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Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the
most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be
recognized as the primary and principal educators.[11] This role
in education is so important that only with difficulty can it be
supplied where it is lacking. Parents are the ones who must create a
family atmosphere animated by love and respect for God and man, in
which the well-rounded personal and social education of children is
fostered. Hence the family is the first school of the social virtues
that every society needs. It is particularly in the Christian
family, enriched by the grace and office of the sacrament of
matrimony, that children should be taught from their early years to
have a knowledge of God according to the faith received in Baptism,
to worship Him, and to love their neighbor. Here, too, they find
their first experience of a wholesome human society and of the Church.
Finally, it is through the family that they are gradually led to a
companionship with their fellowmen and with the people of God. Let
parents, then, recognize the inestimable importance a truly Christian
family has for the life and progress of God's own people.[12]
The family which has the primary duty of imparting education needs help
of the whole community. In addition, therefore, to the rights of
parents and others to whom the parents entrust a share in the work of
education, certain rights and duties belong indeed to civil society,
whose role is to direct what is required for the common temporal good.
Its function is to promote the education of youth in many ways,
namely: to protect the duties and rights of parents and others who
share in education and to give them aid; according to the principle of
subsidiarity, when the endeavors of parents and other societies are
lacking, to carry out the work of education in accordance with the
wishes of the parents; and, moreover, as the common good demands, to
build schools and institutions.[13]
Finally, in a special way, the duty of educating belongs to the
Church, not merely because she must be recognized as a human society
capable of educating, but especially because she has the responsibility
of announcing the way of salvation to all men, of communicating the
life of Christ to those who believe, and, in her unfailing
solicitude, of assisting men to be able to come to the fullness of this
life.[14] The Church is bound as a mother to give to these
children of hers an education by which their whole life can be imbued
with the spirit of Christ and at the same time do all she can to
promote for all peoples the complete perfection of the human person,
the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more
human.[15]
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