The Private Theft of Public Culture

A new middle school is being built in the next town over. They spent five years discussing its need, before raising the tax rates to properly fund it, battling the resistance of the never-taxers who think once their children’s education has ended so should their responsibility to educate the next generation. Once the ground is broken, it will take 3 years to complete. But when one thinks about how long it takes to build a school, one should think in terms of centuries, not years.

The first public school was established in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1635. It was public in name, but not in spirit, since its enrollment was limited to young males destined for college. Black people and females were not permitted to attend, and even today the school, though ostensibly open to all, is criticized for its tendency to exclude minorities. In fairness, the same could be said of many American public schools.

Think for a moment how long it takes to build a public school, by which I mean not only its physical dimensions, but the philosophical and cultural growth which must occur before any society educates its children. There are nations today who fail to provide wide swaths of its population an education; 262 million children around the world lack access to education. If public education is the result of a culture’s growth and evolution, it is clear some nations have failed to progress, thereby guaranteeing systemic poverty, widespread ignorance, and governmental abuse. So when I say the school in the next town will take three years to build, it actually took centuries to build, for what needed constructed before the physical structure was the philosophical and cultural structure that made its physical presence possible.

The Republican Party’s effort to defund public education, directing public dollars to privately owned schools, is the private theft of our public culture. It is the systematic dismantling of a priceless treasure that has taken Americans centuries to build. This bald attack on education is now being extended to our public libraries, what Andrew Carnegie called “the poor man’s college,” as Republicans plot to defund them. We can only conclude those destroying public education do not want an informed citizenry they cannot manipulate and control. Donald Trump made no secret of his motives when he said he loved the poorly educated. He did not mean he loved the people who were poorly educated, but rather he loved that they were poorly educated and therefore more vulnerable and receptive to his evil machinations.

The chief barrier to the wholesale takeover of America by the MAGA movement is education. Bright people, who have been taught to read and think for themselves, are always a threat to tyranny, being less likely to be dazzled by demagogues. Tyranny multiplies in the darkness of ignorance, so ignorance is the friend of the tyrant and knowledge its foe. It is why, in whatever states Republicans dominate, school spending is slashed, robbing the young not only of their opportunity to learn, but their ability to earn. Year after year, our nation’s red states remain the poorest, providing fewer economic opportunities to its citizens.

The Republicans contempt for education is mirrored also in their attack on the free press. They want no story told but their own, no version of the “truth” made available but the one fabricated by think tanks funded by the oligarchs whose contempt for democracy is all too clear. Though they talk piously about freedom and opportunity, they yearn to hold Americans in economic bondage. They long for a beholden workforce, not an empowered one. It is the tug of the forelock they want, the bended knee, the compliant worker toiling in maximum misery for minimum money. And what better way to create such a workforce than to deny our children and grandchildren the knowledge they require to thrive.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump’s decision to shutter the Department of Education has nothing to do with a return to the state control of education, as he claims. It is a thinly disguised effort to curb the federal oversight of schools nationwide. No longer will schools and states be held accountable for providing an inferior education to the poor and minorities. No longer will the vast resources of the world’s wealthiest nation be tapped to empower and equip its children. Assets once used to lift all the boats, will now be showered upon religious schools that confuse the Bible for science, which relegate our daughters and people of color to second-class citizenry, all the while convincing our children their station and struggles are part of God’s great plan.

It is nothing less than the private theft of our public culture, a civilization centuries in the forming, which Republicans, on behalf of the oligarchs, will demolish for their own greedy good. There are no longer two political parties in the United States of America. There are the Democrats, and there is a gathering of thugs formerly known as the Republican Party, which has, by its capitulation to a fascist, made it unfit for any office in a democracy. The sooner it dies, the better.

Every now and then, I offer an essay touching on such consequential matters I don't want it hidden behind a paywall. Today's essay is just such a one. Please restack it, share it on your social media, and consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can dedicate more time, thought, and energy to challenging the corrupt and corrosive goals of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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Philip Gulley is the author of Unlearning God: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe and the popular Harmony series.

Discover my books, stories, and more by visiting Books by Philip Gulley

Contact Philip directly at philiphgulley@gmail.com

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