government schools

9 25 primary now main messed up spacing bc devil term

8/20 mebbe redumbdent, but devil term

see main public school bd gov’t disambig

SEE CHARTER PAROCHIAL

7 22 broaden to bogus criticism

parent rights groomer pedo drag coming for your kids indoctrinate

a variant of liberal pinko prof myth? Limbaugh rant on attack on Am exceptionalism does not use term govt school, but identifies as root of rot

trump 2/20?

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MMA

September 1, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, uploaded to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): But this is the fundamental question of our time, and it's a curse on us, and it makes me so angry at older generations. And I love y'all. This is not gonna be some boomer hate screed. But you don't understand what was destroyed. And it's impossible because it's so hard for — this is why, like, the whole victimhood stuff is such trash — so impossible to put yourself in somebody else's position. It really is very hard for somebody to do this. So I'm not going to ask you to do it, but, like, think about what's been destroyed.

I have to homeschool my kids. Because I can't trust that they're not going to be indoctrinated or abused inside of the public school or killed, you know, right? Obviously, like, killed by a gang of like Third World miscreants that want to scalp a white kid. That didn't exist when I was growing up, when the boomers were raising their kids, except maybe the worst conceivable schools in the worst conceivable parts of the most downtrodden bombed out cities in America. Maybe you could find a public school like that. Now it's every public school, every one. Institutional trust is at absolute zero. That's why homeschooling is exploding.

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RWW

News & Analysis

08/18/2026

Peter Montgomery

Dominionist and MAGA activist Jim Garlow devoted his World Prayer Network call Sunday night to an attack on public education. One of the speakers, Liberty University Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances Rev. Glenn Clary, described how Liberty is planning to take advantage of a provision in the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” designed to funnel tax dollars into Christian schools.

Hostility toward public education is a defining characteristic of the Christian right political movement, which has fought for years to funnel public education funds into religious schools and the conservative-dominated homeschooling movement.

Televangelist Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University, wrote in 1979, “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

Garlow began Sunday’s broadcast by telling his prayer warriors, “We want to help you understand why you've got to help your children, your nephews, your nieces, and your grandkids get out of the public school.” He described public education as “rotten to the core,” and said 75 to 80 percent of students raised in the church lose their faith when they go to college because they had not been “properly grounded.”

Clary, the Liberty vice president and a former chair of the Alaska GOP, described public schools as “anti-God indoctrination centers.” He claimed that public schools are controlled by the National Education Association, an educators’ union that he said he calls the “National Evil Association,” adding, “And so I just think that we need to get the kids out of these public schools.”

An important background to this story is the history of Liberty’s rise to become a billion-dollar behemoth in among conservative Christian colleges. That wasn’t achieved by founder Falwell, but by his now-discredited son Jerry Jr., who saw early on the potential financial windfall of online education, which allowed Liberty to take tuition dollars—much of it funded by taxpayers indirectly through federal student loans—from a huge number of students that didn’t require a lot of physical infrastructure. Liberty devoted millions to high-pressure call centers to recruit tens of thousands of online students.

Liberty University Online Academy, which Clary was promoting on Garlow’s call, is the university’s online K-12 school. Clary says more than 75,000 students have gone through its program. Clary described his current mission as recruiting pastors to turn their church’s used space during the week into classrooms for students taking (and paying for) Liberty’s online classes. It’s a way, he said, for churches to create Christian schools without having to worry about hiring and managing teachers. Students who graduate from the online high school can get 50 percent off their tuition if they become a residential college student at Liberty.

For pastors who might be asking, “How would I pay for this?” Clary suggested that parents and grandparents can contribute. B

The 2025 legislation set up a scheme that allows any taxpayer to get a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes for any contribution up to $1,700 to a scholarship granting organization (SGO) beginning on Jan.1, 2027. The SGO in turn can use those dollars to provide “scholarships” or vouchers to pay for tuition at a private school. There is no cap on the program, which the National Center for Public Education has noted could direct “tens of billions of dollars annually towards private school education.”

Clary was enthusiastic about what this could mean for money flowing into Christian schools like Liberty's online academy:

So if you and your wife did your taxes and you owe $2,000 and you contributed $1,700 to an SGO, scholarship granting organization, you could take that $1,700 off your tax bill and you would pay $300 to the government and you have directed your tax dollars to a Christian school organization in order for a child to have a Christian education.

Clary said that Liberty is going to “stand up” its own SGO. “Liberty is going to have this and make it available to the students that come to Liberty and any of the pastors that stand up affiliate schools,” he said.

