The 250-year American experiment in non-sectarian education has failed

Our public education system has not only undermined religion in the United States, it has replaced religion with socio-political ideology.

Growing antisemitic tensions on university campuses, the ‘colorblindness’ trap, and elementary school illiteracy are further proof that the 250-year American experiment in publicly funded, non-sectarian education has failed.

As Archbishop John Ireland recognized a hundred years ago, there is no such thing as non-sectarian education. The Bible-based curriculums of 19th-century American public schools were gradually replaced by the 20th-century ‘religions’ of political ideology, leaving us with 21st-century immorality, ignorance, hyper-individualism, and civil disorder.

Education, by its very nature, is sectarian and therefore religious, because education forms the intellect and will, which are faculties of the soul. The human person is created by God with a desire to develop these faculties in accordance with truth. But because The Fall clouded our intellects and weakened our wills, we need divine revelation. Religion encompasses the practices and beliefs that respond to and integrate revealed truths. We can acquire knowledge through our senses and reason, but we need guides—teachers to instruct, train, and morally direct us.

The great historian Christopher Dawson observed that religion is what gives structure and impetus to society because religion provides the primary ideas of society. These ideas direct our culture, our traditions, our work, and form the way we think about ourselves and how we ought to use our environmental resources for the common good. Therefore, all education, especially the formation of youth, ought to be rooted in religious ideas, guided by parents, who have the primary authority to educate their children, and teachers, who assist parents in this supremely important duty.

Thus, parishes and schools work together as the cultural hub of family life in any society and the education they provide must be deeply rooted in religious instruction because religion informs us about how we fit into society, who we are, what we are meant to accomplish with our lives, and how we find true happiness. Society does well to empower, not penalize, parents to elect the sectarian education of their choice…