I have spent more than two decades in the classroom, from middle school to college, with most of my time spent teaching Honors English, AP English, creative writing, and speech and debate. What I really taught was 240 young people a year to think critically and communicatet that thinking clearly. And I’m here to tell you we need no kings inthe classrooms.I am a political refugee from Florida. Florida, where religion has mixed with politics, where Ron DeSantis became a king who named himself the arbiter of morality and protector of the faith. Florida, which became the epicenter of book banning, the leaders in politics over pedagogy, saw their reading scores plummet, their SAT scores nosedive, created an exodus of professors and public school teachers, and raced to the very bottom of American education.
And now, we have a would-be king who wants to duplicate this on a national level.One of my students asked me what the purpose of public education was. He was really trying to stall class, but I thought it was a good question to turn back on them. So I asked: Why are you here? What is the purpose of public education?“So we can get jobs.”No.“So we can have better lives.”Nope.“So our parents can go to work.”I can’t disagree, but let’s look at original purposes.“So we can be happy.”Nah.“To make the world better.”Nope.I asked, why is it that folks without kids still pay for schools for you guys? Why did Jefferson want free education? Jefferson, one of the founding fathers who, let’s not forget, fought a war so never again would we have a king.There was silence.Here is what I told them.
Jefferson laid it on the line
The sole purpose of our public schools, as described by Jefferson himself, a proponent of free education, is to create an educated electorate able to discern the factual from the fallacious, to think critically regarding the world and the information at hand, to synthesize that information and be able to communicate that clearly in their writings, decisions, and, most importantly, at the ballot box.The very purpose of public education is to protect us from ever again being under the rule of a king.
But where are we headed instead?Instead we are headed into a future that dismisses the rule of law andreplaces it with the whims of the chief executive.Instead we are headed into a future where we have someone acting as a defender of the faith, executive ordering our pluralistic democracy into a theocracy.But at present we have a Congress full of elected officials who tell us they represent the people but each day, with each word and each action, demonstrate they are paying fealty to a king. Who, instead of keeping their oath of office to protect and uphold the Constitution, protect the person in power as though he were placed on a throne by divine intervention.Instead, we are dismantling the institutions which protect and bolster our democracy and replacing them with loyalty tests, subjugation, and rule by oligarchs acting as lords of the land under the hand of a king.Instead of upholding the separation of church and state, we have a man who rules as though, and is treated as though, he has a divine right to his position, his rule, his authority, and his way.What effect does this have on education in The United States?We have experienced a massive loss of academic freedom and, as a result, academics. Classes cancelled due to content. Tenure attacked. A study by our own Department of Defense has called this a threat to national security as we experience an academic and research brain drain. Loss of academic freedom and an emphasis on research gearedonly toward profit has decreased research for the sake of research, which is where most of our breakthroughs actually come. Entire college boards have been replaced with religious boards changing long-respected creative avant-garde institutions or art and philosophy into colleges of western education.
We have experienced not only a decrease in the quality of education, but in the quality and diversity of students as well, as many of those who come from abroad have decided it is just not safe to come here to study, or, worse, are removed from our colleges and universities by often unidentified masked men, and put into prisons with no due process.We have experienced a decrease in the number of people who want to go into teaching with 35 percent of teachers saying they are leaving the profession and 86 percent of schools having trouble finding teachers to hire. With the threat of beng labeled groomers, indoctrinators, andworse, who can blame them?We are experiencing a drain of capital from our public schools, as the money is funneled, instead, to profitable religious schools.We are experiencing an unprecedented attack on public educators. They are being harassed, doxed, threatened with death and worse. Their work made untenable. They are being demoralized, treated as though their training and expertise, skill and knowledge, are of use only if they keep to the script, support the party line, and say what they are told, even when they know what they are being told to say are lies.
In Florida, teachers must tell students slavery was beneficial to black Americans, all the Founding Fathers were anti-slavery, and Frederick Douglass supported putting off abolition.
In Oklahoma, teachers must teach that the 2020 election was stolen. In many states, teachers must teach America was founded as, and remains, a Christian country. Teachers must teach the one true religion that White, straight Christians built America, and God wants it that way. Students are being gaslighted. Students are being lied to. Students are being hurt. And, thus, is our nation.What is the result? In many states, a 400 percent increase in suicides among our LGBTQ youth. One headline read “Teachers’ mental health ‘crisis’ prompts call for suicide prevention strategy.” We have seen book bans increase over 200 percent in just the last year leaving us in a country that is losing its freedom to express a broad range of ideas, to express who we are as individuals, to learn about each other. Leaving us a country that is losing its ability to feel empathy. A recent article in Scientific American was titled “The US has an empathy deficit.” We have more and more students coming to school ill because they have lost Medicaid, their parents unable to stay home with them because of fear of losing their jobs. Sick kids don’t learn. And sick kids make more sick kids. And more sick teachers. And sick teachers can’t teach. This is just some of what this would-be king has brought us.This attack on teachers and students is not uncommon in countries run by dictators and kings. We saw this is Maoist China, in Stalinist Russia. The Khmer Rouge viewed individuals with inquisitive minds as the second greatest threat to their totalitarian regime. The greatest threat? Teachers. General Mattis said “they started by rounding up all of the teachers. They wanted to extinguish free thought, and the spark of questioning and dissent. Because, to a totalitarian dictator, an open and inquisitive mind is more dangerous even than a Marine with a rifle.”Kings do not want us to think. Kings do not want freedom of thought. Kings do not want us to be able to question. Kings do not want us to be able to think critically. And that is why you are seeing this unprecedented attack on public education.This is the United States. We do not want kings. It is up to you and me to assure we never have one.
Adam Tritt, a former Brevard resident who taught AP English at Bayside High School, now lives in Minnesota.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Attacks on public education flout Thomas Jefferson’s dream for Americans | Opinion
Reporting by Adam Tritt / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
