Introduction
A conceptual inversion has taken hold in contemporary public debate on education — one that demands reassessment from a strictly legal perspective. With increasing frequency, the State and the school are cast as the primary agents responsible for a child’s education, while the family is relegated to a secondary, merely supportive or logistical role. This view, widespread in both administrative practice and certain pedagogical discourses, is difficult to reconcile with a systematic reading of the Argentine legal framework and the federal constitutional rights bloc.
The right to education, recognized as a fundamental human right by the National Constitution and international treaties with constitutional status (Art. 75, Sec. 22, CN), cannot be reduced to schooling or to an institutional service. On the contrary, it is a comprehensive process oriented toward the full development of the person — encompassing intellectual, ethical, social, and cultural dimensions — which necessarily begins within the family and extends, in a complementary manner, into the formal educational system (Arts. 28 and 29, Convention on the Rights of the Child).
From this perspective, the family constitutes the primary educator of the individual, while the State and the school — whether public or private — serve a complementary, subsidiary, and rights-guaranteeing function. Building on this premise, this article aims to define with precision the legal scope of parental responsibility, the structural limits of the school’s function, and the legal status of institutional ethos in private education.
I. Public Education and the Educational System: State-Run and Private Management
A proper understanding of the family’s role in education requires, as a starting point, a distinction between public education and state-managed education. Under Argentine law, education is defined as «public» by its purpose, its place within the national educational system, and its orientation toward fulfilling the right to education — not by the identity of the entity that administers it.
Both state-managed and privately managed education form part of the public education system, insofar as they are recognized, authorized, and supervised by the competent authority and oriented toward ensuring minimum educational standards under the National Education Act (Law 26,206). This coexistence reflects a pluralist conception of the right to education and operates as a safeguard against the concentration of educational authority in the hands of the State.
Privately managed education — particularly that organized around a defined institutional ethos — enables families to channel their educational role by choosing formative projects aligned with their convictions, in the exercise of the freedom of instruction and the right and duty to educate, recognized by both domestic law and international human rights instruments.
II. The Legal Distinction Between Instruction and Education
One of the central conceptual errors in contemporary educational debate is the conflation of education with schooling. From a legal standpoint, it is essential to distinguish between two distinct — though complementary — dimensions of the formative process.
On one hand, schooling or instruction encompasses the systematic transmission of technical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, as well as the development of cognitive and social competencies. This is the specific function that the family entrusts to the school — whether through a contractual relationship in the private sector or through access to the public educational service in the state-managed sector.
On the other hand, education in its full sense refers to the comprehensive formation of the person, encompassing the transmission of values, the development of a worldview, ethical growth, and the shaping of character. This function is intimately tied to parental responsibility and is non-delegable at its core, as it forms part of the inherent rights and duties of those who exercise such responsibility (Arts. 638 et seq., Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation).
Conflating these two dimensions leads to attributing to the school a responsibility that exceeds its proper function and, correspondingly, to eroding the family’s educational role — in direct contradiction with the existing normative framework.
III. The Family as Primary Educator and Parental Responsibility
The family is the primary educator not merely for chronological reasons, but for structural and normative ones. Education begins before any institutional intervention and develops, at its core, within the family through ongoing bonds of care, authority, and responsibility.
Parental responsibility, as conceived under Argentine law, is not a delegation from the State or a function derived from the educational system. It is an original, inherent, and non-delegable set of rights and duties — including the formative guidance of children, decision-making on educational matters, and support for their integral development, with progressive respect for their autonomy (Arts. 638, 639, et seq., CCCN; Art. 5, Convention on the Rights of the Child).
This does not mean ignoring the State’s positive obligations in education, nor excluding its intervention when rights violations, serious failures of parental duties, or threats to a child’s best interests arise, within the applicable constitutional and treaty-based framework.
