On February 8th, 2012, Bishop McFadden (b. 1947) of the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, commented on the demand that all students be taught exactly what the state wants, without exception. He went on to say, “In the totalitarian government, they would love our system. 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.” Of course the usual suspects, such as the ACLU, immediately attacked Bishop McFadden for making such a comparison. In response the Bishop apologized for offending anyone; but he did not retreat from his point saying:
“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 sort of lack of freedom in choosing an education that bests suits their child as those parents oppressed by dictators of the past.
I used the example of the dictators merely to explain how 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. Our support of a school voucher program has the goal of giving parents something that dictators never would, a choice in which school their children attend by being able to control the portion of the tax dollars that is designated for the education of each child.”
As it turns out, Bishop McFadden is more correct than he may know, as our current system of education came from the very totalitarian regimes he speaks of. In fact the word totalitarianism refers to a system of government where the state dictates every aspect of human behavior and achieves this largely through the education system, which becomes a political apparatus of the state.
