Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

On the issue of education, this year’s presidential election is being dominated by Trump’s blustery blast of empty destructive noise.

Neither party’s public education platform is anything to get too excited about. The Democrats basically want to go back to the glory days of Race to the Top, Arne Duncan, and opportunities for profiteers to take over public schools. While I wish that the Democrats would pledge to abandon the ESSA requirement that all states administer annual standardized tests, with Biden in charge and so many other issues to address I’m guessing that the last thing he’ll want to do is pick a fight over an issue that has bi-partisan support— and, alas, the use of tests to “measure schools” is such an issue.

But as bland as the Democrats education platform is, it is FAR superior to what the Trump administration is proposing: which is more choice and less critical thinking about history. Peter Greene’s article sums up the GOP’s thinking about education and, well, everything else: Whatever Trump says is exactly what they agree with. Greene summarizes Trump’s choice plan with this sentence:

Trump’s school choice agenda is about cutting funding for public education and increasing tax dollar support for private schools—schools that will have no obligation to educate any and all students that show up on their doorsteps.

The POTUS’ desire to Make History Great Again consists of eliminating all trade books and replacing them with a single text that lionizes the White Male American Heroes who developed the Constitution and devised an economic system that works within that document to siphon money to the most privileged and rapacious CEOs. These paragraphs offer an insight into how the POTUS plans to become our leading authority on history:

Trump also called teaching about systemic racism “a form of child abuse” and announced the formation of a committee, called the 1776 Commission, that would pose an alternative to the “repression of traditional faith, culture, and values” he feels are running rife in the nation’s public schools.

Even more salaciously, Trump has since pressured Walmart, Oracle, and ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok, to devote $5 billion of the video-sharing app’s sale to his “patriotic education” initiative.

“Do me a favor, could you put $5 billion into a fund for education,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in North Carolina, recounting a conversation he allegedly had with the companies’ executives. “So we can educate people as to the real history of our country. The real history, not the fake history.”

I hope that “real history” will continue to be a contentious narrative that offers a wide range of perspectives. The notion that there is only one right answer in the recounting of our nation’s history is preposterous… and the notion that Walmart, Oracle and Byte Dance can help determine that irrefutable “real history” is chilling.

Greene concluding paragraphs are even more chilling, though:

Trump’s vision of education as privatized and dutifully teaching students a conservatively edited version of U.S. history is not a desirable goal for our future.

Clearly, the only way Trump will be remembered as an education President is if he writes the history books himself. And, really, what’s to stop him?

The only thing to stop him is a clear and victory in November… and even some of the GOP might follow Trump if he decides to contest the election.

Source: The GOP’s Plan for Education: Whatever Trump Says