US education

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Julianne Moore’s freckles? How Republican bans on ‘woke’ books have reached new level

      by

      When the actor Julianne Moore learned her children’s book, Freckleface Strawberry, a tale of a girl who learns to stop hating her freckles, had been targeted for a potential ban at all schools serving US military families, she took to Instagram, posting that it was a “great shock” to discover the story had been “banned by the Trump Administration”.Moore had seen a memo that circulated last week revealing that tens of thousands of American children studying in about 160 Pentagon schools both in the US and around the world had had all access to library books suspended for a week, while officials conducted a “compliance review” to hunt out any books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics”.Although whether Moore’s book would be selected for “further review” or banned entirely remains unclear, the episode brought into stark relief that the movement to ban books in the US – which has been bubbling up for several years, mostly in individual states – had reached a whole new level: the federal one.Donald Trump’s re-election, and his subsequent crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, has many campaigners fearing that the Pentagon move to scrub its libraries of anything it opposes ideologically could be the first of a series of broad attempts to eliminate any discussions of race, LGBTQ+ issues, diversity and historical education from public schools.The Trump administration has scoffed at the idea that it is banning books, and last month it instructed the Department of Education to end its investigations into the matter, referring to bans as a “hoax”. Indeed, many deny that banning books is censorship at all – a disconnect that stems not just from the historical context of book banning, but from a semantic dispute over what it means to “ban” something.In the early 20th century, books such as Ulysses by James Joyce and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck were banned due to “moral concerns”.Likewise, the red scare of the 1950s saw increased censorship of materials perceived as sympathetic to communism, while the 1980s saw attacks against books dealing with race and sexuality, such as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which was nearly banned two years after its release in 1984 after a parent petitioned against its use in an Oakland, California, classroom.The difference today, however, is that instead of coming primarily from conservative community organizers, the book banning movement is now coming from government – school boards, local governments and now, with the Pentagon move, even the federal government, increasingly working in lockstep.The modern wave of book bans could be said to have started with a backlash against The 1619 Project, a journalistic anthology by Nikole Hannah-Jones published by the New York Times. The project aimed to reframe US history by centering the contributions of Black Americans, but conservative politicians – including Trump – claimed it taught students to “hate their own country”.View image in fullscreenIn response, Republican lawmakers moved to ban the work in schools, marking the beginning of an intensified campaign against so-called “anti-American” literature.According to PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to defending free expression in literature, more than 10,000 book bans occurred in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year. Books that address racism, gender and history were disproportionately targeted.“The whole principle of public education is that it is not supposed to be dictated by particular ideologies that aim to censor what other people can learn and access in schools,” Jonathan Friedman, the managing director for US free expression programs at PEN America, said.Rightwing politicians, however, have increasingly used book banning as a rallying cry, portraying certain books as tools of “indoctrination” – failing to note the irony that indoctrination is the process of carefully limiting ideas, like banning books.One key figure has been the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. He has echoed Trump’s dismissal of book bans as a “hoax”, and spearheaded multiple attempts to reshape education to reflect only conservative values, including the Stop Woke Act, which restricts discussions on systemic racism, and the Parental Rights in Education Act, widely known as the “don’t say gay” law, which limits discussions of gender identity and sexuality in classrooms.Banned titles in Florida schools now include Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Normal People by Sally Rooney, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.What DeSantis and other rightwingers often say is that these efforts don’t truly constitute “bans” because they only remove books from schools, rather than totally outlawing them from being bought in the US, and therefore don’t encroach on free speech. John Chrastka, the executive director and founder of EveryLibrary, argued that this is faulty reasoning.“The private marketplace is protected by the first amendment in ways that the government is not beholden to,” he said. “The idea that because a book is still available for sale means that it’s not being banned outright is only the difference between a framework that was in place prior to the 1950s” and today.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe noted that Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was first published in 1928 in Europe, was banned in the US for several years before finally getting its American publication in 1959 in what was a watershed affirmation of the right to free speech. Realizing that the first amendment prevented them from blocking the book from US bookstores, critics turned their attention to libraries instead, a grayer area in terms of constitutional protections.DeSantis and other rightwing politicians have taken the lesson: if the constitution prevents you from banning a book from being bought or sold in Florida, the next best thing is to ban it from the places most people would have the easiest access to it – schools and libraries.“It doesn’t add up,” Chrastka added, “the idea that a teenager in a state where it’s impossible for them to get to an independent bookstore because they don’t exist any more somehow has enough liberty to buy the book when the school library is blocked from having it available for them.”Another key distinction is between banning books from classroom curriculum versus removing them from school libraries – which, unlike classrooms, are historically protected spaces for free access to ideas.“What you read for a class supports the curriculum,” says Chrastka, whereas “the school library is supposed to support independent reading. One of them is required reading and the other one isn’t, but [the reading material] is meant to be available.”The landmark supreme court case Island Trees School District v Pico in 1982, when a school board in New York removed books from its libraries it deemed “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy”, established that school boards cannot restrict the availability of books in their libraries simply because they don’t like or agree with the content.Critics contend the new wave of book bans, although not yet about preventing sales at bookshops, fails to meet the intended purpose of libraries: to preserve and provide a variety of ideas and information that may not be readily or equally accessible to everyone.Now, many fear that once certain books are established as unacceptable in schools, the censorship could spread to colleges, bookstores and eventually nationwide bans. Even if that does not happen, experts say one of the most reliable ways to ensure ideas are suppressed is to dismantle the education system, making Trump’s repeatedly stated goal of eliminating the Department of Education a particular concern.“The vast majority of the budget for the Department of Education and the laws and regulations that make sure that the department is functional go to help students succeed and protect students who are otherwise vulnerable,” said Chrastka.With the education system having been chipped away at for decades with budgets cuts, low literacy rates and high dropout rates, book bans only make it weaker.“What we need in this country is for students to feel supported and to find their own identities, and reading is a core component of that,” Chrastka said. “Let’s let the kids discover themselves and discover their own path forward in the process.” More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Department of Education workers brace for Trump to shut agency down: ‘Everybody is distraught’

