in loco parent is: A Relationship between Parent,State and Child

Abstract

For that the name of Parents being a most sweet and loving name men might thereby be allured the rather to the duties they owe; whether they should be duties that are to be performed to them, or which they should perform to their Inferioures. For that at the first, in the beginning of the world, Parents were also Magistrates, Pastours and School masters.

Archbishop Ussher (1645)¹ in explaining why all superiors were called parents called upon the idea of patriarchal authority. This paper considers the social implications of the same philosophy as it is represented by the practice of education authorities standing in loco parentis to their pupils.