On March 11, newly appointed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon reduced the staff of the Department of Education (ED) by nearly 50%. As predicted per his previous promises, Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20 to dismantle the Department of Education. McMahon recently defended $12 billion in cuts in the ED budget for FY2026. While this gives hope to many for better education in the United States, a cultural change is what is really required for education to significantly improve.
Unlike the bureaucratic top-down methods by which education has been corrupted, the cultural change needs to take place at a local level. And it needs to start with parents and teachers standing up for their right to teach.
Parents Are The Primary Educators
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4)
Whether based on Holy Scripture, moral intuition, or the teachings of a church, it is generally accepted that parents are the primary educators of their children. Linda McMahon is a professed Roman Catholic, and she echoed this sentiment when she gave her beautiful speech titled “Our Department’s Final Mission.” She gave the first of the Department of Education’s “primary convictions”:
“Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.”
Marriage is naturally oriented toward the procreation and education of children. In early years, parents perform all the duties of educating their children in manners, language, culture, religion, etc. As children grow older, parents typically choose to partner with schools and teachers in this task. It may seem an exaggeration to call parents the “primary educators.” Even if parents only formally educate for the first few years, entrusting teachers and schools with this task in later years, the parental role as primary educator never stops. It extends beyond the first few years, though it will not always feel like education. This is manifested in three ways.
First, parents should never outright surrender the education of their children to anyone. The responsibility to educate always remains that of the parents, at least to ensure that their children are being educated well. Implicit in this is that schools ought to make an effort to partner with parents, and parents must make an effort to partner with schools. Otherwise, parents neglect their responsibility as educators and therefore as parents. Schools that do not provide avenues for this partnership neglect their duty to the parents.
Second, parents should actively provide ongoing education to their children until they reach adulthood. Moral and spiritual formation is part of this active education. Good parents speak regularly with their children about important topics like religion, friendship, and sexuality. Regular, age-appropriate discussions with their children about these topics are essential to a child’s moral and spiritual formation. Parents also provide for this education by proactively fostering a good family culture (family dinners, family outings, family traditions, etc.).
Third, children learn many, many things from their parents without parents realizing it. The example of parents is extremely influential, for better or worse. Children resemble their parents, not just in looks, but in behavior. Any schoolteacher will often hear the opinions of parents expressed through the mouths of children. This can range from political opinions about the economy to the non-utility of learning Latin. A good example is given by deeds as well. The priorities parents live by, the spiritual habits they employ, and the type of friends they have—all of these contribute to the formation of a child’s understanding of the way things should be. Children are always listening, watching, and learning.
Schools Forget the Parents
Public education began in this country in the 1800s with good intentions but with a faulty understanding of the role of parents, the role of teachers, and human nature. The first man to bring a system of public education to the United States was the utopian socialist Robert Owen. He saw the enemies of human happiness as marriage, private property, and religion. Owen believed that his schools needed to remove children from the hands of parents as early as possible because parents were incompetent. The Prussian system of education, influenced by some of the ideas of Robert Owen, was based on the same premise. This is relevant because Horace Mann, “Father of American Public Education,” brought Prussia’s system to the United States.
“Child-centered” education is a buzzword in educational circles today. This idea originates with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and has taken various forms since the 18th century. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Horace Mann, Maria Montessori, Charlotte Mason, and John Dewey all called for child-centered education. Not all these people had unjustifiable philosophies of education because it is true that the child should be at the center of education. But the problem is when focus is placed on children, and parents and teachers are left out.
Most schools today fail in their obligation to partner with parents in the education of children. Teachers can go an entire year without meeting the parents of the children they teach. Teachers and parents alike often dread parent-teacher conferences and the extra work these can entail. A teacher is doomed to failure if they only know a child as the occupant of this particular desk in their classroom.
On the other hand, teachers succeed when they know the parents of children and truly act in loco parentis (“in the place of the parents”), treating students like a good father or mother treats their children.
Teachers Are a School’s Most Valuable Resource
Christopher Dawson defines “education” in his excellent book The Crisis of Western Civilization:
“…education in the widest sense of the word is what the anthropologists term ‘enculturation,’ i.e., the process by which culture is handed on by the society and acquired by the individual.”
If a teacher is to be a true educator, one who “encultures” the youth, he or she must be a cultured individual. A teacher will fail to educate his or her students insofar as the teacher falls short of being cultured.
Enculturation is a lifelong pursuit, and teachers should commit themselves to this on a personal level through study. Teachers who study their areas of expertise and seek to deepen their learning in all areas of knowledge do their job well. A life committed to the pursuit of a deeper grasp of truth, appreciation of beauty, and commitment to the good is an essential aspect of the beautiful vocation of a teacher.
Schools Forget the Teachers
Instead, teachers are usually enslaved to standards.
Schools tend to micromanage a teacher’s job because education is managed from the top-down through nationwide or statewide standards or test prep requirements. If these standards are followed or test performance is adequate, schools are eligible for more grant money from the government. This is how the Department of Education has historically been able to exert power over schools.
No amount of micromanaging can ensure that true education (true passing on of culture) happens in the classroom. Whatever is micromanaged by schools does not deserve the name of education but perhaps “indoctrination” instead.
Schools must rely on teachers to do their job and give them the freedom to do it. If a school needs to micromanage a teacher’s job in order for the teacher to do it well, that teacher is unqualified to teach. Or (more likely), the school has a misunderstanding of “teaching well.”
Initiative, passion, and inspiration can only arise in the context of freedom. Freeing teachers from the shackles of standards and weekly lesson plans would, however, put some administrators out of a job. For true progress, sacrifices need to be made.
Changes at the Local Level
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution says the following:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
On paper, at least, it is states that determine their own educational standards and requirements for public schools. But the Department of Education grants over $500 billion annually to schools and districts that meet their standards. And in this case, money is power.
Parents and teachers have been sidelined from education in large part due to the bureaucratization of education. From the perspective of a large governing body, rules and regulations are the way to guarantee anything is successful. This does not work in the case of education. The prudence of parents and teachers is the only way for a given child’s education to be successful.
For this reason, individual schools will need to take up the task of placing the reins of education back into the hands of parents and teachers.
Conclusion
We need good parents who are committed to their obligation as primary educators and schools that are committed to assisting in this. We need cultured teachers, ever striving to be more so, who understand their role as vessels of culture for their students. And we need schools and school leaders with an understanding of education as enculturation, aware of our cultural heritage, and committed to passing on the culture of Western Civilization.