Munich confessional-school enrollment fell from 84 percent to 5 percent without a ban in the statute. Proposition 212 uses a different toolkit toward the same end.
The 1933 Concordat had guaranteed Catholic schools in writing. The Nazi regime did not repeal that guarantee. It ran annual enrollment campaigns backed by propaganda, police obstruction, and the withdrawal of welfare benefits from families who chose wrong — then closed schools for insufficient enrollment.
The numbers
In Munich, confessional-school registration fell from 84 percent in 1934 to about 5 percent by the end of 1937. The American consul general reported pressure and methods little short of terrorism. By the summer of 1939 every denominational school in Germany had been converted into a community school and the church-run private schools were closed or nationalized.
“indescribable terrorism that contravened every principle of law and justice”
No statute said ban the church school. The schools closed because enrollment fell below viability, after years of pressure on the families who kept choosing them.
The method
Authoritarian governments rarely announce they are abolishing educational freedom. They centralize administration. They license the teachers. They standardize the curriculum. They occupy the hours outside school. Then they let the alternatives die.
The Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Culture, established 1 May 1934, took national authority over private schools. The 1938 Reichsschulpflichtgesetz (RGBl. 1938 I, p. 799) converted a duty to be educated into a duty to attend a school building. But the church schools were already gone before that law passed.
What Prop 212 does instead
Proposition 212 does not withdraw welfare benefits from families who choose a microschool. It does something structurally similar with a different toolkit: annual registration fees on every campus and tutoring location, fingerprinting and employment-law compliance for solo tutors, public records for registration paperwork, and a repeal of the state's burden to justify its restrictions in court.
A large accredited school absorbs that stack. A nine-student microschool may not. That is attrition by compliance cost rather than attrition by terror — but the outcome for educational pluralism is the same direction.
You do not need a ban in the statute to lose the school. Vote NO on the Fascist Education Act.