      by

      Workers inside the US Department of Education have described a “horrible, intimidating and unnerving” atmosphere among the rank-and-file as Donald Trump vows to shut it down.Widespread panic and confusion over the department’s future led to an “incomplete and chaotic” staff meeting on Wednesday, according to sources, as managers tried to explain new policies.The US president’s efforts to gut and dismantle the US Department of Education has left federal employees in fear of losing their jobs, with much of their work already halted.“We’re called parasites in the press. There’s a lot of fearmongering about what we do. What we do is ensure states are protecting children with disabilities,” one employee at the department, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian. “This used to be a bipartisan issue. I don’t understand why it still isn’t a bipartisan issue.“I’m struggling. I don’t know what to do because there are imminent threats we face everyday. We can’t talk anymore during meetings freely, and I was told [Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”] Doge is listening in on our Teams meetings. How do you have a free flow of ideas? It’s a really unsustainable way to work.”Around 3,100 employees at the department work in the Washington DC area, with more than 1,100 additional employees working out of 10 regional offices around the US. The department supports and funds 7.5 million students across the US with disabilities with special education services; supports Title I schools, representing 26 million children living in poverty; and oversees federal student loans and grants for higher education.“We have been kept in the dark completely about our co-workers who have been on administrative leave for attending a diversity training, about rumored reduction in forces, the future of our work and their return to work plan assuming we aren’t reduced in force,” said the employee.Staff were invited to a meeting on Wednesday on plans to summon all staff back to the office. A lack of space at regional offices in New York, Boston and San Francisco means staff there will be exempted, it was explained, and remote work for “reasonable accommodations” will still be honored – but arrangements must be re-certified, and approved by the assistant secretary of education.Many attendees were not reassured. “This was an extremely poorly planned meeting that seems to have caused even more confusion,” the employee said. “The process has been so inefficient and time-consuming. The entire department is working on rushing into the office in the middle of several regional offices downsizing real estate.”Another said many employees were not able to hear the audio from the meeting, the Q&A had been disabled for it and no one addressed the audio issues. “Folks are fairly anxious and panicked,” they said. “The meeting technology has been malfunctioning and they didn’t schedule enough time for questions.”Remote participants expressed their frustration in that chat, according to screenshots seen by the Guardian. The meeting was “more confusing than helpful”, one commenter said. “You confused us more,” added another.The department and the White House did not immediately respond to invitations for comment.During Trump’s first term in office, his proposed cuts to the Department of Education were rejected by Congress, with sources in the current Trump administration claiming the president plans to issue an executive order abolishing the Department of Education.Trump has cited a desire to return education to the states, but funding and decision-making for public education already resides at state and local levels. Elon Musk, whose businesses have received over $20bn in federal contracts, has posted on social media claiming the department “no longer exists”.Another longtime employee at the US Department of Education explained that this presidential transition has carried with it an open hostility to civil servants in the form of bullying, harassment and intimidation.“We get regular emails, to the point where it’s excessive, about the ‘fork in the road’ resignation offer. We get petty emails about signature blocks,” they said. “I was here for the last Trump administration. I carried [on with] work through that, but I’m not super optimistic about this work continuing under this administration.”The targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion-related positions and work is concerning, the source said, given the department of education’s mission and its tie to equity. The department was created by Congress in 1979 “to strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual”.Under Trump’s first term, his appointed secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, encouraged diversity training. Under Trump’s second term, employees who participated in those trainings have been placed on administrative leave.“All of our programs are centered on equity and underserved populations, helping to bridge the gap. Federal education funding is a small fraction of education funding overall, but it’s designed to level the field, so it’s primarily targeted toward urban, rural, Title I schools, and special education,” the employee explained. “There’s a lot of fear.“Everybody is abusing melatonin right now to get some sleep. Everybody is distraught, worried about the state of our country. Whenever there is a crisis of some type, our country really relies on civil service for so many functions.”The administration is trying to “create the conditions for people to want to depart”, they claimed. “I believe they intentionally leaked info on the push to abolish the Department of Education to push people toward taking the fork in the road deal. It would be catastrophic for our country, especially the impacts to title one schools and special education.”Another departmental employee said employees working remotely are expected to be back in offices by 24 February.“It’s very obviously being done in order to make people miserable,” they said. “People should know that they have no idea how much what the federal government does actually touches their lives every day, but they’ll notice it when it’s gone.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration gives schools deadline to cut DEI or lose federal funds

