Stephan: Republicans don't like educated people because research shows educated people tend to vote Democratic. Because of that Republicans don't like honest public schools which properly educate children. They are backing charter schools where they can easily control what is taught, particularly American history. They also want children to be indoctrinated into their version religion. You may think I am being partisan saying that, but I am not. As I tell my readers frequently what I care about is objectively verifiable data. Facts. And I always support whatever supports and fosters wellbeing. What surprises me is how many people in Red states seem to be okay with indoctrinating their children rather than educating them. Thomas Jefferson saw the problem at the country’s founding. In a letter he wrote to his friend Charles Yancy, he said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
Chalkboard with a map of the continental USA, with pins leading toward Hillsdale associated schools, and a desk with a portrait of Donald Trump, a copy of The 1766 Report, and an apple with a cross carved into it. (Illustration by Ilana Lidagoster/Salon)
In recent years, Hillsdale College, a small private Christian school in Michigan, has quietly become a driving force in America’s ongoing fights around education. A “feeder school” for the Trump administration, Hillsdale led President Trump’s controversial 1776 Commission and serves as a testing ground for the right’s most ambitious ideas: For instance, that diversity erodes national unity, that Vladimir Putin is a populist hero and that conservatives should lure so many children out of public schools that the entire system collapses.
Hillsdale has inconspicuously been building a network of “classical education” charter schools, which use public tax dollars to teach that the U.S. was founded on “Judeo-Christian” principles and that progressivism is fundamentally anti-American. In January, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced plans to partner with Hillsdale to launch as many as 50 such […]
