Category Archives: Education / Youth

Told You So…Repeatedly

WFYI recently reported on a new business alliance focused on improving civic education. It’s a welcome development.

The Indiana Business Alliance for Civics will provide resources and work with businesses to encourage employees to register and vote, and will provide education about civics. It will also connect businesses with schools, to encourage civics education. The alliance is led by Business For America, a national nonprofit. 

As long-time readers of this blog know, civics education has been a primary focus for me for a long time. During my tenure at IUPUI (now IU-Indy), I founded the Center for Civic Literacy, which explored ways to reverse Americans’ really shocking lack of knowledge about the most basic elements of their Constitutional, political and legal systems. 

A recent Substack attributed the lack of emphasis on civics–and really, all of the humanities–to the growing emphasis on STEM, which the authors traced back to the shock of Sputnik. As they wrote,

it’s not enough for students only to study math, technology, and the sciences. It’s not enough for our country to have the top earners, or the top innovators of weapons and warfare. We all need to be educated citizens, knowledgeable about history and civics as well as science and technology.

If you think the over-emphasis on STEM and the neglect of civics is overstated, you need only follow the money.

At the start of the Biden administration, the federal government was spending more than $50 per student on STEM education, versus only $0.50 per student per year on civic education (and even that represents a tenfold increase from a few years earlier). You get what you pay for: on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics assessment, American students have been scoring pretty dismally for decades now. And as of August 2025, the Trump administration has cut $12 billion for K-12 education (including some STEM programs) and merged funds for civic education with other areas, so that some states may not spend any money on civic education at all.

One paragraph really says it all–it explains how our woeful lack of civic knowledge has contributed to the success of the MAGA/Trump assault on America’s democratic institutions.

Democracy is reliant on a culture of civic participation. Governing ourselves takes work and commitment. So if we’re going to renovate our constitutional democracy and institutions in the United States to work better for everyone, we also need to do some serious work on our culture of citizenship, to make sure that we are ready to play our part well. Civic education is how we restore and grow that culture.

When you don’t know how the system is supposed to work, you are a prime target for disinformation.

I attribute the over-emphasis on STEM and the corresponding lack of concern for civic literacy to what is a hot-button issue for me: the widely-accepted belief that education is basically a consumer good–that it is indistinguishable from job training. Ratings of colleges focus on the earnings of graduates, not the depth of knowledge communicated in classrooms–a fatal misunderstanding of the educational mission. Not only is genuine education a far broader benefit to the individual, it is a public good that builds the capacity of the nation to govern itself.

As Robert Reich wrote in a 2022 essay,

Such an education must encourage civic virtue. It should explain and illustrate the profound differences between doing whatever it takes to win, and acting for the common good; between getting as much as one can get for oneself, and giving back to society; between seeking personal celebrity, wealth, or power, and helping build a better society for all. And why the latter choices are morally necessary.

Finally, civic virtue must be practiced. Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It should be a duty of citizenship.

A concerted emphasis on civic virtue might even begin to change the nature of America’s social incentives, which now are disproportionately weighted toward rewarding greed and celebrity. And–again, as regular readers know–I have long been an advocate for a year or two of mandatory public service.

It’s a positive sign when business leaders recognize the dangers of our civic deficit and take action to combat it. If and when we defeat MAGA’s assault on the principles that made America America, strengthening civics instruction should be a very high priority.

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The REAL “Great Replacement”

We’ve all heard about MAGA’s “Great Replacement” theory–the conviction among conspiratorial bigots that “the Jews” are plotting to flood the U.S. with (gasp!) dark-skinned immigrants who will replace “real” (White) Americans. (Why we Jews would want to do that–what possible benefit would accrue to those who masterminded this bizarre plot–remains a mystery. But then, most of the Right’s fever dreams are–how shall I put it–wacko.)

There is, however, a different and far more worrisome effort at “replacement” being pursued by the Trump administration; it’s the replacement of facts, accurate reporting and scholarship with propaganda. The multiple assaults on education, on news media, on reliable statistics. on museums and cultural institutions are all part of that effort to replace reality with an alternative narrative preferred by MAGA autocrats.

The defunding of NPR and PBS are central to that effort.

As educators know, public media has been an important educational tool. It isn’t just Sesame Street. Content for children reaches some 15 million kids a month, and educators and students across the country get free access to PBS LearningMedia, a K-12 digital learning service. Affiliate stations produce educational resources for PBS LearningMedia, and engage in other outreach to educators, providing professional development services and updated trainings on best practices. As the American Prospect recently noted, especially in rural and low-income communities, these services are often a lifeline for teachers.