It’s worth noting that earlier this year, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, legislation that would repeal the SGO tax credit, which is essentially a federal private school voucher program. The bill was co-sponsored by 28 other Democratic senators.

After Clary spoke, Garlow turned to his next guest, Dr. Lisa Dunne, who has a similar contempt for the “anti-Christian” public education system, calling it “anti-faith, anti-family, anti-freedom—a system that hates our God, hates us, and hates our nation.”

We say education is formation and unfortunately, as you heard from Doctor Clary and you heard from Doctor Garlow, we're wasting a lot of time in the in the educational systems today forming children in a non-biblical worldview. I would say we're raising up atheist armies, and I would say that is not an--that's not hyperbolistic, that’s not an exaggeration in any way.

Dunne, who founded a Christian college and network of Christian schools, is pursuing her vision of replacing public education with church-run schools:

We've done the stats in California, and if 75% of our churches in the state of California would open their doors to 250 students, we would shut down the dysfunctional public school system in our state.

Many religious-right activists have adopted part of the worldview taught by Christian Reconstructionists that there is no biblical basis for public education because God assigned that responsibility to the family and church. Dunne made the same claim, citing Kevin Novak, a right-wing attorney who promotes the abolition of the “civil government school system,” which he calls a “tyrannical mechanism that commands our youth to think in anti-Christian terms.” Dunne called Novak a friend and said he is about to start at her Chula Vista Christian University.

And he goes through biblically, he goes through all of the Word and shows that the government, the secular pagan government, has no jurisdiction to educate our children. None. Zero. The mantle of responsibility is on our shoulders as parents. Now we can choose to partner with a trusted agency like our local church, but it is our responsibility. We will stand before the Lord for how we raised or did not raise our children.

While some religious-right activists call for the abandonment of the public school system, others are using political muscle to try to turn public schools into places to proselytize students or use charter school systems to promote taxpayer funded religious indoctrination.

And while anti-public education religious-right voices may have bigger media platforms, it’s also important to recognize that there are many Christian teachers and administrators in public schools, and many pastors and Christian parents who support the mission of public education.

On the Watchlist

Jim Garlow

Jim Garlow is an anti-LGBTQ activist who made a national name for himself by helping to mobilizing churches against marriage equality in California. He has since played a number of roles in the religious-right movement. During the MAGA era he has become an ardent Trump supporter, serving on the faith advisory board for Trump's 2016 campaign. During the turmoil after the 2020 election, Garlow started a series of prayer calls designed to help keep Trump in power. The World Prayer Network calls have continued as venues for religious-right organizing and MAGA propaganda.

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Mark Meckler tells Christian parents to remove their children from public schools: "You are sacrificing your children to Moloch if you leave them in those schools. You are leaving them to the mercy of demons and people who hate the Creator."

rww 2 26

AN 9 25

After Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, countless Democrats—from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) to former President Joe Biden to California Gov. Gavin Newsom — wholeheartedly condemned the killing. But the Trump Administration and many of its MAGA allies conflated criticism of Kirk's politics with celebrating his murder.

In Pennsylvania, one of the people who is facing threats after disagreeing with Kirk's views — even though she never condoned his murder in any way — is Homer-Center School District board member Misty Hunt.

In an article published on September 23, The Guardian's Ramon Antonio Vargas reports, "A member of a Pennsylvania school board says she is stepping back from her duties — and has been grappling with threats to her safety — after a 'one down, hundreds to go' social media post about windblown milkweed seeds was misconstrued as celebrating the killing of far-right pundit Charlie Kirk. Homer-Center School District board member Misty Hunt uploaded the post in question on 10 September, the same day Kirk was shot to death by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University (UVU)."

Hunt, however, forcefully spoke out against Kirk's murder in a September 10 post on Facebook.

Hunt wrote, "To my community: I am sorry. Sorry that a post of mine was linked to a terrible situation. It was never my intention. For those who really know me, you know I can be wild at times but not like this. And for those who are calling for my undoing — you don’t know me or what is in my heart. But thank you for the assumption. And thank you for the witch hunt. You didn’t ask for clarification. And now you’re calling for me to resign and to be fired from a job where I constantly make kids smile. I am a human being too."

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an 9 25

Florida Attorney GeneralJames Uthmeier (R) has announced the launch of a new tool for members of the public to report “acts or threats of political violence" as well as social media posts of public school teachers, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Uthmeier, chairman of the ironically named far-right "Florida Freedom Fund" political action committee associated with Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), has the backing of Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, who, recently sent a letter to public school superintendents threatening teachers who publicly express negative opinions about deceased far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

In a statement attached to Uthmeier's announcement, Kamoutsas said that “any educator who makes vile, despicable comments celebrating and encouraging violence in schools will be investigated and held accountable.”