      by

      The Trump administration is giving the US’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the president’s fight against “wokeness”.In a memo on Friday, the education department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.Educators at colleges nationwide were rushing to evaluate their risk and decide whether to stand up for practices they believe are legal. The sweeping demand threatens to upend all aspects of campus operations, from essays on college applications to classroom lessons and campus clubs.It’s meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students.“Schools have been operating on the pretext that selecting students for ‘diversity’ or similar euphemisms is not selecting them based on race,” said Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “No longer. Students should be assessed according to merit, accomplishment and character.”The guidance drew sharp backlash from civil rights groups and university groups. Some believe its vague language is meant to have a chilling effect, pressuring schools to eliminate anything touching on the topic of race even if it may be defensible in court.“Creating a sense of risk around doing work that might promote diverse and welcoming campuses is much more of the goal than a clear statement of existing law,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice-president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.The memo is an extension of Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs. As legal justification, it cites the 2023 supreme court decision barring race as a factor in college admissions.“Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” it said.On Monday the education department announced it also cut $600m in grants for organizations that train teachers. The programs promoted “divisive” concepts such as DEI, critical race theory and social justice activism, the department said.Confusion around the implications of Trump’s anti-DEI order was apparent at last week’s confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Linda McMahon. Asked whether classes on African American history would run afoul of Trump’s order, McMahon said she wasn’t certain.The California School Boards Association is awaiting legal guidance so it can advise schools on the Trump administration’s deadline, spokesperson Troy Flint said.“At this point there is not enough information for a step-by-step playbook that tells school districts if you were doing A then now you should do B, or perhaps eliminate the whole program entirely,” he said. “I know people want that granular level of detail. But this is a new era, with some novel civil rights theories and there is no definitive reference for what’s happening now.”The new guidance takes aim directly at college admissions, suggesting colleges have sought to work around the supreme court’s decision.College essays, for instance, cannot be used to predict a student’s race, the guidance says. In the supreme court decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said nothing prevents colleges “from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life,” though he warned that colleges couldn’t use essays as an indirect workaround to consider students’ race.The memo also said it’s unlawful for colleges to eliminate standardized testing requirements “to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity”. Dozens of colleges across the US have dropped SAT and ACT requirements in recent years, citing concerns the exams favor students from high-income families.Practices that have long been commonplace could become legal liabilities, including recruiting in underrepresented areas or buying lists of potential students with certain academic and demographic information, said Angel B Pérez, the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.“Colleges and universities are going to find themselves between a rock and a hard place,” Pérez said. “They know that what they’re doing is not illegal, but they are worried that if they do not comply, not having federal funding will decimate them.”Some universities said they expect little change. At Oregon State University, a legal review concluded that its programs “are fully compliant with all state and federal laws”, according to a campus message from Rob Odom, vice-president of university relations and marketing.The department memo appears to take aim at scholarships for students from certain racial backgrounds. There’s been legal debate about whether the supreme court decision extends to financial aid, with some schools and institutions deciding to scrap racial requirements for some scholarships.The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators said there’s no consensus on the question, and the group is trying to understand how the memo could affect student aid.“The last thing students need when making plans about how to pay for college is uncertainty over when or whether they will receive financial aid they’ve been relying on,” the group said in a statement.Trump has called for the elimination of the education department, and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has slashed dozens of contracts deemed wasteful.The Doge team won a legal victory on Monday when a federal judge declined to block it from federal student loan records. The judge said the plaintiff, the University of California Student Association, failed to prove it was harmed by Doge’s access to the data. More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump and Musk want people to think college is not worth it. They are wrong | Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti

      by

      One of the many guises in which the Trump-Musk duo presents itself to the American public, as they take office in the new administration, is as ”employers-in-chief”: seasoned businessmen entitled to give life advice to their fellow citizens on the basis of a purported real-life experience that cuts against received wisdom.It is in this guise that both Trump and Musk recurrently attack higher education institutions as one of the as yet unconquered bastions of the “liberal America” they are now keen to tear down. Already during his first presidential bid in 2016, Trump famously stated that he “loves the poorly educated”. More recently, at a campaign rally in support of Trump’s re-election bid, Musk stated that “too many people spend four years in college, accumulate a ton of debt, and don’t have any useful skills they can apply afterwards”.The message appears to be landing. According to recent polls, the percentage of Americans who express “a lot of confidence” in higher education has declined from 57% to 36% over the past decade, and only about one in four now believe it is “extremely” or “very important” to have a college degree to get a well-paying job in today’s economy.Defending the emancipatory promise that has historically been at the heart of the United States’ higher education system against these attacks and widespread concerns requires going back to the basics about the nature of that promise. Simply pointing to statistics about the monetary returns of a college education won’t cut it, for at least two reasons.To begin with, aggregate data says little about individual life or investment decisions. While it is true that on average college graduates make between 60% and 80% more than workers without college degrees, a lot depends on what you study, where and at what cost. A more detailed program-level assessment conducted by Wharton professor Peter Cappelli found that “the cost-adjusted payoff from many college programs across the country – as much as one in four – is actually negative”.More importantly, however, this purely monetary way of assessing the value of a college education already concedes too much to its critics. By focusing exclusively on the economic returns after graduation, it ignores the broader educational – but also moral and political – value of the experience of actually being in college.There are not many times in most people’s lives nowadays when they can devote themselves to cultivating their own talents and opinions, without immediate regard to external constraints. Prior to entering college, most young people remain under the tutelage of their parents and are therefore at least in part constrained to do what they think is best for them. Afterwards, they usually have to enter the labor market, thereby falling under the authority of their employers, or at least the economic constraints of their revenue-generating activities.That is why, in his recent book entitled The Student: A Short History, Wesleyan University’s president, Michael Roth, reminds us that the college experience has historically been construed as a “concrete exercise of freedom”. In advocating for the creation of a publicly funded university in the state of Virginia at the beginning of the 19th century, for instance, Thomas Jefferson maintained that it was essential for a citizenry aspiring to be “self-governing” to have the opportunity of spending a period of their lives dedicated to cultivating the capacity to “judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom”, unencumbered from both familial authority and the burdens of toil work.The usual retort against this conception of higher education as an intrinsically valuable exercise in freedom is that it can at best be available to a privileged few. The former director of the (for-profit) University of Phoenix, Mark DeFusco, is on record stating: “I’m happy that there are places in the world where people sit down and think. We need that. But that’s very expensive. And not everyone can do that. So for the vast majority of folks who don’t get that privilege, then I think it’s just business.”Upon reflection, however, this is the stance that turns out to be most truly elitist, since it assumes that the freedom afforded by a dedicated period of cultivation of one’s own talents and opinions cannot – or indeed shouldn’t – be available to everyone. As a professor at a higher education institution – the City College of New York, founded with the explicit goal of “educating the whole people” – I cannot abide by such a surrender of America’s democratic promise, masquerading as realism.For most of the predominantly working class and first-generation students on our campus, the decision to enroll is not a consequence of “privilege”. It involves significant costs and also risks. That is why it is generally experienced as an achievement in itself. By the very fact of going to college, these students already get to take part in what they themselves frequently – and unironically – refer to as the “American dream”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn their eyes, this dream isn’t therefore reducible to a prospect of monetary payoff after graduation. It also includes a direct experience of freedom in the present. And although many City College students also have to work to support themselves while studying, they usually see their jobs as instrumental to their education, not the other way around.I take there to be a lesson in this also for our “employers-in-chief” – which is that the American dream they are so fond of referring to as well isn’t for most people about rushing to serve them (more or less lucratively) on the job market, but rather about a more expansive life of freedom, of which higher education remains a core component.

      Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti is executive director of the Moynihan Center and full professor of political science at the City College of New York. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Evangelical education nearly ruined me. Now the Christian right is coming for public schools

      by

      When I got the chance to attend a conservative, evangelical high school in rural Iowa, I was ecstatic. My early education had been in a similar school – where creationism was the one true science, and evolution was satanic propaganda – and I’d spent the interim as a frightened pilgrim in the unholy land of public school. I was a teenage zealot and longed to be among my people.Throughout those years, my church leaders urged me to proselytize to the public school students, to debate teachers about the age of Earth or the founding of our Christian nation, to be a spiritual exhibitionist, praying loudly at my locker or the flagpole. The apocalypse was at hand, so who had time for algebra?I viewed my enrollment at Forest City Christian school in my junior year as being honorably discharged from my duty of “reclaiming our schools for Christ”. But what I envisioned as a sanctuary of faith, community and “true” education not only left me more disillusioned and bullied but also robbed me of a high school diploma and set me on a path of crushing financial insecurity that would haunt me for years.View image in fullscreenTwenty-five years later, Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.These efforts test the boundaries of the constitution’s establishment clause, reversing a century of civil rights victories in public schools, and have the potential to fundamentally alter the way American children learn – and what they learn about.The push comes in two forms: injecting more Christian rhetoric and rituals into public school curriculum and for the first time in history, using tax dollars to subsidize private religious schools, generally via vouchers that cover student tuition. Each has the potential to bolster the education of America’s most privileged students, while downgrading services for children of low-income families.In Oklahoma, the state superintendent ordered his public schools to teach from the Christian holy book; he later sought to mandate all schools to air a video in which he prays for Trump. On his desk sat a black mug with the Latin phrase si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”In June, Louisiana passed a law ordering all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. And in Florida, Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general, supported a constitutional amendment to allow state funding for religious schools before voters rejected it.In 2022, a supreme court ruling allowed private religious schools to receive government funding. In response to this, LGBTQ+ advocates helped pass the Maine Human Rights Act in their state, protecting students and faculty from discrimination. Two Christian schools are suing the state for the ability to violate the new law while still receiving government funding. Separately, the supreme court has taken up a case addressing whether to allow taxpayer funds for religious charter schools, potentially leading to the first Christian public school in the US.View image in fullscreenIn Texas, the state representative James Talarico has been fighting against a new elementary school curriculum that infuses Bible stories into language arts programs, as well as a bill that could allow students to use public funds to attend private schools, including Christian schools, a move he says will harm low-income students while bolstering the most privileged.“Attempting to indoctrinate public school students into Christianity is not only unconstitutional and un-American, it’s deeply un-Christian,” says the former public school teacher, who is also studying to be a preacher.And this wave of Christianizing is not limited to the south.In 2023, my home state of Iowa passed legislation granting taxpayer-funded scholarships to families who enroll their children in private schools, including Christian ones. And last fall, a wildly successful Christian lobbying group, the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), announced the drafting of a new bill that would require Bible reading in all Idaho public schools.“By bringing back school-sponsored Bible reading, we are bringing God back into public education,” says Morgan MaGill, communications director for IFPC, which has drafted successful state measures restricting rights to abortion and transgender healthcare in Idaho.Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has characterized the growth of US Christian schools as an “educational insurgency” collecting “recruits” to build an underground army “with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way”, Hegseth said in a podcast appearance. Such militaristic language is reminiscent of the evangelical rallies, camps, youth services and Christian rock concerts I attended as a boy, where we were indoctrinated to be “soldiers in God’s army”, fighting to “take back our schools for Christ”.That, said Hegseth, is “what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation”.View image in fullscreenTalarico views Texas’s efforts to create a voucher program for private Christian schools as not only bad for Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ+ students, but also as stealing from the poor to serve the rich.“If you gave my students on the west side of San Antonio an $8,000 or $10,000 voucher, there’s still no way they can afford a $20,000 a year private school,” Talarico says. “But because the voucher program is universal, the wealthy family that is sending their kid to that private school will now get an $8,000 or $10,000 discount on their tuition, at the expense of the working-class kids on the west side.”Talarico adds that the voucher program includes funding for home-school students, up to 90% of whom are Christian and whose curriculum is often poorly regulated. “So we taxpayers will be funding homeschool programs that teach students the earth is flat,” he says.The battle for schoolsTrump’s promise to “bring back prayer to our schools”, shut down the Department of Education and embrace “school choice” fulfills an evangelical wishlist I’d heard about throughout my childhood. The belief that our government seeks to brainwash children into liberal atheists, close churches and outlaw prayer – threats that Trump promised to eradicate throughout the last election – were at the heart of the formation of the Christian right in the late 70s. But the clash over Christian education in America began long before.Protestant education was the norm in the US for nearly two centuries. MaGill points out that Benjamin Rush – a founding father who helped build the US public school system – was a strong advocate for Bible reading in US schools.And while opponents emphasize the idea of “separation of church and state”, those pushing to re-Christianize US public schools are correct when arguing that the phrase is not in the constitution. But it is misleading to claim that this was ever a settled – or simple – issue.In 1797, John Adams signed the treaty of Tripoli, which stated: “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”View image in fullscreenThe first amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thomas Jefferson later said the amendment created “a wall of separation between church and state”.When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was often explained to me that this phrase was intended to keep the government out of religion and not the other way around. The issue of religion in public education muddies this divide.Throughout the 19th century Catholics fought for their unique prayers and scripture to be taught in public