Category Archives: Education / Youth

Why Research Matters

When I joined the faculty of Indiana University after decidedly non-academic stints as a lawyer, real estate developer and  ACLU executive director, non-university friends would often question the institutional obligation to devote considerable time and effort to research. They questioned the reason so many institutions of higher education pursue a “publish or perish” criterion for  tenure (and a number didn’t understand why we had tenure, either).

I’ll leave my fairly robust defense of tenure for another time, but in the face of Trump’s unprecedented assault on universities, the New York Times recently ran an editorial explaining the critical importance of scholarly research.

The editorial began by explaining that what we are seeing is typical of authoritarianism:

When a political leader wants to move a democracy toward a more authoritarian form of government, he often sets out to undermine independent sources of information and accountability. The leader tries to delegitimize judges, sideline autonomous government agencies and muzzle the media.

One of those “independent sources of information” is, rather obviously, scholarship. As the editorial points out, academic researchers pursue the truth–empirical facts– and that can present a threat to those in authority. Putin and Erdogan have closed universities, Modi’s government has arrested dissident scholars, and Orban has appointed loyal foundations to run universities.

Mr. Trump’s multifaceted campaign against higher education is core to this effort to weaken institutions that do not parrot his version of reality. Above all, he is enacting or considering major cuts to universities’ resources. The Trump administration has announced sharp reductions in the federal payments that cover the overhead costs of scientific research, such as laboratory rent, electricity and hazardous waste disposal. (A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against those cuts.) Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans have urged a steep increase of a university endowment tax that Mr. Trump signed during his first term. Together, these two policies could reduce the annual budgets at some research universities by more than 10 percent.

There is public dissatisfaction with the very real problems of America’s universities, and the editorial goes into considerable detail about the current deficiencies and problems of those institutions. But as it also notes, just as with Trump’s approach to trade, government waste, and immigration, the administration’s “solutions” won’t ameliorate or address the real problems. It will make things much worse.

The American higher education system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world, and it now faces a financial squeeze that threatens its many strengths — strengths that benefit all Americans.

Chief among them is its global leadership in medical care and scientific research. American professors still dominate the Nobel Prizes. When wealthy and powerful people in other countries face a medical crisis, they often use their connections to get an appointment at an American academic hospital. For that matter, some of the same Republicans targeting universities with budget cuts seek out its top medical specialists when they or their relatives are ill.

American leadership in medical and scientific research depends on federal money. Private companies, even large ones, typically do not conduct much of the basic research that leads to breakthroughs because it is too uncertain; even successful experiments may not lead to profitable products for decades. Mr. Trump’s planned funding cuts are large enough to force universities to do less of this research. The list of potential forgone progress is long, including against cancer, heart disease, viruses, obesity, dementia and drug overdoses. And there will be costs beyond the medical sector. There is a reason that Silicon Valley sprang up next to a research university.

The Times is right to say that we need to speak–loudly and publicly– about why universities matter, to point to the many ways in which higher education and research promote public health, economic growth and national security. It’s also important to recognize that universities are the largest employers in some regions. And for many Americans, universities have been “an unmatched, if imperfect, engine of upward mobility that can alter the trajectory of entire families.”

Thus far, too many academic officials have been timid and quiet in the face of this assault. That needs to change.

College presidents do not need to become pundits. But they do need to defend the core mission of their institutions when it is under attack. University leaders would help themselves, and the country, by emerging from their defensive crouches and making a forthright case for inquiry, research, science and knowledge.

This administration is waging war on science and knowledge. It’s a war we cannot let them win.

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How We Got Here….

I recently came across a quote–I’ve misplaced the source–that summed up the conundrum that keeps so many of us up at night.

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

How did that–how could that– happen? 

There are really two imponderable questions involved: one, what motivated his supporters to ignore those very obvious facts about him, plus the disaster of his first term, and return him to the Oval Office? And two, what led millions of Americans to conclude that there was no need to inconvenience themselves by going to the polls?

This blog has spent a lot of time and pixels on that first question. The superficial answer is that the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party–it has become a White Christian Nationalist cult. The more difficult question is: why? What is it about White Christian Nationalism that is so appealing to some people that they are willing to overlook all the demonstrable deficits enumerated in that opening quotation, and support a man who lacks a single redeeming human quality? (He isn’t even one of those evil men whose despicable behaviors are covered by charm or distracting good looks–his physical appearance and personality are both repulsive.)

