Universal Statement on Education Freedom and Responsibility

Universal Statement on Education Freedom and Responsibility
7/16/2025

In 2025, a group of respected American educators and experts articulated the Phoenix Declaration, intended to delineate “the responsibility of America’s parents, educators, and policymakers to recommit ourselves to the central purposes of education.” 

We believe within the document are aspects that are universal to all free communities and sovereign nations. We have, therefore, adapted this declaration for a global audience. We recognize the diversity of educational systems around the world. Rightly, the structure of education ought to be a prerogative of national sovereignty and should rightfully reflect the values, priorities, traditions, and culture of the people of and their land. Nevertheless, educating is a fundamental human activity. The “central purpose of education is to transmit humanity’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom, as well as our nation’s particular culture and heritage, to the next generation.” 

Therefore, there must be elements of an authentic and constructive educational experience that are fundamental to all free peoples, the foundation of healthy communities, nations, and societies that promote human flourishing.

We believe:
Education is the cornerstone of individual opportunity, family flourishing, and national prosperity. Every child should have access to a high-quality, content-rich education that fosters the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, so that they may achieve their full, God-given potential. Schools must work alongside parents to prepare children for the responsibilities of adulthood, including their familial and civic responsibilities, by cultivating excellence in mind and heart.
Schools should equip students with the knowledge, character, and skills necessary to succeed in life as individuals and to fulfill their obligations as members of their families, local communities, and country. In order to empower families, advance educational excellence, transmit culture, tradition, and foundational values, we believe the following principles should guide families, schools, policymakers, and responsible officials:

Parental Roles and Responsibilities. Parents are the primary educators of their children. Policies should respect the right and high duty of parents to raise their children and make decisions about their children's education.

Transparency and Accountability. Schools, as secondary educators, should work with parents, not attempt to serve as replacements for them. Schools have a responsibility to be transparent with parents about what their children are being taught and how their children are performing. Schools must never have misguided policies that hide information from parents about their children’s mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. The highest form of accountability is when schools are answerable directly to well-informed parents.

Truth and Goodness. Education must be grounded in truth. Students should learn that there is objective truth and that it is knowable. Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads. Students should learn that good and evil exist, and that human beings have the capacity and duty to choose good.
Cultural Transmission. A central purpose of education is to transmit humanity’s
accumulated knowledge and wisdom, as well as particular culture and heritage, to the next generation. A civilization survives only if it intentionally transmits its history, traditions, and values—including its yet unrealized aspirations—to the next generation.

True progress comes only by building on what has been learned and achieved in the
past. Students should therefore learn about founding principles and roots in the broader civilizational traditions. Students should study the best that has been thought and said, engaging in the great conversation among the competing viewpoints that comprise our intellectual heritage, so that they freely make the best views their own.

Character Formation. Education must prepare children for the challenges and
responsibilities of adulthood. That endeavor entails much more than merely preparing students for a career. A proper education is focused on the full formation of a child, particularly the child’s character. Education should cultivate the virtues and discipline necessary for self-governance. Students must be held accountable for their behavior, both to learn that their choices have consequences and to maintain the order necessary for learning to proceed.

Academic Excellence. Schools should foster academic excellence. Schools should
prioritize a rigorous and content-rich curriculum rooted in foundational subjects such as math, literature, science, history, civics, and the arts. Emphasis should be placed on core knowledge and tried-and-true pedagogy rather than fads or experimental teaching methods. Students should be challenged and rewarded for hard work and accomplishment. Schools should help students achieve their full potential, going as far and as fast as their talents will take them.

Citizenship. Flourishing societies are predicated on an informed and virtuous citizenry. Information without moral formation is insufficient. Parents, schools, and religious and civic institutions must cultivate in children the personal and civic virtues necessary for righteous communities and nations. Schools should teach students the civic virtues and civic knowledge necessary for self-government including the value of civil disagreement. Schools should also foster a healthy sense of patriotism and cultivate gratitude for and attachment to their country and all who serve its central institutions and the ideas they contain about liberty, justice, the rule of law, government, rights, and the equal dignity of all human beings. Students should learn the whole truth—merits and failings—without
obscuring the good.