I attended the recent panel discussion on the Indiana voucher program for private schools.

Although the voucher program was ostensibly launched as a way to help poorer and minority students escape “failing” schools, the focus of the questions and the panel was not on improving education and the teaching of poorer students as much as it was on religion in the schools. It seemed obvious to me that the real goal of the voucher program is to have the state pay for religious education.

It brought to mind my experience as a product of Catholic schools. I'm old enough to remember when religion was taught in the public schools. Although the Supreme Court had ruled that particular religious beliefs should not be taught in the schools (often mischaracterized as forbidding prayer in public schools), my public school, in fact, taught Christianity. The thing was that it was Protestant Christianity. Despite my parents' protests and those of the Jewish parents, they were told that that was the majority religion and that's what they'd teach. When my brother was told by his teacher he wouldn't get to paradise unless he personally accepted Jesus Christ as his savior in an adult baptism by total immersion, that was the last straw and my parents moved us to the Catholic school and they bore the cost.

(It should be remembered that one of the reasons the Supreme Court ruled on religion in public schools was not to provide a haven for atheism, but rather that in a country with people of many religions, the majority religion should not be the one supported by the state and taught in the schools. Likewise, most Catholic schools started because the parents did not want their children taught a religion other than their own.)

Fast forward to the present when our state legislature, no longer representative of all the population because of gerrymandering, is beholden only to a smaller group that has long sought the teaching of particular religions in our schools. After numerous expansions, the voucher program has finally achieved what its proponents in the legislature have always sought – the state-sponsored teaching of religion in a parallel system of state-sponsored schools. That the public schools and the children in them may suffer is at most an unfortunate by-product.

Make no mistake. I'm glad that Catholic and Lutheran educational options exist. And Dwenger, Luers and Concordia are high-quality schools. In fact, I loved my time in Catholic schools. But I also prospered in public school. When we moved to a more progressive area, Columbus, Ohio, my parents enrolled us in public schools because by then the Supreme Court decision was better enforced and one religion wasn't being taught in public schools. (Lest anyone worry, we were also enrolled in CCD, Catholic religious teaching, taught at the church for kids who went to public schools.)

Just as in my youth, I'm glad those options exist and I respect them. I'm glad my parents chose to send us to Catholic school for a time (and to pay for it). But just as in my parents' time, I do not think our legislature should be making taxpayers pay for that choice because they want to see religion taught in schools.