A while back, the Indianapolis Capital Chronicle published an article reminding readers of the importance of the nation’s public schools. The article began with an acknowledgement of the war being waged on those public schools by the Trump Administration and the Christian Nationalists responsible for Project 2025, and it followed that acknowledgement by underscoring what the nation stands to lose if that war succeeds. The authors reminded readers that the nation’s public schools have been responsible for creating an educated workforce–and far more importantly, for inculcating generations of students with the United States’ fundamental values of liberty, equality, fairness and concern for the common good.
As the great political scientist Benjamin Barber wrote, the public schools have been constitutive of a public–they have forged a community of Americans from the diverse families who sent their children into those public school classrooms.
Education is a public good; it doesn’t simply benefit individual students, it benefits the country. The authors quote Horace Mann–often dubbed the father of our public school system–for the assertion that universal, publicly funded, nonsectarian public schools would help sustain American political institutions, expand the economy and fend off social disorder. Mann’s words really resonate right now, as the years of persistent war on public schools and the diversion of tax dollars to primarily religious schools has contributed greatly to the current polarization and tribalization of the American public, and contributed to our growing social disorder.
The authors of the article noted that they’d written a book titled “How Government Built America,” and they shared two lessons they took from their research for that book.
One is that the U.S. investment in public education over the past 150 years has created a well-educated workforce that has fueled innovation and unparalleled prosperity.
As our book documents, for example, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the states expanded public education to include high school to meet the increasing demand for a more educated citizenry as a result of the Industrial Revolution. And the GI Bill made it possible for returning veterans to earn college degrees or train for vocations, support young families and buy homes, farms or businesses, and it encouraged them to become more engaged citizens, making “U.S. democracy more vibrant in the middle of the twentieth century.”
The other, equally significant lesson is that the democratic and republican principles that propelled Mann’s vision of the common school have colored many Americans’ assumptions about public schooling ever since. Mann’s goal was a “virtuous republican citizenry” – that is, a citizenry educated in “good citizenship, democratic participation and societal well-being.”
Mann believed there was nothing more important than “the proper training of the rising generation,” calling it the country’s “highest earthly duty.”
The people currently in positions of authority have made it abundantly clear that they have no interest whatsoever in that “rising generation,” neither its training nor its very survival. From the replacement of medical science with quackery likely to cost children’s lives to denial of the climate change that threatens the livability of the planet, the grifters and con men currently in power are interested only in what they can extract during their time in office. They are perfectly happy to advance Christian Nationalists goals, including the destruction of “government” schools and their replacement with “godly academies” that deepen America’s social divisions.
Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education has been accompanied by pious statements about returning control to the states, but in direct contradiction to that rhetoric, the administration has also been busy mandating what can and cannot be taught in public schools. It continues to threaten funding for school districts that fail to penalize transgender children or that teach about slavery and contemporary forms of discrimination. The White House is demanding a curriculum highlighting “patriotic” education–a curriculum that ignores the less admirable parts of our history and instead depicts the founding of the U.S. as “unifying, inspiring and ennobling.”
A shining City on a hill…
Trump and MAGA fear true education. Instead, they want to indoctrinate–and the material they want to impart is (to put in mildly) inconsistent with reality.
The weakening and eventual destruction of America’s public schools is an essential part of the Christian Nationalist/MAGA/Project 2025 plan to privilege (certain) White Christians and turn others into second-class citizens.
The assault on our universities has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and the assaults on our public schools have nothing to do with the quality of education.
So sad but true. Public schools CREATE our democracy where we have learned about and count as friends those different from ourselves. Racism and religious bigotry have enticed some parents to pull their children from the ‘melting pot’ of public education to segregate them into restrictive schools where tribalism flourishes. State government promotes this with creation of more and more charter schools and taxpayer paid tuition to private religious schools.
I fear for our democracy when we all grow up and associate only with people like ourselves. It’s a prescription for disaster.
“The people currently in positions of authority have made it abundantly clear that they have no interest whatsoever in that “rising generation,” neither its training nor its very survival.”
We are now seeing the reason many Americans fought to prevent John F. Kennedy’s election to the presidency because he was a Catholic. Trump, with the aid of Mitch McConnell paving the way, has used Catholics to stack the deck of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. The results of SCOTUS’ full immunity to Trump are quickly reaching catastrophic levels of Fascism, cloaked in his Dictatorship, as he whines and seeks SCOTUS approval to enslave the working class to fill his personal coffers to overflowing. The “dumbing down” of public education by using the Public Education budgets to pay for private (primarily religious based) education who have been proven to NOT raising the education level of any students is paving the way.
“What We Stand To Lose…” is everything applicable to our day-to-day living as American citizens as the Trump tariffs bleed our economy dry, our health care is dwindling away to dangerous levels of a possibility of physically surviving disease and simple health issues with the possibility of multiple possible Pandemics currently spreading through the population. Our freedom of speech to complain, or make jokes of, is being lost as the freedom of the press and the right to peaceably assemble and there is no area of government we can petition for redress of grievances. The recent killing in Utah of a Republican spreader of Fascism support by a person raised in a Republican family was quickly used in an ass-backward hero level award of the victim of one of their own to cover up the reality of their denial of petition for redress of grievance by the killer who is also one of their own.
