Lear’s two daughters

Created
Mon, 16/01/2023 - 01:00
Updated
Mon, 16/01/2023 - 01:00
Which doth love America most? Our red, white, and blue-wrapped neighbors recall King Lear’s daughters, Goneril and Regan. Eager to profess in florid terms just how much they love their fatherland while quick to abandon it for a larger inheritance than their co-citizens. So it is with the core American institution of public education. I’ve written repeatedly about efforts to undermine public education that the founders valued as essential to their newly minted democratic republic. These days private capital feels entitled to pillage the public good for private profit. Public education being required by 48 state constitutions, it is the largest annual budget item in all 50 states: If you think the conservative furor over critical race theory and grooming and book bans is about culture war issues, you probably think George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security was about getting you, Average Taxpayer, a better long-term return on your paycheck witholdings. It’s about the money. What stands between the investor class and the hundreds of billions states spend, not-for-profit, on public education annually are teachers and school custodians and school administers and state boards of education. They’ve got to go. Critics of the public good dress up their complaints with anodyne words like choice and accusations about the evil machinations of foul lefties who want children actually to learn about the world they will inherit. Parents threatened by changing mores are free to send their kids to religious indoctrinization academies where they will learn what to think and…