Preserving the Role of Parents
September 21, 2023
Parents are waking up to a lamentable reality: School districts are embracing controversial curriculum flowing downstream of America’s broader culture. But perhaps the more problematic detail is that places like Montgomery County are denying parents the right to opt their students out of these lessons. Just last month, a federal court in Maryland ruled that students must participate in curriculum featuring LGBTQ+ content starting as young as Pre-K. Parents across diverse religious traditions have united to push back against what they consider to be indoctrination. They’ve been fighting for the parental choice to opt out, and for the time being, they’ve lost. It seems Montgomery County public schools deny parental authority when it comes to their child’s education. This raises the question; what should be the role of parents in their child’s education?
At ACE, it’s our belief that the responsibility of a child’s education belongs firstly to his or her parents. In the book of Proverbs, parents are instructed to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22:6) Parents possess an intrinsic power, designed by God, to influence their children in a uniquely profound way. The authority of parents is primary, while the authority of their child’s school is secondary.
When parents entrust their children to the care of a school, they are merely delegating a particular job for a particular purpose to that school. The role of the institution, therefore, is not to supplant parents under the guise of education; it is to support and collaborate with parents for the sake of children’s education. A school’s authority, whether public or private, has been granted in each child’s life by his or her parents – it is derivative and it has limits.
A disordered educational institution tries to demote parents from their natural place. It acts in the life of a student without respect given to whose primary care he or she is under. As in the case of Montgomery County, fathers and mothers are seemingly disregarded. A rightly ordered educational institution, however, honors the authority of parents in a child’s life. A healthy school educates with transparency and acts in the life of a student with appropriate consideration for parental input.
ACE is committed to being a place where parents are esteemed as the first and primary influence in their child’s life. Parents carry the responsibility to opt into an educational partnership with teachers and administrators committed to preserving their role as parents… At ACE, we honor and welcome your presence, your participation, your voices, and your freedom to choose how to teach Family Life education.
Madeleine O’Neill, “Parents Lose Challenge to Gender Guidelines at Montgomery County Public Schools,” Maryland Daily Record, accessed September 20, 2023, https://thedailyrecord.com/2023/08/15/parents-lose-challenge-to-gender-guidelines-at-moco-public-schools/.