#savepubliceducation — Public Fediverse posts

It's quite scary to me how fully American leftists have absorbed right-wing propaganda about public education.

We were heading towards a system where everyone could go to college, thanks to heavy government subsidies. Then Nixon freaked out that we were creating an "educated proletariat" who would learn enough history to realize they could overthrow capitalism, and he began a decades-long campaign to defund all levels of public education in the U.S.

And it worked. Without federal funding, university tuition skyrocketed, making college unaffordable to more and more people, while k-12 schools also struggle to fund basic services. Moreover, the subjects that are getting the most extreme cuts are humanities: the classes that could help people learn to understand history enough to see they can revolt against capitalism.

As we watch continuing attacks on public education, a lot of leftists are either indifferent or actively cheering. They say public schools are part of "the establishment," and therefore destroying them is good.

Others point out that almost all university administrators and a large portion of k-12 school administrators are bad. There's also no shortage of bad teachers.

Yet hospital administrators and many medical doctors are also terrible, and I don't see many leftists cheering for less access to health care.

We had thousands of years of extreme wealth inequality, terrible quality of life for most people, and very little public education. It didn't get us a revolution. We're not going to get a revolution if we go back to that system.

#SavePublicEducation