According to The Tallahassee Democrat, Uthmeier said that "while the First Amendment will be upheld, threats of violence won’t be tolerated."

In the wake of Kirk's death, several Florida public school teachers have lost their jobs and status or been put on leave, including Karen Leader, an associate art history professor at Florida Atlantic University, placed on leave for posting about the right-wing podcaster's history of hate speech.

IFrame Content

A retired University of Florida professor lost his honorary title after posting about Kirk, “I did not want him to die. I reserve that wish for Trump," and other professors' posts are under investigation by the state along with teachers at several K-12 schools throughout the state.

“I didn’t say anything or do anything that encouraged violence at all,” Leader told Hyperallergic.“I did not say or do anything that celebrated his death, that said he deserved it, that in any way, shape or form, condoned violence.”

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mma

post kirk shoot

mma

### Steve Bannon: “The public schools and private schools ought to be designated as terrorist organizations too”

09/19/25

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mma

### Jesse Watters brushes aside talk of a Trump enemies list: “Who’s Trump arrested other than bad hombres and the linebacker in Congress?”

05/29/25

Jesse Watters: “Teachers are too stupid and too lazy to buckle down and really go the extra mile for these kids”

05/29/25

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rww

03/14/2025

Peter Montgomery

The religious-right group Family Research Council promoted an excited letter to supporters Thursday saying that President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education could be a “game-changer” for FRC’s efforts to “bring faith and the Bible back to public schools.”

In her recent book “Money, Lies, and God,” Katherine Stewart wrote about the ways that “privatizers and proselytizers” work together to delegitimize and undermine public education. The right-wing funded Moms for Liberty demonstrates this dual strategy, urging activists to take over public school boards while advocating for “school choice” laws to divert funding away from public schools. FRC President Tony Perkins’ letter showcases such a two-front strategy to push religious indoctrination into public schools and shift more students (and education dollars) into religious schools that are free from public oversight.

Perkins begins by criticizing Supreme Court rulings upholding church-state separation, and moves quickly to Christian nationalists’ favorite target: LGBTQ people: “With God, the Ten Commandments, and biblical truths out of the way, the Left had ample room to push their radical indoctrination plan onto our children.”

Perkins’ letter praises recent actions by state officials to turn public schools into de facto Sunday schools, beginning with a 2024 Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. “Louisiana’s spark became a flame as other states – including Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota – have now taken steps to reintroduce biblical teachings back into their schools,” Perkins writes.

But even that is not enough, Perkins continues, calling on every church to start a Christian school in which the Bible “is more than historical context of our nation's founding or a general ethical context -- it is the complete worldview in which reality and life itself are grounded.”

Perkins’ letter comes in the context of Christian nationalist activists urging state legislators to take advantage of right-wing Supreme Court rulings and go “on offense” to dismantle separation of church and state, particularly where schools are involved.

Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters last year ordered public schools in the state to teach the Bible, which may have been an effort to keep him from being upstaged by Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, which has been promoted as part of “Project Blitz,” a campaign to promote Christian nationalist legislation at the state level. Walters' plan to buy Trump Bibles for classrooms was put on pause by the state supreme court this week.

Trump chose his billionaire backer Linda McMahon to oversee the dismantling of the Department of Education. McMahon has chaired the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA think tank that promotes right-wing education policies as part of its agenda for “restoring a nation under God.” AFPI promotes so-called “school choice” laws that divert funding from public schools to unaccountable religious schools.

“AFPI has specifically taken credit for lobbying for the expansion of this approach in Arizona—over the objection of voters—where it has become an expensive ‘handout to the wealthy’ that has forced cuts in programs that serve needier families,” Right Wing Watch reported in February. “Pro Publica has reported on the lack of accountability in the program; a failing charter school shut down by regulators simply reopened as a private religious school funded by taxpayers.”

AN 12 24

MAGA Republicans ramp up plan to 'indoctrinate' public schools with Christian nationalism

rnc 7 24 universal something - voucher parochial

Matt Walsh: “The public school system should be totally abandoned”

07/17/24

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anti-commie teachers new?

rww 2 24

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller told the MAGA activists gathered near Washington, D.C. last week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that conservatives must be willing to use power more aggressively against their opponents. He railed against district attorneys and other officials for not arresting teachers who violate new state laws that restrict teaching on race, gender, and sexuality.

Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies, has been promising MAGA activists that if Trump returns to the White House, he “will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.” Miller’s America First Legal group is part of the far-right Project 2025, which has prepared a battle plan for the movement to “take the reins of government” in a new Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation, ringleader of the Project 2025 scheme, was at CPAC recruiting foot soldiers willing to carry out the plan.

In a recent article for Political Research Associates’ “The Public Eye” magazine, I noted that Project 2025 reflected a “movement-level, ideological shift away from a libertarian mistrust of government power and toward an authoritarian view of government power being used ruthlessly—whether as a righteous force wielded to advance a ‘biblical worldview’ or turned against an ‘administrative state’ supposedly captured by a radical Marxist left.”

Miller provided ample confirmation about the MAGA movement’s intentions, down to his dismissal of libertarianism as “a terrible ideology” that might be fine for academic debates but not in the real world, where he said public officials have a responsibility to “defeat evil.”

Excerpts from Miller’s appearance on a Friday, Feb. 23 CPAC panel:

Call it a mental illness, call it a spiritual failing, call it a moral deficiency, call it weakness, softness, or just being pathetic. There is something really broken in the conservative brain. They’re afraid not only of conflict, we know that. But there’s an even deeper fear, a deeper fear than all that, which is having power, and using power. Conservatives are addicted to the language of libertarianism, which is fine–you know, it’s a terrible ideology, but in an academic setting, okay, have these debates. …

You elect a state supreme court justice, you elect an Attorney General, and so on and so forth, to have an office with specific powers, duties, and responsibilities, with the expectation that they will use that authority to defeat evil, to protect the good, and to accomplish positive change in society. And you have to use that power fearlessly. …

A number of states, for example, have passed laws, saying that you can’t have this in the curriculum, or you can’t have that in the curriculum, and you can’t teach DEI and so on and so forth. Without exception, I can promise you, all the commies in the classroom changed the name of their lecture, changed one word, changed one little paragraph in the syllabus and did the exact same damn thing every single day because they’re communists and that’s what they do. Were they sued? No! Were they arrested if they broke a law and it’s applicable? No! Did any D.A. anywhere, if you’re talking about trans issues, think of arresting somebody for abusing children with trans ideology? No, we write blog posts about it. That’s what we do. So until we get serious, all the way down to the local DA, all the way up to the state A/G. and every office in between, including judges, electing people who have power and will use that power and measure their success by change in the real world, then we aren’t going to be able to beat the left.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-editor-hannah-grossmans-yearlong-obsession-demonizing-educators-and-chaos

no lnx pix twt?

fox News’ Hannah Grossman has written nearly 100 articles in the last year that target specific teachers, schools, administrators, board members, or other staff, largely regarding the discussion of gender, sexuality, or systemic racism in the classroom. Multiple educators named in her reporting have been doxxed, harassed, fired, hit with lawsuits, or forced to resign.

Grossman is an associate editor at Fox News who, according to her Fox News webpage, “currently focuses on education” and covers “the U.S. Department of Education, the Pentagon's schools, teachers' unions and K-12 public schools.” She’s previously published articles on a variety of topics, often attacking the Biden administration, mainstream media, and “wokeness,” but shifted to mostly publishing articles about education in May 2022.

In March, The Daily Dot's Claire Goforth reported that after Grossman published five articles attacking one trans teacher in California, both the teacher’s classroom and the school district offices received bomb threats. Media Matters analyzed all of Grossman’s published articles over the last year (from May 1, 2022 through May 1, 2023) and found that Grossman’s attacks on individual teachers and schools go well beyond one California school and one trans teacher.

In fact, Grossman has published 33 articles targeting specific teachers, librarians, or other school staff by name, 52 articles targeting specific schools, districts, administrators, or board members, and 10 articles targeting specific colleges or universities, staff, or professors — accounting for nearly half of all of Grossman’s articles in the last year. Grossman has also published 20 articles targeting federal education officials. Other articles included broader attacks against teachers and teachers unions, public education, state and federal education departments, and education-related organizations. Fox News spread many of these articles across Facebook, where they earned thousands of total interactions.

Grossman’s numerous attacks on teachers are part of Fox News’ growing war on public education — and inclusive education in particular — in which the network has demonized and encouraged violence against educators, LGBTQ people, and those who support or affirm them. Fox hosts have even leveraged their fearmongering to call for the demolition of the public school system.

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Grossman has written 33 articles targeting teachers, librarians, or other school staff by name, several of whom have been doxxed, harassed, threatened, fired, or forced to resign

Over the last year, Grossman wrote 33 articles targeting specific teachers, librarians, or other school staff, largely for discussing gender, sexuality, or systemic racism in the classroom. In fact, 14 of these articles targeted LGBTQ teachers in particular.