schools. When Tennessee passed a law in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution in public schools, the trial of a jailed science teacher captivated the nation, leading to a media circus that portrayed biblical literalists as “yokels”, accelerating the fundamentalist movement in America, as well as a deep distrust of both the media and intellectuals among evangelicals.In 1962, the supreme court ruled that teacher-led prayer in school violated the first amendment’s establishment clause, essentially banning the practice. Many evangelicals – particularly in the south – felt that their religious rights had been violated years earlier when the court mandated that all US schools be racially integrated, as many white, southern Christians at the time interpreted scripture as mandating segregation.In response, there was an explosion of what would come to be known as “segregationist academies”, private Christian K-12 schools and universities that believed they could continue to racially discriminate – while enjoying tax-free status – due to protections to their “religious liberties”. In time, they would create their own textbooks and accreditation systems, a whole bubble of education independent from public schools or conventional higher education.View image in fullscreenIn the late 1970s, the heavily segregated Bob Jones University had its tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS, a move that was interpreted by many evangelical pastors as the government shutting down a church. The ruling was blamed on Jimmy Carter’s new Department of Education (which would become a whipping boy for evangelicals in the years to come) despite the IRS acting on a court ruling from several years earlier.The perceived attack on segregated Christian schools by the US government helped galvanize evangelicals into voting Republican.Meanwhile, the Christian right doubled down on the creation of its own, independent education system, one that rejected evolution in favor of creationism, made students pledge allegiance to a Christian flag, and preached against environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights and progressive policies.Escaping the bubbleI was born in 1982, and my education began in this isolated world of alternative facts. In my Christian kindergarten, I learned to read using the Bible and did math equations from scriptures on tithing. We were taught a great deal about the dangers of communism, while our working-class parents fell victim to predatory capitalism, manipulated into paying a tuition they couldn’t afford, convinced public schools were unsafe.View image in fullscreenThe collapse of my parents’ small business, a farm crisis tanking the Iowa economy, and years of tithing and additional “seed faith” donations to our church had left them broke.When I was in first grade, my mom and I performed janitorial work after hours for a reduction on my tuition. My dad borrowed money from family members to keep us enrolled and away from the dangers of public school. But following a divorce and bankruptcy, they, like many other working families, could no longer afford tuition.I was terrified of public school, which I imagined to be a cesspool of adolescent sin.I developed a hypervigilant paranoia when it came to the lessons of my public school teachers, particularly when it came to science and history. I was not only tasked with rescuing my classmates from hell; I had to avoid it myself, mainly through maintaining my belief in (a very specific definition of) God, which the “secular humanist” curriculum was a threat to. This required me to keep a heavy filter on the information I allowed into my mind and censor the thoughts that information inspired.Consequently, I flunked half of my classes.At the Christian school I attended my junior year of high school, things were different. We were taught from the lectures of creationists such as Ken Ham and Kent Hovind that our planet is only 6,000 years old, along with a detailed meteorological explanation for Noah’s flood. Hovind often blended conspiracy theories, such as evolution being a communist plot, into his lectures. Ham and Jessica DeFord’s book Climate Change for Kids explains to homeschooled and Christian school students: “Man cannot destroy the earth. God promised that.”In “Logic” class, we learned about gay rights rallies in San Francisco that were attempting, according to my teacher, to “indoctrinate children into that lifestyle”. It was not uncommon to hear leaders in the Christian school movement, like the “Christian economics” textbook author Gary North, argue for capital punishment for all homosexuals. North believed this should occur through the biblical practice of “stoning”. As a thin, effeminate young man with little interest in sports or hunting (yet perked up if the conversation turned to musicals or Alloy magazine), I was a relentless target for the rural boys at the Christian school, who saw it as their religious duty to shout “fag” in my ear as they tussled my hair and knocked books from my hands.The longer I stayed at the school, the deeper I fell into a malaise of depression and self-harm. In addition to the stress of bullies, I had trouble getting my mind around the logic of these classes, and knew that if I didn’t understand it, and believe it, eternal torture awaited me. Meanwhile, costs remained difficult. I was working part-time at Subway and Bennigan’s to pay for my Christian education, but it still wasn’t enough.I headed back to public school for my senior year. I’d been there a semester before it was explained to me that my credits from Forest City Christian school didn’t transfer, because they weren’t “accredited” by the government. (The school has since closed.)Instead, I was directed toward the GED testing center, where my education came to an unceremonious end with a generic certificate. Colleges and universities, I was told, were even worse than public schools in their liberal indoctrination, so I drifted through a decade of low-wage jobs in factories, restaurants and construction sites, as my fellow students who’d graduated from public school, then college, ascended the socioeconomic ladder.In time, I developed my own education at libraries and bookstores. But first, I had to, in the words of Yoda, “unlearn what you have learned”. In fundamentalist education, all knowledge and thought must bend itself to unarguable truth that the Bible is 100% factual in all matters. The itchy curiosity of philosophy, the relentless questions of the scientific method, the skeptic probing of journalism, have no place in that world.It was only through breaking out of the Christian education bubble – defecting from my duty to “reclaim America for Christ” – that I was able to cultivate strong learning faculties, eventually clawing my way into a career in journalism.Perhaps my financial prospects would have been much brighter if I had stayed in my Christian high school, attended a Christian college like Liberty University (which accepts students from non-accredited Christian schools) and gone on to work at a megachurch like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood church or in a Maga political organization like Turning Point USA. But my inability to get my head around the 2+2=5 logic of creationist science, or the claim that our founding fathers intended to create a Christian theocracy, prevented me from being an effective soldier in the fight for Christian nationalism, despite how eager I was to join the fight.Instead, I eventually traveled in the opposite direction, reporting extensively on the modern machinations of the Christian right. In the course of that work, I have often felt a deep sorrow for students enduring the bubble of private Christian education – particularly the poor and queer ones. Now it seems that compassion must extend to those in public schools as well.

