessment.
As the Catholic population expanded over the course of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of Catholic schools emerged. Indispensable to this development were the efforts of teaching sisters, including the Sisters of Charity, Felician Sisters, School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Ursulines. As Bishop O’Connell says,
For generations, Catholic schools have enriched America by providing a rigorous education rooted in faith. Our schools are committed to serving all students, regardless of income, and we support policies that ensure families are truly free to choose the educational environment that aligns with their values and meets the needs of their children.
Catholic education is mission-driven and rooted in faith and the command of Jesus who says, “Go and teach all nations” (Mt 28:19-20). A challenge in Catholic education today is ensuring that Catholic identity, culture, and adherence to Catholic teaching are not compromised. Unfortunately, we have experienced and continue to see forces hostile to Christian values placing pressure on Catholic schools and institutions to promote ideologies opposed to Catholic doctrine, which makes Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families necessary.
We believe that all children – Catholic and non-Catholic – are made in the image of a loving God. Through Her institutions, the Catholic Church seeks to accompany each student (and their parents) in reaching their God-given potential – helping them to appreciate that faith and reason are compatible, as well as to cultivate good habits and virtue that will benefit both themselves and the common good.
Sadly, states such as California, New York, and Illinois have been actively defunding charter schools, thwarting efforts for tax-credit scholarships, and blocking school choice legislation. However, several states have expanded school choice programs empowering parents to decide what is best for their children. These states include Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Freedom in education is an extension of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but not necessarily available to all parents. If President Trump accomplishes his goals, it could rejuvenate religious education in the U.S., particularly Catholic schools. With limitations removed, parents would be able to choose a Catholic education that is funded by government as with secular education. If successful it could also provide greater opportunity for new schools to be founded, allowing more educational options for a larger demographic, especially in rural communities that have few options.
While advocates for expanded parental choice applaud these opportunities, those opposed believe this approach will upend public education in America (I believe they are mostly concerned about being prevented from advancing their radical ideologies). This is a real battle for the rights of parents and their children, which must be pursued with urgency.
Marriage and the Primary Role of Parents
Societies once almost universally respected the family and the rights of parents to raise and educate their children, recognizing the family’s unique role. They upheld the principle that parents have an irreplaceable responsibility and are best suited to teach and transmit cultural, social, spiritual, moral, and religious values that are not only essential for the good of the family itself but also are essential for the good of society.
God designed the institution of marriage between a man and a woman as a life-long covenant with two ends: unitive and procreative. The two purposes, the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children, are mutually supportive and never at variance with each other. As Gaudium et spes states, “The unbreakable compact between persons, and the welfare of the children, both demand that the mutual love of the spouses be embodied in a rightly ordered manner” (no. 50). In other words,
These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family. The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2363).
“Marriage and conjugal love,” says Gaudium et spes, “are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage…” As parents they “should regard as their proper mission the task of transmitting human life and educating those to whom it has been transmitted” (no. 50). Because of the inseparability of the two ends of marriage, the begetting of a child is but one part of the picture. There is the second aspect of procreation: the education and upbringing of children, forming them both in the spiritual and temporal life, and helping prepare them for the eternal life. In other words, God has entrusted parents to become instruments of His love and salvation in the lives of their children. It is an inalienable duty and a right.
Matrimony is a conjugal community because it is internally structured as the place naturally designed by God to receive new human lives and to care for and attend to their development. As Pope St. John Paul II says,
With the creation of man and woman in His own image and likeness, God crowns and brings to perfection the work of His hands: He calls them to a special sharing in His love and in His power as Creator and Father, through their free and responsible cooperation in transmitting the gift of human life (Familiaris consortio, no. 28).
Through this exclusive and indissoluble union there is ordering to the transmission of new life. “Thus, the fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator—that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person” (no. 28).
Hence, the Church teaches that “since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators” (Gravissimum educationis, no. 3). The family is vital to the moral and social formation of young people, and the role of education is a key obligation of parents. As Gravissimum educationis continues to say,
Parents are the ones who must create a family atmosphere animated by love and respect for God and man, in which the well-rounded personal and social education of children is fostered. Hence the family is the first school of the social virtues that every society needs (no. 3).
A natural aspect of the vocation of marriage is the right and duty of parents to provide education, since it is intimately connected with the transmission of human life. Because of this unique relationship between parents and their children, their role in education, which is both inalienable and irreplaceable, cannot be entirely delegated to others or usurped. Moreover, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church insists that all education be directed to the proper formation of the human person “in view of his final end” (no. 242). In other words, a God-less education is unacceptable.
Though the Church upholds the primary responsibility of parents in the education and upbringing of their children, it sees Catholic schools as vital contributors that assist parents in their task of catechesis and moral formation. Parents may obtain the help of others or institutions in the education of their children, but these always remain secondary, answerable to parents as principal educators. As the Compendium states,
Parents have the right to choose the formative tools that respond to their convictions and to seek those means that will help them best to fulfill their duty as educators, in the spiritual and religious sphere also (no. 240).
In Sum
The relationship between Catholic education and the state has taken a variety of forms in the United States at different times in our history. The proper role of government is to provide, with the support of the Church, a moral framework in which the human person can flourish, fulfilling their vocation. And in seeing its proper role as serving human persons – individuals and the family – government’s aim is to assist people to use their God-given freedom to seek truth and return to Him.
The government’s role, as well as all social institutions, is directed toward both serving and assisting each human person and the family to fulfill their vocation. It is to assist parents in their role and duties, providing reasonable aid, and never in any way to limit the freedom of couples in deciding about their children – who with love for their children know what is best for them. This implies that parents should have the individual autonomy to raise their children outside of government control. Acting in any other regard, the state oversteps its rights and would “constitute a grave offense against human dignity and justice” (Charter of the Rights of the Family, Article 3).
It is my hope that the Trump administration will continue its support of parents, who have shared in the begetting of human life, and have a duty to nourish the gift of life entrusted to their care through education and formation.