As regular readers of this blog know, my answer to that first question is the deep-seated racism that is America’s original–and continuing– sin. Throughout our history, far too many people have chosen to “other” those who look or pray differently. Today’s Christian Nationalism is a modern version of the attitudes that motivated and justified slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and  periodic eruptions of anti-Semitism. Christian fundamentalism feeds the persistent misogyny that allows MAGA folks to joke about sexual assaults and dismiss the significance of predatory sexual behaviors. 

There are clearly a lot of unhappy people who want to blame some “other” for their disappointments and failures–many more than we like to recognize. If there was any doubt about the immense role of racism in support for Trump, his anti-DEI rampage should have eliminated it.

But what about the second question? What failure of American life explains the significant number of people who simply didn’t bother to vote? Some of them probably didn’t want to choose between a Black woman and a clown–they shared MAGA’s biases, but detested Trump, so they opted out. Others were undoubtedly victims of the multiple vote suppression tactics employed by GOP operatives. But those two categories can’t explain the large numbers of no-shows.

Over my 21 years of teaching, I reluctantly concluded that America’s schools have failed their most important function:  citizenship education. The nation’s public schools weren’t established simply to teach the three Rs–they were also, and importantly, intended to be constitutive of a public–to turn out informed citizens who understood the system they inhabited, and recognized that membership in a polity involves civic responsibilities. (Voucher programs–as I’ve noted– wage war on that civic mission of the schools, and undermine efforts to forge a united citizenry.)

For too long, too many Americans have been–civically speaking–dumb, fat and happy. They’ve accepted the benefits of living in a free society without worrying about their obligation to maintain it. They’ve ignored politics, followed favored celebrities rather than civic or political leaders, dodged such civic duties as jury duty and voting, and complained about paying their taxes–all while assuming that police and fire departments would continue to protect them, that their Social Security checks would appear on their due dates, that the National parks would be open when they wanted to visit…expectations that are currently at risk.

If there is any bright side to the Trump/Musk destruction currently being waged, it is that people are being awakened to the fact that the maintenance of a stable government and civil society requires them to be informed participants–that they are not guaranteed an effortless free and livable society, and that continued progress toward realization of the American Idea is not inevitable. 

If and when enough good Americans eject the clowns, buffoons and bigots installed by our megalomaniac co-Presidents–if and when We the People regain control of our governing institutions, rebuilding civic education should be a first order of business. 

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If you want to understand the disastrous budget Republicans are trying to pass–and the process they’ll need to negotiate to do that–I will be doing a Zoom interview of Economics Professor Denvil Duncan from 7:00 to 8:00 tomorrow night, for the Central Indiana Indivisible chapter. You can register here.

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They’re Still Coming For The Schools

While co-Presidents Trump and Musk absorb all the oxygen/attention, the Christian Nationalists have continued their long-term focus on the public schools. While Americans who understand the damage of the daily assaults on Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law are distracted, those “Christian soldiers” just keep marching on…

The Guardian recently published a report on that steady march by a product of Evangelical schooling.

The author began by relating his own education in what he termed “a sanctuary of faith, community and ‘true’ education,”  which he reported had left him disillusioned and bullied, and had set him on a “path of crushing financial insecurity that would haunt me for years.”

Twenty-five years later, Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.

As he notes, the efforts to transform education into fundamentalist Christian indoctrination takes two forms: injecting more Christian rhetoric and rituals into public school curriculum and the use of tax dollars to subsidize private religious schools via vouchers. As he also points out, each of these tactics is bolstering the education of America’s most privileged students, while downgrading services for children of low-income families.

Lest readers dismiss his concerns as overstatement, he provides evidence.

In Oklahoma, the state superintendent ordered his public schools to teach from the Christian holy book; he later sought to mandate all schools to air a video in which he prays for Trump. On his desk sat a black mug with the Latin phrase si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

In June, Louisiana passed a law ordering all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. And in Florida, Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general, supported a constitutional amendment to allow state funding for religious schools before voters rejected it.

