This new chapter of the Small Manual of Civility sets out important principles of authority. When a parent sends a child to school, he is delegating his natural authority to the teacher. In effect, he tells his son, respect and obey your teacher as you would respect and obey me. In times past, when parents sent their son to a Catholic school, he could assume that his child would be formed according to sound principles and learn virtues well as reading and math.

Since Vatican II, this is no longer the case. Often, the Catholic schools are breeding grounds for social activism; instead of the Catholic Catechism, students have Comparative Religion classes to learn tolerance for all religions. The sex education classes also can be more explicit and vulgar than those in public schools, where at least the parents still retain the option to have their child “opt out” of them.

It is important for parents to inspect not only the course material their children will learn, but also know about the morals and character of the teachers. Entrusting a child to the authority of a teacher sends the implicit message to the child that he can trust and admire that person. If the teacher’s values and thinking are different from the parents, this can create conflict in the child and in the home. One can easily understand why so many Catholic parents today have resorted to home-schooling or alternative Catholic schools that use the Baltimore Catechism and demand a proper respect for authority. Thus the parental authority is affirmed and strengthened, instead of contradicted and weakened.