There have always been anti-intellectual elements in our public life; both Richard Hofstadter and Susan Jacoby have chronicled the waxing and waning of anti-intellectualism in the United States in the past two centuries. What is disturbing is to see that, for all our knowledge, our technology, and the progress we have made, anti-intellectualism is on the rise again. While we have always seen sniping at the edges in the ongoing battles over teaching evolution, and climate change, many of the recent battles have been attacks on education itself, and the very idea that education has value for its own sake.
The attacks on education have come largely from the Republican Party, often in the form of deep cuts to both K-12 education and higher education. Sacrifices must be made, the governors and legislators solemnly declare, but those sacrifices never seem to come from those who can afford to make them, nor are they equally distributed. Pennsylvania's now-former Republican governor Tom Corbett oversaw nearly a billion dollars in cuts to the state's schools, resulting in larger class sizes, cuts to music and art education, and the loss of over 20,000 educational staff. These were paired with deep cuts to the state's funding for higher education, which have resulted in higher tuition and cuts to programs. Sam Brownback of Kansas is set to slash $45 million from that state's education budget, and Wisconsin's Scott Walker is preparing to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system. Those three are hardly the only Republicans to cut funding to education in their state; Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida are among a host of states who have made similar budget choices, consistently privileging tax cuts and funding for prisons over the education of students at all levels.
The attacks on education haven't been limited to just financial ones. While the Right has a history of dismissing the value of education, what was once largely the purview of talk radio hosts like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh has gone mainstream within the GOP. Scott Walker's proposed cuts to education funding were, briefly, accompanied by editing the University of Wisconsin's mission statement. Passages that highlighted education's value in understanding "the human condition" and in "the search for truth" were to be axed in favor of a bland statement about meeting the state's workforce needs. A Republican lawmaker in Mississippi recently equated education to "welfare," which, in Republican parlance, equates to an "undeserved handout to people we don't like." The 2012 Republican Party platform called for the ending of federal student loans, loans which make education possible for many; that same year the Texas GOP platform expressed opposition to the teaching of "critical thinking skills" as they may "challenge student's fixed beliefs and [undermine] parental authority." Former PA Senator Rick Santorum, a surprisingly well-educated man himself, called the President a "snob" for wanting everyone to be able to attend college, where they would be "indoctrinated by some liberal professor," in Santorum's words. His conservative audience cheered his derogation of higher education.
Republicans believe themselves the true heirs of the Founders, but their views on this topic are distinctly at odds with what men like Jefferson thought about education. While men like Walker work to make it harder to get an education, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia; Ben Franklin helped found the Academy of Philadelphia, which became the University of Pennsylvania, making education more widely available. The men who founded the Republic knew that the only way to keep what they created was to cultivate an educated public. Today's Republicans scorn the very idea, mocking the educated as "elitists."
In attacking education, Republicans attack the very idea of a civil society. Education has the power to open minds. It gives us the ability to better function in the modern world, where we are inundated with claims and opinions and in need of tools to sift the good from the bad. Education enables us to form coherent arguments and engage in reasoned debate rather than shouting past each other. It is not something to be feared but to be celebrated. To pretend that this is not so because of ideology, or fear, isn't the hallmark of a statesman, it's the behavior of a vandal. The barbarians are here, but they aren't at the gates--they're already inside.
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