Jose Luis Vilson, scholar and educator, puts on his sociologist hat to look at the challenge of shutting down the Department of Education.
What do we do when our public schools are under attack?
A couple of weeks ago, the new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon leveled significant cuts to the US Department of Education in an ostensible effort to shut EdGov down. McMahon is the latest in a string of the least qualified and/or the most subservient selections for important positions. In the same week she threatened hundreds of EdGov jobs, she was still learning education policy including IDEA and the work of school boards. While we ridiculed the nomination with clips from her WWE days, her first week in office presents a clear threat to public education in many of our lifetimes.
The “othering” of so many people across identities happens among both supporters and critics of public schools. That’s why we need to get right and get right now.
But this dynamic aligns well with President Trump’s plans for the 14,000 or so districts across the country. Many of these districts have threatened to wipe out their systems via vouchers altogether. The role of the US Department of Education has been discussed at length, but few have made it plain. The federal role in schools is to ensure at least a modicum of equity to our nation’s schools. This means every and all schools where specific groups of children may find themselves underserved by that institution or state. That matters for civil rights and education policy for everyone.
As a sociologist, I’m seeing some things that are worth your attention:
Killing Empathy Within Communities
Reducing empathy is a clear pathway for authoritarians. Even a simple search of “empathy” and terms like “Christian nationalism,” “Trump,” and “fascism” brings up the drudge from our societal well. Some pastors and preachers are signaling empathy as weakness to their congregations. Some influencers are taking advantage of people’s personal hurt to punch down or to the side, but never up. Policymakers and enforcers alike use xenophobia in their commercials as a clarion call for national identity.
This, too, makes it to children’s eyes and ears.
The attack on socio-emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion points to people not seeing each other as human beings. Ruthlessness breeds mistrust and allows for us to speak in dystopian terms. This includes people across protected classes, and really, any other person who doesn’t fall 100% behind a specific ideology. Folks who fought for integration often named public education as an empathy project as well towards a shared humanity.