Bishop McFadden and “Totalitarian” Public Schooling

Bishop McFadden and "Totalitarian" Public Schooling
by Michael Tennant, March 2, 2012

"In a totalitarian government, they would love our system [of public education]," Bishop James McFadden of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told WHTM-TV. "This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all of them tried to establish -- a monolith, so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things."

McFadden's remarks touched off a firestorm of complaints from the usual suspects.

Barry Morrison, Eastern Pennsylvania/Southern New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said McFadden "should not be making his point at the expense of the memory of six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust," arguing that the bishop had "inappropriately [drawn] reckless comparisons" to that horrific event.

Andy Hoover, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, declared McFadden's comments "completely inappropriate."

Harrisburg University professor Dr. Mehdi Noorbaksh, who is also vice president of the local World Affairs Council, told WHTM, "As soon as you throw in those words and you take the debate and the conversation to another level and another context, it is not right."

In a statement responding to his critics, McFadden apologized to "those who may have been offended by [his] remarks." He is not, however, retracting them, pointing out that he "purposely did not mention the holocaust" to avoid giving offense ­ an assertion backed up by the TV station, which stated that "in the 20 minute interview he never mentioned the word holocaust."

"The Church recognizes the holocaust as a terrible atrocity and evil emanated against humanity and especially those who were the victims of these crimes," McFadden wrote. "I would never minimize or trivialize the devastating suffering that took place."

He also elaborated on his analogy:

The reference to dictators and totalitarian governments of the 20th century which I made in an interview on the topic of school choice was to make a dramatic illustration of how these unchecked monolithic governments of the past used schools to curtail the primary responsibility of the parent in the education of their children. Today many parents in our state experience the same lack of freedom in choosing an education that bests suits their child as those parents oppressed by dictators of the past.

[An] absolute monopoly in education, where parents do not have a right or ability to choose the education that best suits their children due to economic circumstances or otherwise, runs counter to a free and open society.

McFadden could not be more correct.

"In 1936," writes the History Place,

all of the Catholic parochial and Protestant denominational schools [in Germany] were abolished. Christian holy days which had usually meant a day off from school were now ignored and classroom prayers were banned. Celebrations of Christmas and Easter were discouraged, replaced by pre-Christian Yule or Solstice celebrations. The Nazis later forced all teachers to renounce any affiliation with professional church organizations.

Moreover, says the article, indoctrinating students with Nazi ideology became the sole purpose of the schools, to the detriment of genuine education:

National Socialist teachers of questionable ability stepped into grammar school and high school classrooms to form young minds, strictly abiding by the Party motto: "The supreme task of the schools is the education of youth for the service of Volk and State in the National Socialist spirit." They taught Nazi propaganda as fact which was then recited back by their students as unshakable points of view with no room for disagreement or discussion.

Fascist dictators weren't alone in recognizing that controlling the schools meant controlling the minds of the youth. "Free education for all children in public schools" is one of the demands of the Communist Manifesto; and Karl Marx's disciples in the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and elsewhere have always abolished private schools in favor of state-run indoctrination centers.

It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the public schools of 21st-century America are turning out students thoroughly steeped in environmentalism, socialism, and moral relativism but unable to read their own diplomas. The objective of government schooling is to produce cogs for the state machine, not well-rounded, independent thinkers.

With the facts on McFadden's side, his critics have been forced to attack his remarks' propriety rather than their truthfulness, which also reveals the critics' true agenda: sticking up for government schooling.

The bishop, meanwhile, is seeking to allow parents more options in schooling their children. Believing it is unfair for parents to have to pay twice to send their children to parochial and other private schools ­ once in taxes and again in tuition ­ and faced with declining parochial-school enrollment, McFadden and other church leaders are calling for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to enact a school-voucher program whereby parents' tax dollars that are earmarked for education can be directed to whatever school, public or private, parents choose for their children. (A proposal that would have allowed that under certain limited circumstances was rejected by the state legislature in December.)

McFadden's diagnosis of the problem is correct; his proposed solution, however, leaves much to be desired. School vouchers might very well end up co-opting private schools into serving the state, which would be an even worse situation than the one that currently exists. Private colleges -- minus a handful of brave resisters who have chosen to forgo federal dollars -- have been forced to obey Washington's dictates in exchange for accepting federal student aid. Why would anyone expect state governments to hand out money to schools with no strings attached? Instead, private schools would very likely become dependent on such aid and would compromise their integrity by bowing to the state's demands, ultimately becoming the state's handmaidens in training the youth to serve Leviathan.

McFadden and other Christians, of all people, ought to recognize the dangers inherent in mixing the state with the private sector. Separation of church and state -- in the sense that neither controls the other -- has served Americans well over the centuries. Why not separation of school and state as well?

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1203d.asp