The Demise of Education Priorities

“In America, one of its most characteristic and suggestive aspects is the recurring crisis in education that, during the last decade at least, has become a political problem of the first magnitude.” Philosopher and social critic Hannah Arendt wrote that in 1954 in an essay called “The Crisis in Education.”

She wasn’t the first to criticize educational failures and policies. Plato also pondered the place of education in society. In giving us the Socratic method which rests on asking questions that lead to enlightenment, he encouraged a view of education that goes beyond perception and opinions. In his famous “Allegory of the Cave” he focused on justice and morality.

Others throughout history like John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Mary McCleon Bethune, to name a few, are joined by contemporary advocates like Malala Yousafzai who works internationally for better educational systems that meet the needs of all students and learners. 

But none of them has faced what we are experiencing now when it comes to educational policy.

We are in our own “crisis in education” as the Trump administration continues to demolish the Department of Education.

In his campaign the president promised to abolish the Department and quickly appointed Linda McMahon, a billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, who has no background in education, to head the Department shutdown.  The agency’s layoffs have now reached at least 1,400.  And with the help of SCOTUS, which has allowed Trump and McMahon to continue dismantling the federal agency’s work, things are looking bad.

It should be noted that only Congress has the authority to close the Education Department, although some elected members of Congress have supported the aim to delegate programs to other governmental agencies. For example, Trump wanted to move student loan program to the Small Business Administration, but it is now expected to be in the Treasury Department. That would mean they would have to handle a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting 43 million borrowers, among other things.

Further, the DOE is outsourcing several grantmaking programs for workforce training and adult education to the Department of Labor. And the agency plans to move special education and civil rights out of the Education Department. According to AP News, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services wilk move to the Department of Health and Human Services, which as we know is run by RFK, Jr. Advocates agree that “special education doesn’t belong in a health department that treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of differences in how children learn.” And the Office for Civil Rights will move to the Justice Department, despite any concern for justice there.

As both a teacher and a parent, I’m no stranger to what all of this will mean. It’s a sickening abrogation of human rights and social justice in our current government.  The consequences of all this will be unimaginably destructive and take a long time to overturn. It will hurt multitudes of people, including the disabled, people with special needs, those who identify as alternative genders or transgender, and those who are discriminated and bullied in schools because of their race or national origin.

Already parents of kids with disabilities, and their teachers, have had to wait for the DOE to process their complaints of bullying or other discrimination. As one mother put it, “It’s to the point that I don’t even check in anymore with the attorney.” She filed a complaint in the spring of 2024 with the Office for Civil Rights, reporting that her daughter was bullied because she wears hearing aids. The case is  still unresolved.

And the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Service has already shrunk by a third in the last two years, and the Office for Civil Rights is 40 percent smaller, while in the DOJ the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by 50 percent. 

These are staggering and deeply consequential reductions that we should all be concerned about. As Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president at the National Women’s Law Center notes, “Without enough staff and resources, students will face more barriers to educational opportunity and have fewer places to turn to when their rights are violated. This is part of a coordinated plan by the Trump administration to dismantle the federal government and roll back hard-won  civil rights protections.”

In her essay "The Crisis in Education" Hannah Arendt argued that the fundamental purpose of education was to introduce the young to the world so they can care for it and ultimately renew it. She believed that education is where society decides whether it loves the world enough to assume responsibility for it.

As the school year begins, we must all care for our communities, our kids, and our schools, especially after this nightmare ends. So too, as a society, we must love our country and its schools enough to revive our educational values and systems as we take responsibility for our collective future.  This is a fine time to start.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Reclaiming Our Time and Treasure

There is a new urgency in the air and it’s palpable. Grounded in collective anxiety and a plea for a return to a civil society free of fear, oppression, oligarchs, and megalomaniacs who defy laws and ignore the Constitution. We’ve had enough of the dystopian nightmare propagated by an authoritarian regime rife with abuse and massive corruption. The threat of creeping totalitarianism is glaringly obvious, and we are waking up to what that means.

The difference between civil societies and our governance today couldn’t be starker. Civil societies don’t have their highest court tilt so far right that they treat their country’s highest leader like a king with absolute power.  They have humane policies grounded in social justice so that people have basic human rights. They pass laws to provide housing, universal healthcare, childcare, quality education, and other issues that are poverty driven.

Supreme Court Justic Sonia Sotomayer made this clear in her compelling dissent in the recent SCOTUS decision that gave our president outrageous power in what is supposedly a democracy. She noted that the president and the policy-making people behind him disregard the Constitution along with settled precedent.  (It should be noted that three Supreme Court justices appointed by the current president committed perjury in their confirmation hearings when they said they would adhere to precedent and then proceeded to ignore or reverse it.)

Here is part of what Justice Sotomayer wrote. “The Court gave the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted. … “It also means respecting precedent…out of a recognition that, whatever our confidence is in the theories of the present moment, the wisdom of our founding document does not belong to today’s Justices alone.”

One example of precedent that has been battered is the overturning of Roe v. Wade. What civilized nation arrests and jails women who have suffered a miscarriage or lets them die for lack of urgently needed medical care. What parliamentarian would think that women who have abortions should be jailed or executed, both of which some rightwing legislators in the U.S have done!

According to Pregnancy Justice US over 400 prosecutions of women have taken place since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Charges include child neglect, endangerment, violation of abuse laws, and substance abuse during pregnancy. Every one of those charged suffered arrest, physical and psychological trauma instead of receiving the care they needed.

Eugenics is also making a comeback here. It’s like Hitler’s plan to have a completely Aryan race, which resulted in the Holocaust, and was based on discrimination against people he thought were inferior and shouldn’t be allowed to procreate. That was the basis of eugenics in the early 20th century. Followers believed in “planned breeding and racial improvement.” It resulted in involuntary sterilization, segregation, isolation, poverty and the “final solution.”

