By Will McCorkle | This Christmas season, we are focused on the good of children throughout our nation. Central to their well-being is a strong education system. However, the vitality of our public education system is in great danger due to political malfeasance and individuals who do not believe in the concept of public education.
In November, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon, the former head of the WWE and someone without any teaching experience, to be head of the U.S. Department of Education. This was not surprising as it is just part of a larger trend to discredit, belittle and dismantle public education in the United States.
Trump’s prior Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, also had no teaching experience and was completely unqualified for the position. But I at least understood that pick a little more given Devos’s background with charter schools and the Republican agenda of privatization. McMahon probably does not differ much from Devos on this front, but it seems like this pick is even less serious. It is just a way of putting a loyalist into office, and in the end, the attitude seems to be more of disregarding and ultimately dismantling public education anyways.
What many in our nation are failing to realize is that the most important aspect of keeping our republic functioning is our education system. Founding father Thomas Jefferson in his appeal to create a public education system in Virginia told us exactly why it was so important. As he stated,
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”
In the end, a strong education system is not primarily about obtaining job skills or for individual growth or insights. Though all those aspects are important, as Jefferson stated, it is ultimately about preserving the republic from those who would want to subvert it and lead us to tyranny.
We are living in such a moment right now. It is no accident that Trump won some of the largest margins among those with the least education and now vows to end the U.S. Department of Education. In a truly educated populace, someone like Trump would never be given consideration much less win two terms as president.
It is time for us to recommit ourselves to public education and realize that a lack of strong social studies education and the weakening of public education has been one of the central factors that has led us to this point in our country. It allowed us to elect someone who tried to overthrow the government back into office – something that leaders like Jefferson would not have been able to comprehend.
If we survive this moment as a republic, we must ensure that our next generation is properly educated so they can help resist the movement towards tyranny in their own time.
Summerville resident Will McCorkle teaches educational foundations and social studies education at an area college.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!