So how does MAGA propose to replace those services?

If you guessed that Rightwing ideologues have a candidate, you’d be right: PragerU. A Prospect newsletter recently described PragerU:

FOUNDED IN 2009 BY ALLEN ESTRIN and right-wing radio talk show host Dennis Prager, PragerU has been a major player in the movement to do away with “divisive” and “inclusive” educational curricula. Although its name sounds like an academic institution, PragerU is a registered nonprofit advocacy group that rakes in millions each year from donations. In 2024, PragerU reported receiving $66,693,281 in contributions from donors, accounting for 95 percent of its total revenue ($69,710,136). Its largest benefactors? Conservative and right-wing foundations. In its early stages, PragerU was supported by funding provided by hydraulic fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, who have donated millions to far-right political initiatives and provided early funding to The Daily Wire.

PragerU’s financial support is certainly reflected in the media it produces. Right-wing luminaries such as Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro have made appearances in its videos. Its most controversial project is PragerU Kids, an educational programming initiative that produces content for kids as young as three. Although it is marketed as “the leading network offering educational, entertaining, and pro-America content for students of all ages,” PragerU Kids has a very specific point of view.

“PragerU Kids is right-wing propaganda; it presents right-wing propaganda as ideologically neutral education and it serves as a gateway into extremism through its attempts to define issues for children at a very young age,” said John Knefel, a senior writer at the research group Media Matters for America, who has conducted significant research into PragerU Kids’ educational content. He explained that PragerU has displayed a commitment to cherry-picking and watering down the tragedies of the past, particularly in videos highlighting U.S. history. “The goal of these videos taken as a whole is to defend an unequal status quo, and to defend existing hierarchies from progressive activists, academics, and teachers who are seeking a more just society,” Knefel said.

PragerU is just one element of the real “Replacement” being pursued–MAGA’s effort to replace truth with fiction.

 
 

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The Rhyming Of History

So much of what Trump and the GOP are doing right now defies logic, although it’s probably consistent with their twisted version of what would make America “great”–a country filled with people who are White, fundamentalist, and receptive to propaganda. The list of insanities is long, but today I just want to focus on the administration’s war on higher education. (Not that today’s Republicans don’t have contempt for education at all levels; they clearly do.)

In the decades following WWII, the best universities in the United States have been considered the best in the world, and that reputation, that prominence, has generated a wide array of economic, cultural, scientific, and geopolitical benefits.

For one thing, our universities generate a significant share of the world’s basic research. Federal funding supporting that research–funding that Trump has threatened to withhold– has given us everything from the internet to mRNA vaccines.

American universities attract and train a highly-skilled workforce. They anchor local economies. They promote economic growth through partnerships with industry. And universities have played a major role in research supporting military innovation, cybersecurity, and intelligence–something you’d think the GOP, with its military obsessions, would appreciate.

Of course, America’s universities also serve to promulgate “liberal” values like academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, democracy and human rights, so MAGA is willing to dispense with the other benefits in order to minimize the chances of creating an informed and thinking citizenry.

This assault on academia isn’t as obvious or remarked-upon as the other–frighteningly numerous– parallels to Germany in the 1930s, but those parallels are there. My friend Morton Marcus recently sent me a copy of an article titled How Universities Die. It began with a history that feels chillingly similar to the Trumpian effort to turn America’s universities into obedient organs of an autocratic, White Christian state.

In 1910, German universities were the envy of the world. They were the world’s center of scientific research, not only in the natural sciences but also in the study of history, politics, philosophy, and literature. Our modern scholarly disciplines were all first defined in Germany. The University of Berlin, founded a century earlier, was the Harvard of its day. Every serious American university, from Hopkins to Chicago, to Harvard and Berkeley, was made or reformed according to the “Berlin model.” Why else is Stanford’s motto (“Die Luft der Freiheit weht” — “The winds of freedom are blowing”) in German? Original research was prized over the mere transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. Faculty and students would learn together in seminars and laboratories. Professors would have “Lehrfreiheit,” or the freedom to teach, while students would enjoy “Lernfreiheit,” the freedom to learn, across multiple disciplines. Although supported entirely by the state, universities themselves would decide who would teach and what would be taught. If university rankings had existed in 1910, eight of the top 10 in the world probably would have been German — with only Oxford and Cambridge joining them in that elite circle.