The idea led to baby breeding among German women who were rewarded for having lots of pregnancies. Today, we are seeing pronatalist propaganda fostered by politicians, White Supremacists and Christian Nationals. A group of rightwing women recently held their annual “Leadership Summit” in which they proclaimed that all women need to “normalize liking husbands again.”  Their playbook is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.  

How did we become a country that terrorizes and arrests thousands of innocent immigrants, legal residents, and citizens and physically, sexually and emotionally abuses them, deports them, and incarcerates them in our version of concentration camps, where they are separated from their children, denied healthcare, decent food, access to family, lawyers, or Congressional oversight. How civilized is that? These people have been called “vermin” and other ugly invectives by this administration which fails to understand how much immigrants contribute to our lives, our economy, and our cultural diversity. I suggest that those who are troubled by vermin need to look in their own closets.

Then there’s the issue of gun violence that just keeps on growing and shocking people who live in civil societies.  Recently the Supreme Court struck down a law in Hawaii that barred gun owners from carrying handguns in public places. On June 30th they agreed to decide whether assault-style weapons like AR-15s can be banned in response to mass shootings.

Gabby Gifford, who was shot in the head while campaigning for her Congressional seat several years ago, has declared gun violence an American crisis.  Her organizations website reports that 46,000 Americans die annually from gun violence. That’s 125 a day.  What civilized nation would have people advocating for guns on the streets and in public places.

Giffords puts it this way. “Gun violence has become an inescapable fact of American Life. While families and communities across the country are regularly torn apart by bullets, the burden isn’t spread equally, particularly when it comes to the daily drumbeat of gun violence.”

All of this and more is why we must reclaim our time and treasure and rejoin the civilized countries of the world whose values and policies are commendable, achievable, humane, and compassionate before it’s too late.  The time has come for us to recapture our better selves, and to restore our values which are demonstrated in personal acts, and policies, that bring back the history, meaning, and brilliance of the Constitution. 

We know what we must do come November.

Food for Thought as the School Year Begins

I remember the days when school was about to begin for another year.  Kids went to the Five-and-Dime store to buy new pencil holders, good erasers, and tablets, before carefully covering their new schoolbooks with brown paper bags from the grocery store. Sometimes we got new saddle shoes too. It was exciting, and thankfully our parents didn’t have to worry about funding cuts that would affect our school district.

What a far cry from now, when deep and damaging cuts to essential school-based programs that would affect millions of people. The recently proposed cuts were unimaginable and cruel, but not surprising given this administration’s priorities and policies.

The pending crisis in education became obvious when Mr. Trump appointed Linda Marie McMahon as Secretary of Education, with Congressional approval. A former professional wrestling promoter with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French, McMahon has  no relevant experience that qualified her for a job running a massive organization that requires management, fiscal, organizational, and policymaking expertise. She has none of those skills and appears to have no interest in education and less interest in the people who need and benefit from educational objectives, programs, and sufficiently prioritized budgets.

The trouble started when the Trump administration took steps to dramatically reduce the size of the Department of Education by firing DOE employees. When a federal judge tried to have the fired employees returned to their jobs, the Supreme Court majority blocked the order with a temporary pause.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer was joined in a 19-page opinion by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.  In it they called the court’s decision “indefensible” and wrote that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of power is "grave.”

In June the Trump administration announced a seven billion dollar cut to state and local schools. Sixteen state attorneys general reacted to that cut by suing the administration for “unconstitutionally” ending over a billion dollars in mental health related grants created to help after mass school shootings.

The $7 billion in federal spending cuts for education included five important grants that fund summer and after-school programs serving millions of students nationwide. Other impacted programs included almost $4 million for migrant education, over $2 billion for professional development, almost $9 million for English-learner services, and over a billion dollars for before-and.-afterschool programs.

National education Association president Becky Pringle reacted with shock. “Withholding billions in promised federal education funding that students need, and states had planned to use to support children in their states, is a cruel betrayal of students, especially those who rely on critical support services,” adding that “Schools are already grappling with severe teacher shortages, burnout, and under-resourced classrooms.” The fact that teachers would be expected to fill the gaps in teacher shortages and classroom supplies and would be denied training is an outrage. 

To put a human face on these cuts, imagine being a migrant child who has been in school for years and now wants to graduate from high school but can’t pass the necessary academic standards. How would you like to be an educator who wants to help student achievement by furthering your training, but you are denied that opportunity. Wouldn’t you like your child’s school to have upgraded technologies like computers?  How about having literacy and other educational services available during non-school hours via after school or summer programs, particularly if you live in a rural area where schools have low performance records. These educational benefits, and necessities, help kids reach their potential and shape their futures.

Keeping children safe and cared for outside of routine school or summer hours is another benefit derived from educational programs. It’s not hyperbole to say that investing in educational opportunities and programs make a ton of difference for families, communities, and this country’s future. 

Interestingly, the Education Department released $1.3 million in previously held grant money for after-school programs just days after ten Republican senators sent a letter begging the Trump administration to allow frozen money to be sent to states. Withholding those funds would have meant some school districts and nonprofit organizations would have had to close or drastically scale back their educational programs this fall.

In addition to the released funds paying for programs before and after the summer the release of those funds will provide childcare for low income working parents or provide childcare options in rural areas. Beyond that, children can receive help with reading and math, as well as in science and art.

In July the remaining $5.5 billion cut was restored due to growing pressure on the administration from the public and professionals. Let’s hope that continuing pressure by parents, teachers, education administrators, and others will impact the administration, and Linda McMahon, enough to care about our kids, and  realize that education in all forms is  critical for all of us.

On this and other urgent matters, we need to keep the pressure up. It obviously works!