      This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project’s James Ledbetter Fund. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump promises a crackdown on diversity initiatives. Fearful institutions are dialing them back already

      by

      In 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order against “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” which would have set the stage for sweeping attacks on diversity initiatives in the public sphere. In January 2021, on his first day in office, Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s anti-DEI order and signed one promoting “racial equity and support for underserved communities”.Now Trump is returning to office, he expected to restore his directive and double down on it. The people that run diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at public and private institutions are expecting mass crackdown. Project 2025 has labeled them “woke culture warriors” and pledged to wield the full force of the federal government against their efforts to create a more equitable society.Trump and his advisers have already threatened the funds and accreditation of universities they have labeled the “enemy”, and pledged to dismantle diversity offices across federal agencies, scrap diversity reporting requirements and use civil rights enforcement mechanisms to combat diversity initiatives they see as “discrimination”.The multi-pronged attack is certain to be met with major legal challenges, but while they prepare for those, advocates warn about the ripple effects of an administration declaring war on inclusivity efforts.“The concern is the bigger footprint and symbol,” said Nina Ozlu Tunceli, chief counsel of government and public affairs at Americans for the Arts. “Federal policies do have a domino effect on other states, on foundations, on individual donors.”Last week, Walmart became the latest in a series of high-profile companies to announce a rollback of its diversity initiatives following a campaign of legal challenges by conservative groups. Other businesses and institutions small and large are trying to keep a low profile to avoid becoming the target of anti-DEI campaigns, those who work with them say.There are already concerns that institutions fearful of losing funding or facing lawsuits may overcorrect and dial back their programmes before they are required to do so, advocates warn.A climate of fearEven before Trump was re-elected, “educational gag orders” seeking to limit discussion of race and LGBTQ+ issues in school classrooms had been introduced in at least 46 states. Last spring, conservative legislators linked campus protests against the war in Gaza to DEI initiatives. Virginia Foxx, the chair of the House committee on education and the workforce, told the presidents of several colleges that her committee would be “steadfast in its dedication to attacking the roots of antisemitic hatred, including anti-Israel DEI bureaucracies”.Questioning by Foxx’s committee ultimately led to several resignations by college presidents.“That got everyone terrified, including private university presidents who previously had been pretty brave about these things,” said Jeremy Young, director of the Freedom to Learn programme at the free speech group PEN America. “It was just this sense that, they’re coming, they’re headhunting for leaders, and you just have to do everything they say or they’re going to fire you or they’re going to cut your budget.”View image in fullscreenEven where no laws have been passed, a broad fear of repercussions has prompted some campus leaders to cut back on DEI initiatives, noted Young.“A number of states have engaged basically in jaw-boning, where the lawmakers will go up to a university president and encourage them or threaten them to close their diversity office while dangling a threat of funding cuts or passing a law the following year,” he said. “So we’re seeing universities trying to comply with these restrictions, or with these threats, even though there’s no law compelling them to do so.”Young cited the University of Missouri, for instance, where campus leaders in July dissolved its division of inclusion, diversity and equity citing nationwide measures against DEI even though no such law was passed in the state.In Texas, where state law does ban DEI offices but exempts academic course instruction and scholarly research, the University of North Texas system began scrutinising course materials in search for references to DEI, in what Young called an example of overcompliance and a “complete overreaction”.It’s a domino effect that anti-DEI activists are exploiting, for instance by sowing confusion about the 2023 supreme court ruling, which was fairly narrow but is sometimes cited as evidence that all DEI initiatives in higher education are illegal, said Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, where she focuses on classroom censorship.“We are very concerned about the broad chilling effect, and we see conservatives misrepresenting the status of the law in order to further the chilling effect,” Watson said. “Overcorrections are happening, and things are being cut that don’t have to be cut.”Some institutions have attempted to protect their work by downplaying their language around diversity to ensure that members from states with restrictions in place can continue to access them. Others have changed language about eligibility requirements for fellowships initially intended to promote access to people of color so as to avoid legal challenges.“There are institutions that want to continue their DEI programmes and they don’t want to be sued and they are really in a hard place with how to do that,” said Watson. “People are trying to fly under the radar at this point.”The new administrationGoing forward, the Trump administration is “likely to be the most virulent anti-DEI administration that we’ve seen”, said David Glasgow, the executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which helps institutions navigate an array of recent legislative restrictions on diversity work.“People who do this work are nervous and anxious about what might be restricted but their commitment is still there, so it’s really about trying to figure out what they’re going to be able to do,” he added.So far, four states – Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – have banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or offices in universities, a primary target in the battle against DEI. A fifth, Alabama, has severely restricted them.In Florida, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, also erased nearly all already approved state funding for the arts, ostensibly over a festival promoting inclusivity, which he dubbed a “sexual event”.View image in fullscreenThat may offer a blueprint for attacks on what conservatives see as “woke” culture under the incoming administration, said Tunceli, of Americans for the Arts.Institutions anticipating a similar backlash at the national level are already planning to emphasise projects the incoming administration may be more supportive to – like those celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, in 2026 – and to turn to alternative funding for those they expect will lose out on federal support.Many now believe that institutions will have to show bravery to uphold their values, even if it means risking funding. “What they need to do is find a backbone, and I say that with a lot of understanding and empathy for the situation they’re in,” said Young, of PEN America.“I worry when I see a university roll over for funding,” he added, calling on administrators to leverage their influence with alumni and their communities to stand up to legislators’ attacks. “A university that doesn’t have a new building is still a university, it’s just a poor university. A university that has lawmakers banning ideas and restricting the actions of the administration is really not a university at all.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican senator introduces bill to abolish US Department of Education

