The family side of school

Rome, Thursday 5 March 2020
Every year the Center for Legal Studies on the Family (CSGF) organizes an interdisciplinary day of legal anthropology of marriage and the family. The planning of these days in the heart of our Center, which operates within the Faculty of Canon Law of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, finds its inspiration in the centrality of the legal context - that is, true justice - as the intrinsic reality of family relationships. Such study days are therefore, focused on family law and founded on the very essence of marriage and the family.
Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation on love in the family, deals with the importance «to reiterate that the overall education of children is a “most serious duty” and at the same time a “primary right” of parents. This is not just a task or a burden, but an essential and inalienable right that parents are called to defend and of which no one may claim to deprive them. The State offers educational programs in a subsidiary way, supporting the parents in their indeclinable role; parents themselves enjoy the right to choose freely the kind of education – accessible and of good quality – which they wish to give their children in accordance with their convictions. Schools do not replace parents, but complement them» (AL 84).
This is what we would like to emphasize in this third interdisciplinary day, where the focus will be on the "family side of school" – to be explored from a legal, pedagogical, psychological, and sociological perspective. In addition to the legal sector, the study day is addressed to pedagogical experts, family associations, and the school sector in general.