Several subjects of Grossman’s attacks have been doxxed, harassed, threatened, fired, or forced to resign:

More than 300 people reportedly attended a school board meeting the month after Grossman published a January 25 article targeting a nonbinary teacher from California, with some attendees calling the teacher “evil” and demanding for them to be fired. Grossman’s article was written in response to a New York Times article about trans students that featured the California teacher, and her piece falsely accused them of boasting about “changing students' genders without parents knowing.”

Grossman Embed 1

In December 2022, Grossman wrote an article attacking two LGBTQ teachers and fearmongering about “social transitioning” — a process that often involves changing one’s pronouns, first name, hairstyle, and/or clothing. The article was the first of at least three that Grossman would write targeting one of the teachers, whom Grossman accused of “hiding students' gender transitions from parents.”

The teacher had reportedly made a TikTok explaining that some students have asked them “not to disclose their [trans] identity” to family or other students, saying, “That’s a promise I always honor.” Grossman attacked the other teacher in multiple articles for using stuffed animals to teach students about gender identity.

Both teachers had reported receiving threats even before Grossman targeted them.

Grossman Embed 2

In September 2022, Grossman wrote an article amplifying Oklahoma Education Secretary Ryan Walters’ calls to revoke a teacher’s license, falsely accusing her of providing students with “access” to “pornographic material.” The teacher told CNN that following the passage of Oklahoma’s HB 1775 she covered the books in her classroom that “could be at issue” with paper as instructed, but labeled them “Books the State Doesn’t Want You to Read,” and placed a QR code linking to the Brooklyn Public Library “Books Unbanned” page on the paper.

The parent of one of her students complained, including on local television, where she said the teacher “should not have access to children now, or in the future. She should be stripped of her certifications. To be perfectly frank with you, she should have criminal charges against her.” The teacher was subsequently placed on leave, and then resigned.

Three days after Grossman's article amplifying calls to revoke this teacher’s license was published, The Daily Beast reported that the teacher had told authorities that since her story went viral, she’d been doxxed and was “worried people may show up to her apartment.” She’d also reported getting messages saying she “should be lynched” or “sterilized” so she can’t “breed.”

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CitationFrom an August 26, 2022, KOKH report

Grossman has written 52 articles targeting specific schools, districts, administrators, and board members, and some of the targeted LGBTQ board members have faced death threats and lawsuits

Beyond targeting specific teachers, Grossman has also written 52 articles over the last year targeting specific schools, officials, and school board members. Some have subsequently faced death threats, lawsuits, and calls for their removal. Grossman has written numerous articles highlighting the chaos that has ensued at school board meetings across the country — much of which has been encouraged by Fox News’ dishonest and inflammatory reporting about alleged left-wing indoctrination of children in school.

Grossman Embed 3

She’s also written multiple articles targeting board members, school districts, and their administrators:

Grossman wrote at least 10 articles about specific school board members, 4 of which came in March of this year and targeted an LGBTQ school board member in Arizona.

In February, this Arizona board member suggested the board reconsider extending the district’s longstanding contract with Arizona Christian University, citing concerns about anti-LGBTQ bias, noting that the university’s website claims it seeks to promote “biblically informed values” including “traditional sexual morality and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.”

On March 3, Grossman wrote her first article targeting the Arizona board member, mocking her for “wearing cat ears during a meeting,” and suggesting that she and the board have a “bias against Christian beliefs.” This board member subsequently received death threats, and dozens of parents reportedly attended the next board meeting, some of whom pushed for her to resign.

Arizona Christian University is now suing the school district and board — which has multiple LGBTQ members — with the help of extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Grossman Embed 4

Grossman has also written 15 articles targeting specific school and district administrators, such as superintendents — seemingly contributing to at least one superintendent facing calls for his removal from state lawmakers.

In March, the Arizona Capitol Times reported that an attempt to remove the superintendent of Scottsdale Unified School District had “spilled over to the Capitol after Fox News reported this year on an interview” he gave “to a progressive Michigan blog in 2019, a year before he was hired in Arizona.”

Grossman had published two articles on the subject targeting the superintendent earlier this year.

Grossman Embed 5

Grossman has also written 20 articles targeting specific school districts and 6 articles targeting specific schools.

Grossman has written 20 articles targeting education officials at the state and federal levels

Over the last year, Grossman wrote 20 articles targeting federal education officials by name, including 15 articles specifically targeting Kelisa Wing, a former diversity, equity, and inclusion chief at the Department of Defense Education Activity. The pieces falsely accused her of anti-white racism and of indoctrinating the children of the nation’s military personnel with Marxism. As Grossman — and right-wing media more broadly — targeted Wing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) advocated for Wing’s removal.