As late as 1932, the University of Berlin remained the most famous of the world’s universities. By 1934, it had been destroyed from without and within.

Germany’s descent from a nation of “poets and thinkers” (“Dichter und Denker”) to one of “judges and hangmen” (“Richter und Henker”) ended its leadership in higher education.

When the Nazi regime came into power, it purged universities of non-Aryan students, faculty and political dissidents. Trump is trying to prevent foreign students from enrolling at Harvard, and ejecting foreign students enrolled elsewhere who dare to speak or write in support of Palestinians. International students have noticed; between March 2024 to March 2025, U.S. international student counts declined 11.3%.

The article tells us that leading scholars left Berlin in large numbers, beginning what would be a historic migration of brilliant thinkers to the United States and elsewhere. German universities were divested of capacity for self-government. Scholarship in search of truth was replaced by scholarship in service of the “Volk.” Faculties were purged of non-compliant members. (In Florida, Governor DeSantis has dutifully followed the Nazi model, and Florida has seen a similar migration of professors.)

German universities never regained their status or importance.

The Trump administration is intent upon destroying one of the few fields– higher education– in which this country is still the global leader. The intensifying assault on immigrants had already reduced applications from international students. Coupled with the escalating attacks on universities and DEI, the administration is crippling America’s capacity to recruit talent from all shores. We will decline.

History tells us that when universities die, nations decay.

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And The Hits Keep Coming..

If there is any consistent theme that runs through the Trump administration’s “governance,” it is antipathy to science and education. RFK, Jr. presides over a truly horrifying assault on medical science;  Trump’s torrent of Executive Orders has hobbled government’s ability to deal with climate change (which MAGA denies)…the list goes on.

And then there’s the Right’s persistent, vicious war on education. Theirs is a movement that is trying–with some terrifying successes–to take America back to the Dark Ages. That effort isn’t new–the now decades-old effort to privatize education, to evade the First Amendment’s Separation of Church and State and destroy public education by sending students and tax dollars to religious schools– has recently been joined by an all-out assault on the nation’s universities.

It isn’t just Trump’s assault on elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard. As a recent report from The New Republic documents, among the other obscenities in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are measures that amount to “an extinction-level event” for the nation’s universities. As the article warns, “If you think the last few months have been bad for Harvard, brace yourself—the “big, beautiful bill” is coming, and with it, a new dimension of destruction.”

While it’s mostly gone unremarked upon in the mainstream media, institutions of higher learning across the country are about to be pummeled by the looming reconciliation bill, which may portend an extinction event for higher education as we know it. The bill weaponizes working-class families’ reliance on debt to finance their college dreams with such intensity that not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher education altogether.

As the report makes clear, the fallout from these provisions will be monumental. The effect will be to deprive the schools that manage to survive of working- and middle-class families. A college education will once again be within reach of  only the wealthy.

As the article notes, millions of people already consider a university education “to be a costly endeavor that is irrelevant to their everyday life.” That reality would suggest that we should remake higher education into a much more accessible endeavor– that legislators should recognize that improving the educational level of a population translates directly into social and fiscal health. But–consistent with the rest of a bill that honest labelling would title “Protecting Plutocracy”–the legislation would do the opposite. “It will cement the stereotype of higher education as an elite institution into an ironclad reality.”

This existential assault on higher education is not inadvertent–not an unanticipated consequence of fiscal legislation. It is entirely consistent with the goals of Project 2025 and the far-Right anti-intellectual MAGA figures who have already decimated much of Florida’s higher education landscape. The article includes a quotation from influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo, confirming the desired results. “Reforming the student loan programs could put the whole university sector into a significant recession” and state of “existential terror.”

And just in case American voters return a sane occupant to the Oval Office, the bill removes the power of a future President to cancel federal student loans.

While details are still being negotiated between the obtuse and vicious GOP members of the House and Senate, if the measure passes in anything like its current form,  eight million student debtors will see their monthly payments spike from $0 to over $400.

Dentists and doctors who choose to work in low-paying community health care centers will no longer be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs, dramatically reducing the number of health care providers in communities that are already underserved. The bill even comes after the long-standing, Republican-approved federal student loan repayment plans, which allow borrowers to discharge their debts after a certain number of years of regular payments.

