The education system in the United States is already under attack and over the years there have been a number of skirmishes. When Trump takes office, he and his sycophantic MAGA army have made it very clear they will make a full on, frontal assault on the entire education system in this country from kindergarten at the bottom to universities at the top. There is a reason for this. The Trump MAGA world fear an educated population capable of critical and independent thinking. The fact is, the majority of college-educated voters, voted for Harris. As it turns out, the level of education has become a great predictor in how someone will vote.
Unfortunately, given the high cost of a college education these days, the gap between the number of people with college degrees and those without college degrees continues to grow. As the wealth gap continues to increase so does the education gap. This does not bode well for the future of democracy. The MAGA world view this disparity as an opportunity to implement their vision of a white, Christian-based education system. One only has to look at what is going on now to get a sense of what will transpire in the future.
The Texas state legislature passed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state. Fortunately, a Federal judge stepped in to stop that, at least temporarily. There is no doubt they will continue to push that.
The Superintendent for Public Education in Oklahoma tried to mandate that curricula include Biblical teachings and use a Bible that just happened to be a Trump branded bible. He then tried to force teachers to show their students a video of him praying for Trump. Both of those initiatives have been struck down for now. There is no doubt the assault on the wall between church and state will continue under Trump.
Trump has vowed to reclaim universities from the radical left. His chief lap dog, J.D. Vance, has praised Victor Orban’s effort in Hungary to takeover public universities. Trump and his Project 2025 zealots have vowed to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump’s previous Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, has long been an advocate of dismantling the DOE and, instead, providing block grants of Federal funding to individual states.
The idea of block grants of Federal dollars to states that would allow them to administer their education system as they see fit sounds fairly innocuous at first glance. However, there should be absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind what this would really lead to. The Federal grant dollars would become an enormous cudgel to force public schools and universities in blue states to toe the line with the MAGA education ideas or risk losing those Federal dollars.
The wall between church and state has long held firm although it has been tested many times. The question now is, “Will it be able to withstand the assault that is coming in the new administration?” Many people in MAGA world would like everyone to believe the United States is a Christian country. That is provably false. It is, and has been since its founding, a country of ‘religious liberty.’ There is an enormous difference. In fact, the words ‘under God’ were not part of the original Pledge of Allegiance. They were added in 1954 in response to the McCarthy scare. The original pledge was written in 1892 and contained no religious reference.
The MAGA world is an environment marked by propaganda and misinformation where ‘alternate facts’ thrive. It is likely this virus will soon infect the entire United States education system. The antidote for this virus is an education based upon critical thinking and facts. But those seem to be in short supply these days.