      by

      A bill that would accomplish Donald Trump’s goal of abolishing the federal Department of Education has been introduced into the US Senate.The Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced the bill, called the Returning Education to Our States Act, on Thursday. If passed, the bill would see $200bn in funding and the work of the education department redistributed to other federal agencies and states.“The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic department that causes more harm than good,” Rounds said in a statement announcing the bill.He added: “For years, I’ve worked toward removing the federal Department of Education. I’m pleased that president-elect Trump shares this vision, and I’m excited to work with him and Republican majorities in the Senate and House to make this a reality. This legislation is a roadmap to eliminating the federal Department of Education by practically rehoming these federal programs in the departments where they belong, which will be critical as we move into next year.”Major responsibilities of the Department of Education would be rerouted to other offices: the administration of federal student loans would become the responsibility of the treasury department; the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which enforces protections for the 7.5 million students with special needs, would fall under the Department of Health and Human Services; the Fulbright-Hays Program would be overseen by the Department of State.The bill would require a supermajority of 60 votes in the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Senate to get passed. Notably, Rounds believes he can pass the bill with 50 votes, according to the Argus Leader. That feat would happen through reconciliation, a congressional loophole which allows the enactment of legislation on taxes and spending with only a majority. Despite Rounds’s ambition, reconciliation does not look promising as Democrats and some independents who oppose eliminating the department are still in control of the Senate and White House.Rounds could reintroduced the bill next term, when Republicans take control, but it would still require 60 votes to pass the Senate.Education and policy experts have expressed their concerns should the bill pass and for what else is ahead in another Trump administration.David DeMatthews, a professor in the University of Texas’s department of educational leadership and policy, said he did not think the education department “will be abolished ultimately, but I do have a lot of fears”.Education is one subject that “really cut[s] across the political divide”, he said.“People who are Republicans who voted for Trump, they may have a child with a disability or a traumatic brain injury that is in a special program that would cost that family $50-60,000. They want their child to be in a high-quality program that’s evaluated by the state. They want rights if the state is not doing a good job, and all of that comes from the federal special education law ‘Idea’ [the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act], and all of that is monitored and enforced by the US Department of Education.”It has long been a key objective of the Republican party to abolish the Department of Education since it was launched in 1980 by then president Jimmy Carter. Within that same year, Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, even campaigned on eliminating the newly formed department – though that desire was quashed after Reagan’s first education secretary, Terrel Bell, penned a report that “advocated for a strong federal role to ensure students received a high-quality education”, according to ChalkBeat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince then, the department has seen a push and pull depending on the party in office. Under Democratic administrations, the department has leaned more progressive. A recent example was the Biden administration issuing new Title IX rules in April that offered more protections for LGBTQ+ students, victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant students; in July, House Republicans blocked it.In his campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasized that one of his education policies was to shutter the Department of Education and “create a new credentialing body that will be the gold standard anywhere in the world to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values support our way of life and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children”.He has also pledged to return school choice to the states and cut federal funding for any school or program that teaches “critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content”.Shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump baselessly claimed the education department was staffed by many people who “in many cases, hate our children” and said “we want states to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it” in a video.Earlier this month, Trump chose the former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon to serve as his as secretary of education, tasked with running the department he has vowed to close – a move DeMatthews calls “concerning”.“Across the board, what we’re seeing is already people in the Trump administration and some Republicans really trying to walk back some basic civil rights victories that happened in the 60s and 70s to support students with disabilities, low-income families, English learners,” DeMatthews said. “I think if the public understood it and knew about it, they wouldn’t be for taking away supports to help some of the most marginalized children in our country.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Theatrics, hatred and Linda McMahon: how pro wrestling explains Donald Trump

