Law Commons^™

Recovering Subsidiarity In Family Life Education, Karen Jordan

Karen A. Jordan

This article provides a rigorous analysis of the legitimacy of continuing to rely on and promote school-based family life education, as a way of addressing concerns associated with sexual activity by adolescents. The issue is crucial because empirical evidence strongly suggests that a school-based approach, regardless of curricular content, has failed. For reasons grounded in law and policy, this article advocates that states should retreat from school-based family life education and, instead, recover the insights of the philosophical principle of subsidiarity. Recovering subsidiarity means fully respecting and giving effect to the parental right and duty to educate children in matters …