This is too convoluted for current public education or voucher students in private schools (primarily religious based) to understand. The reality will never occur to the majority of Trump/MAGA supporters who are declaring statues of the “victim” be erected on government properties after the flying of flags at half staff. We have already lost too much to see the possibility of full recovery if we manage to oust the current Fascist monarchy from control.
“The assault on our universities has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and the assaults on our public schools have nothing to do with the quality of education.”
This is a multi-front war on public education. Thanks for calling out the US Department of Education’s “patriotic education” initiative, defined as “present[ing] American history in a way that is accurate, honest, and inspiring.” Yeah, history written with a gallon of whitewash, no doubt using the WallBuilders collection. And next year’s, first-ever partisan school board races will be the moment when Hoosier Christian nationalists run candidates who will change the curricula and bring in DOE-approved books from the WallBuilders collection.
Everything Trump/Fascist America touches dies. Actively killing public education and whitewashing history is all part of the NAZI playbook brought to us by The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.
JoAnn, yes the Catholics on the SCOTUS are donkeys of the first water, but they are also Federalist Society members. This goes back to Scalia, and EVERY Republican-nominated Justice is from the Federalist Society. And here we are.
And people think I’m too hard on Republicans … Prove me wrong.
You guys and gals remind me of when our past governor, Mitch Daniels, had a personal meltdown over Howard Zinn when he died. Was he respectful to the historian? Not even close. Mitch was a hypocrite living by double standards.
If the goal of our government is to undermine public education, I’d say the results of testing prove it has been successful. The international NAEP test scores demonstrate a continued decline over the past few decades. If the goal were to “dumb down American children,” I’d say bravo; it’s been successful. East Asian schools dominate the top-ranking schools, while the US ranks in the 40s. Awesome job! And with Trump booting international students, China is constructing excellent universities so their students can stay in China and learn. Since international students pay much higher tuition, Trump has caused budgetary issues for US higher education. Purdue in Indiana was one of the schools that attracted Asian learners. #ouch
Clearly, our educational system was broken, and the changes made by our politicians via Heritage Foundation “studies” are only making matters worse. Why can’t we have open-source, transparent studies funded by the people to propose actual changes to institutions that are failing the country? You know, like a democratic process.
Oh yeah, we are not a democracy or a republic. We lost that form of government generations ago. We have an oligarchy that is now holding onto power by using an autocratic regime with lots of surveillance.
p.s. Oracle’s co-founder, Larry Ellison, will become a part-owner of the US version of TikTok, which has 110 million users. So will Lachlan Murdoch. Their goal is to move the algorithm closer to the far right, similar to what Musk has done with former Twitter, now X. It will also become more pro-Israel, which means they will suppress videos of the genocide in Gaza. For those unfamiliar with the multi-billionaire Larry Ellison, his vision for government is AI-centric, involving extensive surveillance of the people, which AI can easily process. Isn’t that grand? I mean, what could go wrong?
Speaking of timing, Sheila, this is from The Guardian this morning:
“Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors.
Of those interviewed in the survey, roughly a quarter of respondents said they applied for a job in higher education in another state since the start of 2023.”
Professors are also leaving Red States. Who can blame them? I wonder how many IU professors will leave in the next few years?
The link:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/professors-us-south-leaving?
St. Augustine reportedly told the powers that be, the church at the time, not to educate the public, as it might lead to people being able to think for themselves.
Note that many of the red states have the most poorly educated public of all, especially. Louisiana and Mississippi.
Rand Paul has been gunning for the Dep’t of Ed. for many years now, and we do not consider Kentucky an especially educated place.
Trump is nothing but a NYC, Roy Cohen-educated showman/conman with an unlimited ego and an appetite for attention. He’s surrounded himself with a cadre of equally inept people who are playing at, rather than governing.
We cannot go much longer without government.
Pete, what you just posted is another way of describing a psychopath.
I returned from my daily rolling walker exercise through my neighborhood in time to watch the last half (approximately 30 minutes but seemed like 2 hours or more) of Trump’s blathering to the United Nations General Assembly. I missed his announcement that the members the United Nations were all “going to hell” but didn’t miss his reports on his wonderful leadership of the U.S., the safest nation with the cleanest air and the greatest economy on this earth. His support of fossil fuels included HIS report that (I think it was) Scotland and Holland who have solar panels that measure 7 MILES by 7 MILES; covering all of their farm fields. When I stopped blinking and shaking my head he was referencing “they” must be planning on killing their cows. I am actually still too nauseated to even think about lunch; if this 56 minutes of what one MSNBC reported erroneously called his “word salad” but was actually an overflowing garbage pail, doesn’t bring action from both parties in House and Senate to impeach him for the THIRD TIME, we can plan on more of the same of the past nine months of accelerated destruction of the United States of America, nothing will.
Was anyone else watching to fully understand “What We Stand To Lose…”?
THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS NATION’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT!!!
As my friend, the good Dr. C. Is fond of saying, “It’s easier to keep ‘em poor if you keep ‘em ignorant.”
All of these arguments have merit but another key one is profit. Once entrepreneurs discovered that they could make money on educating children, the die was cast. Charter operators, and those benefiting from vouchers given to private schools and homeschooling are raking in funds hand over fist. And that’s taxpayer money.