One of the points most strongly emphasized in the two great encyclicals of Pius XI on Christian Marriage (Casti Connubii) and The Christian Education of Youth (Divini Illius Magistri) is that the foundation of true education is the family. That is where education begins and where the ground of human personality is first prepared for its full growth to maturity. If this basic education is missing or defective all further education is liable to be like building an elaborate superstructure on faulty and insecure foundations or trying to cultivate plants in poisoned or exhausted soil.

Unfortunately there seems to be a growing tendency, even among practising Catholics, to shift the responsibility for the basic education of the young from the family circle to the school. A tendency to imagine that the good nuns or other teachers from the infant school onwards, will do all that is necessary in the way of teaching religion. It is almost taken for granted in consequence that the father and mother, and elder brothers and sisters, have no immediate concern with the religious atmosphere in which the younger children are growing up.