I found this article very interesting because it confirms what I have been saying in SR for years. The Republican Party is trying to turn the American population into indoctrinated, poorly educated peasants, whose lives are controlled by the oligarchs who control and use the Republican MAGAt politicians. This is what the Founders feared would happen to the country they had just created. They understood the importance of quality education to a functioning democracy. Benjamin Franklin felt so strongly about this that he established a trust in Philadelphia and Boston to provide scholarship support, and more than two centuries later it is still doing that. Were people like Franklin alive today they would be appalled, but I don’t think surprised at what has happened to our democracy. As Franklin replied to a woman he encountered as he left the constitutional convention in 1787 when she asked him what kind of government he and the others had just created, “A republic if you can keep it.” We now have a Republican Party that doesn’t want to keep it. They want an anocracy that they control.
Illustration by Jared Rodriguez / truthout
Conventional wisdom tells us that every crisis contains an opportunity, and the right wing in the United States is wasting no time in proving this true. Take public schooling. “The uncertain period following pandemic destruction [is] an ideal moment to reimagine U.S. education,” Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in his recently released book, The Great School Rethink.
Hess is not alone in his reactionary revisioning. Groups including the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council and the Manhattan Institute, alongside conservative talk radio and other media, have raced to formulate and impose their wish list on what students can learn and what teachers can teach. It’s a long roster and extends from banning the teaching of anything that could possibly be dubbed “critical race theory” (CRT), to eliminating programs that promote and support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Also included are efforts to exclude transgender athletes from women’s teams, the reframing of curricula to focus exclusively […]
Terri Quint
on Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 7:11 am
The Founding Fathers were soooo right to insist on public education because a true democracy cannot exist if citizens cannot read, know the news, laws, and what Congress is doing. What we have seen in the last 10 years or so is an effort to control education as never before! Charter schools, voucher systems, book banning, removing diversity and equity in the system, preventing minorities from easily being accepted to good universities, the list goes on and on.
Only electing strong Democrats who believe in democracy is going to change things for education, economics, climate change, the list goes on and on what Republicans are against.
Terri Quint
The Founding Fathers were soooo right to insist on public education because a true democracy cannot exist if citizens cannot read, know the news, laws, and what Congress is doing. What we have seen in the last 10 years or so is an effort to control education as never before! Charter schools, voucher systems, book banning, removing diversity and equity in the system, preventing minorities from easily being accepted to good universities, the list goes on and on.
Only electing strong Democrats who believe in democracy is going to change things for education, economics, climate change, the list goes on and on what Republicans are against.
Terri Quint