Grossman Embed 6

Grossman also wrote eight articles that targeted state and local departments of education. For example, she wrote multiple articles targeting New York City’s Department of Education and the Oregon Department of Education, accusing the departments of pushing a “woke agenda” and “transgenderism.” Grossman also wrote five articles attacking the United States DOE, including attacking Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as “equity-obsessed.”

Grossman Embed 7

mma 5 23

New York Times Magazine recently dedicated a multipage spread to the conservative war on public education, often legitimizing the political right’s advocacy for school choice vouchers and crusade against obscure concepts like "critical race theory.”

In doing so, the magazine placed a target on the back of public education advocate and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, gratuitously framing right-wing attacks on education as an organic result of the political climate, rather than as a manufactured onslaught spurred by conservative media.

On April 28, The New York Times Magazine published an article on the continued attacks on the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the largest teachers unions in the country. The article details recent fights surrounding public education such as those over school voucher programs, COVID-19 mask mandates and school shutdowns, and culture war topics. While the cover of the April 30 edition of the magazine displays a fake picket sign reading “STOP RANDI WEINGARTEN!!” and thestory appears to be framed as a profile of the AFT leader, it quotes her only sparingly.

In its characterization of the AFT and Weingarten, the magazine amplifies multiple right-wing talking points that attack public education and teachers unions, which ultimately frame Weingarten as the scapegoat for larger social issues well out of her or teachers unions’ purview.

For example, the article’s headline describing Weingarten as “the most dangerous person in the world” was taken from former President Donald Trump cabinet member and staunch election denialist Mike Pompeo. The article goes on to declare that Pompeo “had nevertheless put his finger on something” in targeting Weingarten and concludes, “Maybe Pompeo hadn’t been wrong.”

Pompeo later bragged about his inclusion in the magazine piece, tweeting, “Even the New York Times has to agree with me sometimes.” But as MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote, adopting Pompeo’s “ridiculous and offensive attack” on Weingarten was “shoddy.”

The New York Times has repeatedly mischaracterized extreme attacks on public education and framed discriminatory education policies as a question of electability rather than highlighting the harm caused by this rhetoric and the policies it generates. In recent years, the Times has also whitewashed figures who have been driving forces in the attacks on public education, such as right-wing anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, giving a national platform to his extreme viewpoints.

In addition to sanitizing the right’s war on education, The New York Times has legitimized other conservative culture wars. Last year, the Times helped fan the flames of rising anti-trans rhetoric by repeatedly suggesting that trans youth are being rushed to transition prematurely, featuring anti-LGBTQ extremists, and fearmongering about increasing rates of trans identification. The Times has also had a history of inadequately covering right-wing extremism and amplifying ahistorical right-wing rhetoric such as “tough-on-crime” policies, which has been used as a racist dog whistle throughout American politics.

Given the publication’s national readership and widespread circulation, the Times bears a great responsibility in giving its audience accurate reporting that reflects reality, not distortions crafted by right-wing media. Here are just some of the ways that the Times magazine elevated bad-faith right-wing messaging about education.

Framing Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as successful in leveraging attacks on education

It was not Glenn Youngkin’s plan to turn Virginia’s 2021 governor’s race into a referendum on America’s battles over education. Initially, he was just hoping to prevent his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, from owning an issue that historically favored Democrats. “We couldn’t afford to let them take the fight to us,” Jeff Roe, one of Youngkin’s chief strategists, told me. By almost every measure, Youngkin, a former private-equity executive with no political experience, was the underdog.

Throughout his election campaign, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) leveraged right-wing culture wars on education, namely going after the conservative boogeyman “critical race theory” and threatening LGBTQ protections in schools. In its description of his gubernatorial campaign, the magazine paints Youngkin as an education warhawk who successfully used CRT to turn out the vote in addition to invoking other concerns plucked directly from conservative media. In reality, the effect of CRT in his race was likely much more subdued. As Vox wrote, voting patterns across Virginia did not appear to be “consistent with a CRT-focused explanation” but rather indicated the state took a “uniform swing against McAuliffe, not an especially strong backlash in areas where CRT was an especially prominent issue.” The Times further fails to mention that Youngkin has little to no experience with public education as a private school attendee and a parent who sent his own children to private schools.

Giving credence to right-wing advocacy for “school choice”

Did the pandemic and the culture wars reveal the indispensability of these [public] schools to their communities and to the broader fabric of the nation, or did they only underscore their inherent limitations — in effect, making the case for school choice?

