In his “Letter to Families,” St. John Paul II wrote: “Parents are the first and most important educators of their own children, and they also possess a fundamental competence in this area: they are educators because they are parents” (16).
While the saint wasn’t saying that parents are the only educators of their children, this quote highlights the reality that parents are the most important educators of their children. This is a privilege that, as a parent, can be a challenge to navigate.
Parents desire to give their children the best, but oftentimes what parents find available in our culture is not the ideal. And thus, parents are left with choosing from imperfect options how to raise their children and who to allow to help raise their children. One of the most important things a parent should remember though is this: There are options to consider and choices to be made, and while the perfect option likely does not exist, each parent has the responsibility to discern what is best for their own child.
A parent’s responsibility
Chris Motz, member of the Cathedral of Saint Joseph Parish and lawyer with a national religious freedom law firm, says, “Parents, as the natural and primary educators, bear the God-given duty to form their children in faith, virtue and truth.”
This reality is a huge responsibility for parents. It means that “parents hold primary responsibility for their children’s holistic formation—spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical—before any other institution,” Chris says.
According to Chris, this happens organically as families live together and share life and love. Parents have the opportunity to witness to their children each day in the small and big joys and sacrifices of life.
This does not mean that parents can and should be the only influences on their child’s life. Every child benefits from having many healthy, faithful adults in their life, but a parent’s role should not be underestimated. “They can, and often do, delegate portions of this role to others, but they can never give away their ultimate responsibility,” Chris says.
Many families choose to send their children to school and to delegate a significant amount of time and academics to outside the home. Thus, “The Church teaches the government must ensure accessible, quality education for all as a basic right, respect parental freedom and subsidiarity, and assist families in imparting moral and religious formation,” Chris says.
The Church’s stance on education is simply that there should be options to choose from for a parent, whether home school, private, public or a hybrid model, and that it is the parents prerogative to discern what is best in their specific situation and for their child to partake in.
“[Children] are gifts from God, and their parents have the inalienable right to direct their upbringing, including in the choice of schools,” Chris says. “The Church has been very strong in defending this right.”
Making a choice
For many parents, knowing there are and should be choices for their child’s education doesn’t help that much. It can be a difficult and confusing choice to make. Chris offers two nuggets of wisdom to consider when choosing a schooling method.
The first is that school does not just educate the mind, it forms the person. “[A]cademics cannot be isolated from the whole person; education forms mind, heart, soul and body together,” Chris says. “Schools shape children through community, values and relationships, not just knowledge. Importantly, they are meant to shape who and what we love.”
Thus, close attention should be paid to the whole experience a child is receiving at school. It’s not just about what they’re learning in class, but also what they are encountering at recess, at the lunch table, how their classmates treat them and each other, etc.
The second consideration Chris highlights is the witness of teachers. “There’s a saying that ‘teachers are the curriculum,’” he says. “Of course, subject matter is important, but the point is that teachers are the irreplaceable torchbearers and models for faith in Catholic schools [specifically]. If they are deeply rooted in Christ, if they see him as the logos who is revealed in all that is true, good and beautiful, and if they are serious about promoting a community culture grounded in love and freedom, this is tremendously attractive to the human heart.”
Thus, a parent should consider choosing a school that is going to provide witnesses of virtue and that is always going to lead toward the beauty and wonder of truth.
“Parents should choose schools that integrate faith and reason, fostering a child’s integral growth in freedom for love,” Chris says. This does not mean it has to be a religious school, but looking for teachers who model Christ-like virtue and love is essential to a learning environment for children.
For Catholic schools specifically, Chris thinks the teachers hold the key to attracting families and communities to consider their school and to providing a rich and faithful environment. “[I]n my view, it is teachers who can be called and empowered as missionaries. If teachers deeply love the Lord, their students and their subject matter, the school community will be rooted and attractive.”
The reality
In a secular and modern culture no longer grounded in Christ or natural law, finding a school like this can be difficult. It has steered many to consider home schooling or private schools. In keeping with the Church’s view that parents should have options available to them to fill this need, the Church stands behind government subsidies of private schools and home studies to help make multiple options available to parents.
“In order to ensure the true liberty of parents in their choice of schools, the government should subsidize these choices without monopolizing, and must avoid ideologies that undermine faith,” Chris says. “[E]ven with the saintly generosity of teachers and parishes, the lack of strong parent choice policy is a real obstacle to ensuring every family who wants Catholic school has it as an option.”
If you are a parent discerning the educational options of your own children, Chris says the book “The Heart of Culture: A Brief History of Western Education” has helped him and his wife “discern how the Lord is calling us to educate our own children. Parents can discern through prayer, consultation with pastors, educators and other Catholic parents, and reflection on the purpose of education.”
At the end of the day, parents can rest in the peace that even if they struggle with the discernment of where to send their children to school and don’t have an ideal option available, the most important thing they can give their children is their own witness to the faith and their unconditional love to their children and spouse.
