Here is where Catholic and other schools based on a religious foundation have an advantage. The community and its central institution, the church, provide the social capital which can give the school staff and the family the support necessary to discourage youth in their care from merely taking the easiest path in high school. Consequently, graduates of Catholic high schools show the highest level of success among those who enter four year colleges. The Catholic school's proper function is to create for the school community a special atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity, to help youth grow according to the new creatures they were made through baptism as they develop their own personalities, and finally to order the whole of human culture to the news of salvation so that the knowledge the students gradually acquire of the world, life and man is illumined by faith. Theology of education can be, furthermore, a respected academic discipline.
Education also has an important connection with the development of reason.
Infancy is important because that is when religious and moral life make their first appearance.