Posted on 06/23/2010 4:47:10 AM PDT by tcg
One of the important public policy issues making its way through the Courts is "school choice" or more accurately, "Parental Choice" - since parents are the ones who should make the educational decision for their children. The unwillingness of those in charge of the Federal Educational Bureaucracy to consider this approach at a time when we all know the educational system is broken exposes the difference between rhetoric and reality.
To support "Parental Choice in Education" is to affirm that Parents are the ones who should be able to make the choice of how to best extend their own teaching mission outside of the home. The proper role of Government is to support the first government in the home. Rather than focus on the word "School" - which is then used to arouse a "public" school vs. "private" school debate - we should use the term "Parental Choice". After all, it is Parents who are the first teachers of their children and the family is the first school.
This is where the coming policy debate should focus. We are not against government. We simply maintain that government begins in the family. Good governance recognizes the first government of the family and follows the social ordering and good governance principle of subsidiarity by deferring to the smallest governing unit; not usurping but empowering and helping families. The current overly federalized approach to education in the United States is failing.
... The primacy of marriage - and the family founded upon it - as the first cell of society, the first church, first government, first school, first hospital, first economy, and the first mediating institution of the broader society is at the heart of Catholic Social Thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
ping
If I sit down at the government’s table, I have no grounds for complaining about the menu. What it feeds me, I must swallow.
Responsible parents save themselves a lot of frustration and grief, by educating their own kids.
Thanks for posting. Very interesting. The family...the greatest collective in the history of civilization.
Parents do have choices. They can enroll their kids in public schools. They can enroll their kids in private schools. They can home school.
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