From this perspective, the relationship between family and school is neither symmetrical nor horizontal. The family leads and guides the educational process; the school complements it through systematic instruction and broader socialization. Inverting this order means disregarding the legal nature of parental responsibility and disrupting the balance inherent to the constitutional educational system.
IV. The School’s Function and Its Institutional Limits
The school — whether state-run or privately managed — plays an essential role in the educational system, but that role is necessarily limited. Its legitimacy derives from its technical capacity to transmit knowledge, develop cognitive competencies, and facilitate structured socialization within an institutional framework.
To expect the school to assume full responsibility for the educational process is to demand functions for which it was neither designed nor legally authorized. The comprehensive formation of the person cannot be fully institutionalized or reduced to standardized curricular programs.
Attributing to the school the status of primary educator not only lacks sufficient legal grounding — it also produces dysfunctional outcomes: it dilutes parental responsibility, overburdens the school with demands beyond its proper function, and encourages educational bureaucratization.
This functional delimitation does not minimize the role of the educational system or relativize the State’s duty to guarantee access, quality, and equal opportunity in education. Rather, it clarifies each actor’s proper scope within a framework of differentiated and complementary responsibilities.
V. Neutrality, Pluralism, and Parental Authority
A frequently invoked argument for placing the school at the center of education is the supposed axiological neutrality of the school — particularly in the state-managed sector. However, from a legal standpoint, absolute neutrality is unattainable.
All education involves the selection of content, the prioritization of knowledge, and the implicit transmission of values. In this context, the family’s educational authority acquires central importance as a legitimate space for comprehensive formative guidance.
The neutrality required of the State does not consist in imposing a uniform moral framework or stripping the educational process of all value content. Rather, it consists in ensuring that no particular worldview is coercively imposed by public authority. Parents do not forfeit their educational authority by enrolling their children in school; they retain the right and duty to ensure that the formative process is compatible with their convictions, within the framework of respect for the child’s fundamental rights (Art. 12.4, American Convention on Human Rights).
This supervisory authority cannot be understood as an individual veto over mandatory curricular content established by law, but rather as a right to information, institutional coherence, and freedom from the coercive imposition of views incompatible with the constitutional framework.
VI. Institutional Ethos and Private Education
In privately managed education, the relationship between family and school is legally structured through the institutional ethos — a foundational element of the educational project and of the legal relationship between the parties. Far from being a mere programmatic statement or a communications tool, the institutional ethos defines the axiological, pedagogical, and organizational framework within which educational activity takes place.
From a legal standpoint, the institutional ethos serves a threefold function. First, it operates as a concrete expression of the freedom of instruction and the institutional autonomy of private educational establishments. Second, it functions as a benchmark for informed choice by families, who can verify whether the school’s educational project is consistent with the formative orientation of the home. Third, it constitutes a relevant criterion for defining the scope of State supervisory authority, which cannot translate into an axiological homogenization incompatible with educational pluralism.
The legal recognition of the institutional ethos does not imply the existence of educational spaces exempt from State regulation. On the contrary, supervisory and oversight powers must be exercised in a reasonable, proportionate, and pluralism-respecting manner — without translating into an axiological uniformity incompatible with the freedom of instruction and the right of families to choose their children’s educational project.
This autonomy finds its limits in respect for the fundamental rights of the child, the child’s best interests, and compliance with public educational law. Within these bounds, the institutional ethos is a key mechanism for guaranteeing genuine educational pluralism and for preserving the family’s primary educational function against undue State intervention.
Conclusion
Education is not a function to be delegated or a service to be entirely outsourced to schools. It is a comprehensive process that begins within the family and extends, in a complementary way, into the school and society.
The family is the primary educator because it is the only setting capable of taking responsibility for the integral formation of a person across all dimensions. The school plays an indispensable — but limited — role: to instruct, complement, and support, not to replace or absorb the family’s educational function.
Any educational model that inverts this order places parental responsibility under strain, diminishes the school’s proper role, and ultimately weakens the very right to education as conceived under the constitutional framework.