The promotion of school choice policies has become a way for right-wing figures to push anti-public education sentiments and promote private and charter schools, and it has enabled de facto primary and secondary school segregation. The Times piece gives credence to the right-wing belief that school choice is a popular education policy by constructing the narrative that there is widespread disappointment in public schools. However, according to one of the Times' own surveys, conducted in 2022, 66% of parents with at least one school-aged child are satisfied with their local public schools, and 77% are satisfied with their own child’s education. While polls show that public support for school vouchers has increased in recent years, FiveThirtyEight notes that several of these surveys are sponsored by school choice advocacy groups that “may be incentivized to word their poll questions in a way that encourages respondents to indicate support for the programs.”

Blaming teachers unions for pandemic public school closures and learning loss

There was already early research showing that students were suffering academically from remote learning. Schools across Europe had begun reopening without any major outbreaks, and many of America’s private and parochial schools were making plans to resume in-person learning at the start of the new school year. A lot of public-school parents wanted their children to be back in the classroom, too. But many teachers seemed resistant to the idea.

Throughout the article, the Times blames teachers and teachers unions for needlessly delaying the return to in-person public schooling. At one point, the magazine cites a study from Brown University suggesting that “Democratic districts, with correspondingly strong teachers unions, returned to in-person learning more slowly and gradually than Republican districts with weaker unions.”

However, data from the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress found that pandemic learning losses were still significant in “areas that returned to the classroom quickly” while “cities — which were more likely to stay remote longer — actually saw milder decreases than suburban districts.”

Referencing groups such as Moms for Liberty without acknowledging their right-wing dark money connections

In Brevard County, Tina Descovich, the incumbent, was in favor of an immediate return to the classroom and opposed mask mandates. She was challenged by a public-school speech-language pathologist, Jennifer Jenkins, who called for a more cautious approach, including a mask mandate for all but the youngest children. Jenkins easily won the late-August election, but Descovich was just getting started. She called Tiffany Justice, a fellow school-board member in nearby Indian River County, to suggest that they create their own parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty. “We’ve got to do something here,” Justice recalled Descovich’s telling her. “We have to help these parents because they’re trying to step up and speak out, and the schools are just slamming them at every turn.”

Moms for Liberty has gained traction in national discussions on education for portraying itself as a supporter of “parental rights” in public schools – a frame the Times uncritically adopts. In reality, Moms for Liberty is a right-leaning organization that has prominent ties to right-wing and far-right groups that are also seeking to privatize education and attack school boards and administrators. Moms for Liberty has also been found to harass and threaten violence against school administrators and board members for not supporting anti-LGBTQ educational policies. In its neutral framing of Moms for Liberty, the Times is whitewashing anti-public education figures and characterizing them as underdogs against Weingarten and the AFT, despite Moms for Liberty’s close ties to Republican politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Glossing over the origins of the right’s CRT and LGBTQ fearmongering

Christopher Rufo, the right-wing activist who manufactured the obsession with C.R.T. two years earlier, was now on Fox News railing against another crisis — the “academic queer theory” that he charged was being “mainlined” into America’s public schools — while Republican candidates condemned the “grooming” of children to identify as different genders in the nation’s classrooms. Many Republican candidates pledged their allegiance to a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” requiring schools to provide information on reading lists, curriculums and whether a family’s child used another name or pronoun in school.

Though the Times magazine mentions concepts like critical race theory and so-called “academic queer theory” as targets of conservative backlash, the article largely glosses over the way such grievances were engineered by right-wing activists to misleadingly gin up resentment toward public schools. CRT came to conservative prominence in the spring of 2021, with right-wing media and figures trying to erase its roots as an academic concept typically taught at the graduate level to make it a blanket term used to decry lesson plans that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Conservatives have also tried to sound the alarm about alleged “academic queer theory” taught in public schools pushing vaguely defined gender ideology.

While the Times’ on Weingarten initially comes off as a profile on the AFT leader, the lack of voice given to educators on the frontlines of the right’s manufactured war on education is telling. Rather than giving a national platform to the teachers affected by the right’s crusade on the conventional classroom, amid the Times’ amplification of right-wing education policies and demonization of public schools, the magazine somehow found its villain in teachers and teachers unions.

CNN gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin a town hall to spew right-wing talking points about education

03/10/23 5:27

National media coverage fails to accurately cover DeSantis’ dystopian crusade against public education

02/09/23

The New York Times helped fuel an anti-trans panic in 2022. Will 2023 be any better?

