Sermon Blog
The Role of Parents in Education
November 22, 2025
Those of us who are husbands and fathers can confirm what on the other hand we learn from common sense: Parents are the primary educators of their children, meaning they are the first and the most important. It is a role that parents receive from the beginning. Every choice on the part of a child’s mother or father is part of this education, so much of it learned by observation, especially in the early years. As founding rector of The Oratory School, an English public school, St. John Henry Newman helped the parents of his students understand their role: to know and therefore to love their children into maturity.
It’s an established fact in psychology, and in many other fields, that the early years of a child’s life are a critical stage of development. If certain skills are not learned early—delay of gratification for example— it is hard to learn them as an adult. These early years set the tone for the later years, and it is these early years when children learn everything from their parents. As the teachers, parents are effective to the degree that they know their children and therefore know the difference between real tears and crocodile tears, notice when they are ill even though a doctor might not detect it, and can discern how to administer a just punishment. And these children learn in turn by being known. Author Scott Peck writes: “The parents who devote time to their children even when it is not demanded by glaring misdeeds will perceive in them subtle needs for discipline, to which they will respond with gentle urging or reprimand or structure or praise, administered with thoughtfulness and care” (23).
Newman wanted to help parents to understand their children, to know them well, especially since the boys were away at school. His regular term reports, rare at the time, kept parents intimately informed of their boy’s progress because he expected parents to make decisions that would be in the boy’s best interests. He saw his students as boys and also as individuals, so Paul Shrimpton has noted: “While emphasizing the importance of study, Newman was equally sensitive to the boys’ need for play and free time, and his automatic reaction to parents who asked for extra lessons was to remind them of the boys’ reluctance to forfeit time outside classes” (198-199).
As the primary educators, parents have a great responsibility, yet they don’t awake with an understanding of how to do it well. On the contrary, it takes great effort. In their role, they need support and education. Newman strove to educate parents however he could: “A theme Newman repeatedly emphasized to parents was the need for patience with their sons. He calmed their eagerness for quick gains, insisting that the phases of growing up be respected and that irritating passing habits be overlooked. Boys could not be forced like plants; each would bear flower and fruit in his own season.”
Today, many forces seek to remove parents as primary educators, including national and state governments, political organizations, the secular entertainment industry, and many corporations who have profit as their only motive. Each of these would like to directly influence children without the interference of parents, to recruit members to their movements, to make them loyal subjects of the state, to hook them with digital technology, to fashion them into consumers.
The Church reminds us that every man and woman is made in the image of God; Our dignity lies not in our usefulness to others but in our very nature as God’s creatures and children. Our parents, who love us for simply being their children, are the first to teach us this essential lesson. They point us to our Heavenly Father, whose love for us is unsurpassed. We want our children and others to know this love of Father God. Let us ask for the intercession of St. John Henry Newman, recently named co-Patron Saint of Education, to help us know how to educate our children, or how to help others support theirs.
Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled.
Shrimpton, Paul. A Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School.
