Three Pillars for Decimating Public Education

What do we do when our public schools are under attack?

A couple of weeks ago, the new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon leveled significant cuts to the US Department of Education in an ostensible effort to shut EdGov down. McMahon is the latest in a string of the least qualified and/or the most subservient selections for important positions. In the same week she threatened hundreds of EdGov jobs, she was still learning education policy including IDEA and the work of school boards. While we ridiculed the nomination with clips from her WWE days, her first week in office presents a clear threat to public education in many of our lifetimes.

The “othering” of so many people across identities happens among both supporters and critics of public schools. That’s why we need to get right and get right now.

But this dynamic aligns well with President Trump’s plans for the 14,000 or so districts across the country. Many of these districts have threatened to wipe out their systems via vouchers altogether. The role of the US Department of Education has been discussed at length, but few have made it plain. The federal role in schools is to ensure at least a modicum of equity to our nation’s schools. This means every and all schools where specific groups of children may find themselves underserved by that institution or state. That matters for civil rights and education policy for everyone.

As a sociologist, I’m seeing some things that are worth your attention:

Killing Empathy Within Communities

Reducing empathy is a clear pathway for authoritarians. Even a simple search of “empathy” and terms like “Christian nationalism,” “Trump,” and “fascism” brings up the drudge from our societal well. Some pastors and preachers are signaling empathy as weakness to their congregations. Some influencers are taking advantage of people’s personal hurt to punch down or to the side, but never up. Policymakers and enforcers alike use xenophobia in their commercials as a clarion call for national identity.

This, too, makes it to children’s eyes and ears.

The attack on socio-emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion points to people not seeing each other as human beings. Ruthlessness breeds mistrust and allows for us to speak in dystopian terms. This includes people across protected classes, and really, any other person who doesn’t fall 100% behind a specific ideology. Folks who fought for integration often named public education as an empathy project as well towards a shared humanity.

We don’t even have to name conflicts that started World Wars to cite a societal lack of empathy if only because we have a plethora of examples domestically. Which means …

Structural Othering

Suppressing marginalized groups (across race, disability, gender, etc) internationally and domestically means rendering their humanity as invalid. We’ve already seen a number of instances where this administration has used people they’ve deemed second-class citizens to hammer at long-standing policy, including the Constitution. Immigration officials deported a professor at a prestigious university despite her having a valid visa. NYC’s mayor gave permission for those officials to enter public schools at will, and ordered administrators to step out of the way. A list of students partly developed by people on Elon Musk’s platform sits somewhere on Tom Homan’s desk.

Even without mentioning the identity of the groups and individuals affected, we can see the peril we’re currently sitting in. The more they feel the permission to strip people’s rights and liberties, the more they can isolate whose opinions —and power— matter to them. And us.

Secretly, attendance rolls have decreased across schools due to these dynamics. Our public education systems —flaws and all— are the most enduring social safety nets we have for these groups. Not coincidentally, as our schools become more racially diverse, politicians turn the heat up on fear mongering.

This leaves them and us more susceptible.

Norming Students for Societal Inhumanity

I’ve said this for decades now, and it remains true. Focusing narrowly on test scores in math and English Language Arts — as opposed to a well-rounded curriculum — doesn’t allow our students to make critical connections between what’s happening around them and things that happened before them. To wit, science and social studies are applied math and ELA, and look how they’re devalued now. Even in this moment, we’re labeling anything that looks like “kill and drill” as “science of …” To be clear, it’s nonsense. This idea of “competing” belies how the United States has never really competed and won on international measures.

Plus, if policymakers really wanted a competition, they’d make bigger and better investments in schools, especially in personnel and curriculum.

The problem goes beyond basic literacy. It’s the whole endeavor of education, which is different than schooling. If the whole project of schooling is towards a malleable populace, then our narrow visions for schooling make norming students for societal inhumanity simpler.

What Will You Commit To?

Put all together, this creates conditions of a less-educated and easily controllable populace – one that you can continue extracting labor from – across the board. Knowledge, curiosity, and empathy are real keys. Don’t lose em. Let’s get to knowing this.

This dynamic is not new, just the next stage in the onslaught’s evolution. Over the last 15 years, I’ve documented some of the insidious ways that education reform opened the door for privatization. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning reformers didn’t pay close attention to their narratives. Specifically, the consistent bludgeoning of these institutions gave permission for those with ill intention to disband public schools —and the “public” part of schools— completely. On the flip side, many who advocated against these education reforms rarely built coalition with children who attend public schools as well.

The Martin Niemöller poem “First They Came For …” was a lesson in keeping our eye out for the way society’s most powerful people can structurally marginalize people across multiple identities. Unfortunately, too many people have waited for the last line before getting activated. Even the mention of race and/or gender sends people into defensive mode as opposed to taking a proactive learner stance. As movements raged in the streets for human and civil rights across America in 2020, people bought books, attended the lectures, and made commitments.

My immediate question then was “Will you take the next step forward?” This is as good as any to get the “public” activated in our public schools.

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