In 2022, a supreme court ruling allowed private religious schools to receive government funding. In response to this, LGBTQ+ advocates helped pass the Maine Human Rights Act in their state, protecting students and faculty from discrimination. Two Christian schools are suing the state for the ability to violate the new law while still receiving government funding. Separately, the supreme court has taken up a case addressing whether to allow taxpayer funds for religious charter schools, potentially leading to the first Christian public school in the US.

A Texas elementary school curriculum infuses Bible stories into language arts programs. And these efforts are not limited to Southern states. Iowa passed legislation granting taxpayer-funded “scholarships” to families who enroll their children in private schools, very much including Christian schools. Meanwhile, the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), a Christian lobbying group, announced it was drafting a bill to would require Bible reading in all Idaho public schools. (The organization has also drafted legislation banning abortions and restricting transgender healthcare.)

These local efforts are currently being supercharged by the Trump/Musk administration. Trump has promised to “bring back prayer to our schools”, shut down the Department of Education and embrace “school choice”–measures that would fulfill a longstanding evangelical wishlist. Christian Nationalists insist that “government schools” brainwash children into “liberal atheists.” 

The Guardian essay recites the history of this effort to make America’s schools “godly” and–not so incidentally–keep them White. (The government’s denial of tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools–not Roe v. Wade– was what galvanized evangelicals and drove them into the GOP.)

Meanwhile, the Christian right doubled down on the creation of its own, independent education system, one that rejected evolution in favor of creationism, made students pledge allegiance to a Christian flag, and preached against environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights and progressive policies.

The essay traced the author’s very painful emergence from the bubble he had inhabited, the fundamentalist education system in which “all knowledge and thought must bend itself to unarguable truth that the Bible is 100% factual in all matters.” As he notes, the “itchy curiosity of philosophy, the relentless questions of the scientific method, the skeptic probing of journalism, have no place in that world.”

That rejection of science, empiricism and inconvenient evidence is the “education” supported by the Trump/Musk Administration–not because either of these megalomaniacs are devout Christian fundamentalists, but because they know they owe their continued support to the fearful, racist, “faux Christian” voters who comprise the majority of the GOP base.

If successful, those Christian Warriors will take us back to the Dark Ages.

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House Bill 1136

The assault on democracy and rationality isn’t just at the federal level.

At the start of every session, the culture warriors in Indiana’s terrible legislature introduce all kinds of wacky and extreme bills. Some of them are so wacky and so extreme that they go no farther. They don’t even get committee hearings.

Of course, lots of perfectly reasonable measures–even obviously excellent ones, if sponsored by Democrats–also go to the  bill graveyard.

Media folks who cover the statehouse have learned not to take bills seriously until there are indications that they have some chance of actually passing. That should be our reaction to House Bill 1136, which has received a good deal of publicity and generated significant anguished pushback. H.B. 1136 provides that, if more than 50% of students who live within a school corporation’s boundaries are enrolled in a school that isn’t operated by that school corporation, “the school corporation must be dissolved and all public schools of the school corporation must be transitioned to operating as charter schools.” The bill establishes a new governing board and procedures for dissolving and reorganizing the school corporation.

I tend to lump this bit of legislative nastiness (it’s clearly aimed at urban schools that serve minority and low-income kids) in with the other looney-tune measures that will go to the big bill cemetery in the sky, but it does trigger several of my pet peeves, the most “peevish” of which is lawmakers’ persistent war on public education.

Before I focus on recent evidence bolstering my argument that vouchers are simply a way to evade the First Amendment and allow legislators to send tax dollars to religious schools, I need to focus on a preliminary pet peeve: the public discourse that makes no distinction between charter schools and the private schools that accept vouchers. 

Charter schools are public schools. They operate under restrictions that don’t apply to private schools (like the Constitution). Overall–depending upon their sponsorship and management–their performance has been positive. That’s overall, but–just as with traditional public schools–there are exceptions. (Most of the problems, according to what I’ve read, have come from charters managed by private, for-profit companies.)

Voucher-accepting private schools are another matter entirely, as I have repeatedly documented.

Pro Publica recently added to the huge volume of data on that subject.

