Dear Editor,
My thanks to Name Withheld (Letters, June en) for responding to ‘The Educational Pincer Movement’ (May en). I appreciate the chance to interact on this crucial subject. I take the basic question to be ‘Who is ultimately responsible for the upbringing and education of a child?’ The answer, I hope we’d agree, is the child’s parents. Related questions are ‘Who has emergency powers of intervention if a child isn’t being educated?’ and ‘How are these powers to be exercised?’ The current policy conversation jumps straight to these secondary questions, makes them primary, and answers them in a way which undermines the parent-child relationship. Emergency government powers subtly become a ‘right’ to know about each child, and presumptive involvement with families. This should concern Christians deeply.
My correspondent did not address the basis of my argument: the clear Biblical witness to the primacy of parenthood in the education of children. This is something we must understand and prize, for the world around us does neither. We must recover what some have called ‘sphere sovereignty’ – the idea that the Lord has created differentiated spheres of authority – the state, the church, the family, etc. These domains are independent, and no sphere may usurp the God-given prerogatives of another. Yet this is what is happening as the UK state expands into civil society.