      by

      Despite her background in professional wrestling, Linda McMahon is not known for bombast. Indeed, she’s terrible at it: in the many years during which the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO would make occasional appearances in her company’s programming as a version of herself, she was always derided by fans for her lack of charisma and wobbly speaking voice.The most notable thing she did in any of the storylines was pretend to be comatose in a wheelchair while her husband, the vastly more explosive Vince McMahon, sexually harassed one of his female wrestlers in a skit. Linda won’t be winning an Emmy anytime soon.That’s ultimately what makes her a threat: she doesn’t seem like one. She is falsely perceived as a “moderate” and will come across as the “good cop” in a collection of awful ones. When she was nominated as director of the Small Business Administration in 2017, under Donald Trump, she was the only cabinet pick who passed with substantial Democratic support – 81 out of 100 senators voted to confirm her. She made it through her two-plus years in the role without drawing attention (despite the fact that her husband was simultaneously making lucrative business deals with the Saudi government). She will almost certainly be confirmed by the Senate again with relatively little difficulty. They have other things to worry about.View image in fullscreenBut senators should be worried about putting McMahon in charge of education policy. Behind her grandmotherly affect beats a cold heart. As I documented in my biography of her husband, Ringmaster, Linda and Vince have presented a united front at all times even amid accusations of sexual assault. She was almost certainly aware of a massive pedophile ring that ran within the McMahons’ World Wrestling Federation (as it was known) from the 1970s to the early 90s.Just last month, five additional men stepped forward in a lawsuit to accuse Linda and Vince of knowingly allowing their childhood sexual assaults. Naturally, the McMahons deny any wrongdoing. (Vince is also under federal investigation for sex trafficking, a fact that Linda has yet to publicly comment on.)So far, Linda hasn’t mimicked Trump’s wild attacks on his opponents or the institutions of the US government. Her first statement since receiving Trump’s nomination was bland: “All students should be equipped with the necessary skills to prepare them for a successful future.” But I would doubt that her tenure will be moderate.She has never spoken or acted in opposition to any of Trump’s extremist policies in the past, and she has been friends with him since the early 1980s. She ran the biggest pro-Trump Super Pac in 2020 and is currently the co-chair of Trump’s transition team. There is no reason to doubt that this lifelong Republican and dedicated Trumpist operative will enact large swaths of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for slashing school budgets and censoring educational content on race and gender.There is an illusion at play here. McMahon will be held up as a “reasonable” woman. But given that she works for Trump, her reasonableness is nothing more than “kayfabe”.View image in fullscreenEmerging from carnival sideshows in the 1880s, pro wrestling has always been built on a platform of deception. This deception is known in the industry as “kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey, babe”). For wrestling’s first century of existence, kayfabe was relatively simple, if arduous: wrestlers pretended to be violent madmen and performed staged matches “against” each other – but unlike film actors, they had to stay in character at all times, even on their off-hours. To commit to this code was to “stay in kayfabe”; to violate it was to “break kayfabe”. It was a lie, but it was wide and flat, so you could stand on it easily.However, those days are long gone. In the 1980s, Vince and Linda admitted their product’s fakeness in legal proceedings, so as to avoid taxes, regulations and fines. The secret was out, and nobody could credibly claim wrestling was on the level any more. So kayfabe evolved. What emerged was powerful – and often malevolent.In Ringmaster, I coined a term for this new form of misdirection, which still reigns: “neokayfabe”. Instead of insisting to the audience that what they were seeing was real, McMahon allowed fans to see behind the curtain and learn that not all was as it seemed.Wrestlers were encouraged to bring up real-life disputes with fellow grapplers, or even with McMahon himself, when they appeared in the ring. Previously taboo truths were confessed. Salacious teases of people’s personal lives came to the fore: first, it was just revelations of behind-the-scenes business frustrations; then, it graduated to things like a live interview with a wrestler’s widow about his drug overdose, the day after he died. Eventually, you had spectacles like a closeted gay wrestler being forced to sing Boy George lyrics and then get gay-bashed by another grappler. It’s hard to overstate how shocking – and gripping – these neokayfabe developments were for wrestling fans.When neokayfabe fully took hold in the late 1990s, ratings soared. Fans knew for sure that the matches were staged, but they also knew that thrilling revelations were bursting to the surface. The appeal wasn’t about who “won” or “lost” any more. It was about digging up the truth and deciphering it.You’d see a wrestler throw a particularly vicious personal insult at another one and start to wonder if their hatred was real, even if the match result wasn’t. You’d see Vince wrestle as a sadistic owner called “Mr McMahon” and be astonished that a Fortune 500 CEO was risking life and limb by falling 20ft from the side of a steel cage and landing on a table – was he really hurt after that fall, or was it all part of the show? Conversely, when the wrestler Owen Hart fell 70ft in a zipline accident during a 1999 live show and died after hitting the ring, the McMahons’ show went on, leading many in the crowd to assume it had all been staged. On top of all that, McMahon would toss in obscene sexual references and unconscionable bigotry to mock the marginalized.Much like Trump, McMahon was a master at capturing your attention because you couldn’t quite believe he was able to do what he was doing. Yet there it was. And all the while, Linda was the hidden hand behind him, steering the ship through the choppy waters of industry and emerging with a (somewhat) respectable media empire worth over a billion dollars.In her time running the company, she and Vince cultivated relationships with a wide array of people who now find themselves at the top of the Republican food chain. Most notably, Trump hosted two installments of the annual WrestleMania extravaganza in the late 80s, attended many additional shows and even participated in a long storyline where he pretended to be in an explosive rivalry with Vince, back in 2007. Before that storyline, Trump had rarely, if ever, worked up a rowdy and interactive crowd. But he was a quick study, and we can all see what he learned when he addresses his rally crowds.View image in fullscreenBut Trump wasn’t the only key contact. The McMahons were early corporate partners of the mixed martial arts promotion UFC, getting to know its deeply controversial head, Dana White (and, for what it’s worth, missing an opportunity to buy UFC in its infancy, only to watch as MMA dwarfed wrestling in popularity). It was the McMahons who made the wrestler Hulk Hogan (born Terry Bollea) an international superstar in the mid-80s. By 2024, both White and Hogan, as well as Linda, were primetime speakers at the Republican national convention.The reasoning for that prominent placement was easy to suss out: Trump just flat-out loves wrestling, and has since he was a preteen in Queens, watching local shows organized by Vince’s father. Trump did a late-stage campaign interview with the retired wrestler Mark Calaway (better known as the Undertaker), and was so excited that he essentially turned the tables and started interviewing Calaway with childish questions (eg “What stops somebody from going nuts and starting a real fight?”).If you watched Trump’s face throughout the convention, you saw him practically – and sometimes literally – falling asleep during the speeches. Not so when Hogan got up there. Trump was rapt and grinning while Hogan ripped off his shirt and declared that “Trumpamania” would take the former president all the way back to the White House. Hogan proved more prescient than many highly paid pundits, in that regard.The introduction of pro-wrestling culture into mainstream politics has brought a huge dose of chaos. That chaos is, of course, the point. It’s a shock-and-awe tactic: the enemies of pluralistic democracy are attempting to overwhelm us with statements and actions that confuse and unsettle. The Trump team is doing what it does best, which is keep the world off balance by warping our sense of reality. We no longer trust that anything we see or hear from Trump is strictly “real” – he lies as easily as breathing and routinely gets bored with his plans – but nor do we feel certain that he won’t act on his most ludicrous promises. We are immobilized in a state of constant panic and bewilderment.All of which is to say, Trump and his team have learned the most essential lessons of Trump’s favorite art form. If you don’t understand wrestling, you’ll never understand Trump.And you must know wrestling to understand our likely next secretary of education, as well – even though she doesn’t come across as a typical wrestling personality. She will mask herself in neokayfabe and do what her boss tells her to do. She will seek to tear up American education, from starving public kindergartens of cash to crushing protests at universities. She will be the sharp end of the presidential spear, all while seeming more like a kindly southern aunt than an efficient tool of neo-fascist revolution. She, and all of her ilk, will deceive and misdirect us. We must be vigilant. Don’t believe the hype. More