In an article titled “On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools,” the report focused on the religious underpinnings–and successes–of the voucher movement. The article highlighted three conclusions.

The Ohio Model: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.

Helping the Affluent: An initiative promoted as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids — is increasingly funneling money to families who already easily afford private school tuition.

The Voucher Deficit: Expanding programs threaten funding for public schools and put pressure on state budgets, as many religious-based schools enjoy new largesse.

I really urge you to click through and read the entire hair-raising report, which documents the real purposes of educational vouchers: they are tools meant to enrich religious institutions and the well-to-do, and undermine separation of church and state.

The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-­riding lessons.

Strategists behind this effort started with targeted programs that placed needy kids in parochial schools. Then they fought to expand the benefits to far richer families — “a decadeslong effort by a network of politicians, church officials and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate.” 

So much for that pesky Constitution…

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Old Truths

Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally on January 20th has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.

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.Several weeks ago, the Indianapolis Capitol Chronicle ran an article in which the author mused about civics instruction. She had come across the 1930 edition of a civics textbook, and noted that its focus on community responsibilities seemed very different from today’s preoccupation with individualism.

The book starts with this preface (and yes, I took photos while at the table): “It is generally agreed today that the main reason for the existence of schools is to help our pupils to become good citizens. Our schools teach the three R’s because everybody needs those tools in order to act intelligently in his relations with his fellow man. It is no less important for the pupil to learn that his life must be lived in close association with his fellow men, and to profit by the experience of human beings in regard to these relations.”

In those few introductory words lies the conundrum that faces all societies: how do we protect the political, religious and philosophical autonomy of the individual while building safe, orderly and supportive communities?

Several years ago, I made a speech in which I considered that question. As I said then, there is an African proverb to the effect that it takes a village to raise a child. Implicit in that saying is the question at the heart of political philosophy: What should that village look like? What is the common good, and what is the nature of social obligation? What sort of social and political arrangements are most likely to promote and enable what Aristotle called “human flourishing”? And perhaps, more importantly, do we live in an era when such questions have largely been abandoned?

That simple introductory paragraph from a long-ago textbook reminds us that our public schools have two vitally important tasks: first, giving children the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but also to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and second, equipping them for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Over the past few decades, there has been a very unfortunate narrowing of emphasis to just one portion of that first responsibility. Critics of public education have focused almost entirely on the subjects needed to produce a workforce–on giving students the skills they’ll need to compete economically. The sorts of instruction that will help them flourish, that will give them the insights and understandings that will help them create rich and enjoyable lives–music and art and literature–have been relegated to the sidelines or eliminated entirely, dismissed as “frills.”

Worse, the various educational “reforms” that have been pursued have ignored the second important purpose of public education–preparing students for thoughtful and engaged citizenship in a complicated and increasingly diverse society.

Not only have our public schools neglected the proper teaching of American history and government, the vouchers that facilitate evasion of the First Amendment have sent thousands of children to religious schools, most of which ignore civics instruction and deepen tribal commitments rather than helping students understand the complexity–and necessity– of seeking the common good and wrestling with the imperatives of our national motto: e pluribus unum.

Too many of our legislators, here in Indiana and elsewhere, confuse education with job training. They are most definitely not the same thing. We are impoverishing generations of students by depriving them of sustained contact with the liberal arts and with the enduring questions that separate thinking humans from automatons. By neglecting instruction in government and citizenship, we have contributed to the widespread ignorance that continues to elevate so many unfit and unstable individuals to positions of power. It isn’t just Trump–there are plenty of other examples at all levels of government, certainly in Indiana.

Finding the “golden mean” between too much emphasis on individualism and too much emphasis on community and conformity has never been simple. That search for a proper balance between individual rights and the imperatives of the common good is fatally compromised when a significant portion of the population remains uneducated because those responsible for education policy don’t know (or care about) the difference between educating students and training them.

When the body politic lacks a common understanding of their society’s foundational principles, culture warriors and plutocrats are enabled, and tribalism threatens to bring down the entire edifice of legitimate government. That is arguably where we find ourselves right now, and the sustained assault on American education–an assault that has hollowed out the very concept of education– is at the very heart of our impending Trumpian disasters.

We are reaping the whirlwind.

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