The House version cuts Pell Grants and increases the course load required for part-time students to access aid. People with  jobs or family responsibilities will find it nearly impossible to comply. And House Republicans want colleges and universities to pay back unpaid federal loans extended to “high risk” students–a move designed to penalize institutions that serve low-income students who are more likely to default, turning “the working-class kid studying to become a social worker, artist, or a physician into a liability to her university.”

None of this is accidental.

A recent Heritage Foundation report recommends terminating higher education “subsidies” in order to “increase the married birthrate.” In plain English, it’s an effort to reduce women’s access to higher education–an access that has facilitated women’s growing civic and economic equality. MAGA wants more babies and fewer women in the workforce.

The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a MAGA wet dream.

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More Of This, Please!

If there was any lingering doubt that MAGA and Trumpism are rooted in racism, the extension of refugee status to White South Africans–at the same time Trump rescinded the similar status of vetted Afghans who had, at significant risk, worked with U.S. forces during the war–should put an end to it. That “in your face” evidence joins the administration’s barely-less-obvious measures to “protect” White folks from perceived victimhood: the dismissal of Blacks and Women from positions of authority (and their replacement with laughingly unqualified Whites), the scrubbing of websites documenting the achievements of women and minorities, and especially the disgraceful and dishonest all-out war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

An embarrassing number of institutions have folded under that attack, but others have not. Vernon shared an entirely appropriate response to the federal government’s anti-DEI demand from one school superintendent.

Here is that letter.

___________-

To Whom It May (Unfortunately) Concern at the U.S. Department of Education:

Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire. Alas, it appears you are serious.

You’ve asked me, as superintendent of a public school district, to sign a “certification” declaring that we are not violating federal civil rights law — by, apparently, acknowledging that ci1vil rights issues still exist. You cite Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, then proceed to argue that offering targeted support to historically marginalized students is somehow discriminatory.

That’s not just legally incoherent — it’s a philosophical Möbius strip of bad faith.

Let me see if I understand your logic:

If we acknowledge racial disparities, that’s racism.

If we help English learners catch up, that’s favoritism.

If we give a disabled child a reading aide, we’re denying someone else the chance to struggle equally.

And if we train teachers to understand bias, we’re indoctrinating them — but if we train them to ignore it, we’re “restoring neutrality”?

How convenient that your sudden concern for “equal treatment” seems to apply only when it’s used to silence conversations about race, identity, or inequality.

Let’s talk about our English learners. Would you like us to stop offering translation services during parent-teacher conferences? Should we cancel bilingual support staff to avoid the appearance of “special treatment”? Or would you prefer we just teach all content in English and hope for the best, since acknowledging linguistic barriers now counts as discrimination?

And while we’re at it — what’s your official stance on IEPs? Because last I checked, individualized education plans intentionally give students with disabilities extra support. Should we start removing accommodations to avoid offending the able-bodied majority? Maybe cancel occupational therapy altogether so no one feels left out?

If a student with a learning disability receives extended time on a test, should we now give everyone extended time, even if they don’t need it? Just to keep the playing field sufficiently flat and unthinking?

Your letter paints equity as a threat. But equity is not the threat. It’s the antidote to decades of failure. Equity is what ensures all students have a fair shot. Equity is what makes it possible for a child with a speech impediment to present at the science fair. It’s what helps the nonverbal kindergartner use an AAC device. It’s what gets the newcomer from Ukraine the ESL support she needs without being left behind.

And let’s not skip past the most insulting part of your directive — the ten-day deadline. A national directive sent to thousands of districts with the subtlety of a ransom note, demanding signatures within a week and a half or else you’ll cut funding that supports… wait for it… low-income students, disabled students, and English learners.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. A moral victory for bullies and bureaucrats everywhere.

So no, we will not be signing your “certification.”

We are not interested in joining your theater of compliance.

We are not interested in gutting equity programs that serve actual children in exchange for your political approval.

We are not interested in abandoning our legal, ethical, and educational responsibilities to satisfy your fear of facts.

We are interested in teaching the truth.

We are interested in honoring our students’ identities.

We are interested in building a school system where no child is invisible, and no teacher is punished for caring too much.

And yes — we are prepared to fight this. In the courts. In the press. In the community. In Congress, if need be.

Because this district will not be remembered as the one that folded under pressure.

We will be remembered as the one that stood its ground — not for politics, but for kids.

Still Teaching. Still Caring. Still Not Signing.

_________________

May that Superintendent’s tribe increase.

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