Monday, August 24, 2020

Trump's Education Agenda

Trump has released his agenda for his second term, and it's special. Cut taxes. Add jobs. Eradicate Covid-19. End reliance on China. Cover pre-existing conditions. Congressional term limits. Bring violent extremist groups like ANTIFA to justice. Dismantle human trafficking. Build the world's greatest infrastructure system (so, more infrastructure week!) Stop endless wars.

It's all familiar hooey, in bullet point list form (so not a word about how or why, but education gets its own subheading, under which we find these two bullet points.

Provide School Choice To Every Child In America

Teach American Exceptionalism

That's it. That's the whole thing. Get some of that good old ahistorical jingoism back in the classroom, and dismantle the public education system and replace it with a privatized one. It's a fun pairing because if you're going to have a school choice system, how are you going to force every school to teach exceptionalism? For that matter, how will you force a free and open market to serve every single student (spoiler alert--you can't).

So not just crap, but sloppy, poorly thought out crap. Trump's listicle agenda is less an actual agen da and more a collection of catch-phrases that he's figuring will appeal to his base. Also, in the case of sc hool choice, it also lets him reassure folks like the Catholic Church that deal he made (voucher-delivered taxpayer dollars in return for votes) is still in place.

Note also that there is no GOP platform this time. The GOP has decided to skip having a platform and instead has simply declared that the press is mean, that whatever the Dems are for, the GOP is against it, and finally, that they pledge their loyalty to Dear Leader. So this bullet point list is all we get this time around.

Lots of public school teachers voted for Trump first time around. There may have been some question about how things would go that time, but this time out there can be no doubt-- a vote for Trump is a vote against public education.

Addendum: For those sputtering "But but but what about Biden," here's the post I already ran about Biden's "unity" platform.

1 comment:

  1. and dismantle the public education system and replace it with a privatized one.

    School choice need not be obtained by dismantling public education.

    Where I am from parents usually have multiple choices: the local public school, another public school in the city, the local (public) Catholic school, a local indigenous school (state funded) and two private schools (which have to use national curriculum, because they are part state funded).

    In the UK a lot of parents can choose between various local state schools (especially the Academies and Free Schools).

    That school choice has become associated with state funding of charter schools in the US does not mean it has to be so. It is entirely possible to have choice in a 100% public system.

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