02/08/23

omg

no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/critical-race-theory-2659941137/

twenty or 30 years ago, most consumers of right-wing media didn't know what critical race theory (CRT) was. Many liberals and progressives, for that matter, were unfamiliar with CRT — a college-level African-American studies discipline that, in essence, argues that racism of the past affects present-day institutions.

But in recent years, CRT has become a major boogieman in right-wing media and among MAGA Republicans. MAGA pundits and politicians, according to their liberal critics, have weaponized the term CRT and used it to attack any book or article that makes them uncomfortable — be it "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" or Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."

Scholar Stanley Kurtz is among the right-wing figures who has been railing against CRT, but his efforts go beyond trying to keep books out of public schools.

READ MORE: Why Texas Republicans’ crusade against 'woke civics' does students a huge disservice: report

Reporter Asher Lehrer-Small, in an article published by The 74 on May 2, emphasizes that Kurtz has "spearheaded a quiet but influential campaign to cleanse classrooms of what he calls 'woke civics.'" According to Lehrer-Small, Kurtz's "advocacy in Texas led to the 2021 passage of an unprecedented state law banning assignments that involve 'direct communication' between students and their federal, state or local lawmakers."

The reporter notes, "At the core of Kurtz's activism is a central idea: that hands-on civics lessons, such as students writing to their legislators, will lead to 'school-sponsored indoctrination and political action in support of progressive policy positions'…. Accurate or not, Kurtz's depiction of 'woke civics' is now being felt in America's classrooms."

Lehrer-Small adds, "When the scholar penned his model legislation in 2021, which said students should be banned from receiving class credit for 'lobbying' or 'advocacy' at the federal, state or local level, lawmakers and advocates across the country pounced."

The reporter notes some specific examples of Kurtz's influence. In 2022, for instance, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware and GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, according to Lehrer-Smalls, proposed a bipartisan bill that called for increasing grants for civics education. But the bill was "stopped in tracks" when Kurtz labeled it CRT. AndFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis "mimicked" Kurtz's messaging by claiming that the bill would "award grants to indoctrinate students with ideologies like critical race theory."

READ MORE: 'Censorial filters are unconstitutional': DeSantis' aim to control FL colleges' academic freedom worsens

Read Asher Lehrer-Small's full report for The 74 at this link. https://www.the74million.org/article/the-conservative-scholar-who-convinced-gop-lawmakers-civics-conceals-crt/

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mma 1020

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Parents already have to deal with high crime and inflation and now they have to worry about demonic teachers turning their classroom into a drag show? You would think Biden, who is almost 80, would know better. But he doesn't. Maybe that's why they call him creepy Joe. The president, who is already in over his head, wasted his day chatting with a transsexual activist Dillon in the Oval Office about why children should be getting sex changes without their parents' permission.

new fox target?

**Laura Ingraham** is the latest on the far right to attack a bedrock institution of American society: public schools. The Fox News propagandist on Thursday called to “defund government education” and wrongly implied the National Education Association, a labor union, was responsible for establishing education standards and curricula, which is the responsibility of government agencies.

Ingraham hosted Terry Stoops of the right-wing think tank The John Locke Foundation, which Accountable.US has said “repeatedly alleged Democrats conspired to allow widespread voter fraud.”

Reading some of the proposed items, Ingraham mocked them, saying, “Reading, writing, and abortion.”

Ingraham jumped in, calling for an end to public schools, and saying taxpayer funds should be diverted to private education.

As Media Matters reports, Ingraham said the NEA’s annual meeting “is more like a political rally for the far left.”

“But what it’s not about is education and this is why I think, Terry, a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents so they can say, ‘No, we’re not doing this anymore.’ And I think that just has to happen. We have to stop funding this madness.”

Watch below or at this link:

an 7 22

no lnx

They're projecting': Fox News sparks outrage after calling teachers union the 'KKK with summers off'

Fox News host Greg Gutfield (screengrab/@justinbaragona/Twitter).

Meaghan Ellis

July 08, 2022

A co-host of Fox News’ The Five is facing deep criticism for her recent rant comparing the largest teachers union in the United States to the Ku Klux Klan.

During a recent segment of the show, Fox News' Jesse Waters and other co-hosts discussed a new published on Wednesday about the National Education Association's (NEA) latest proposal to "substitute the term “birthing parent” for the word “mother” in order to be “inclusive,'" according to The Daily Beast.

Although the association's members have not voted on the proposal, the Fox News headline displayed on the screen declared the proposal to be “woke insanity.” That's when Waters weighed in.

READ MORE: Fox News reported that Gavin Newsom violated California's travel ban. An analysis says otherwise

“You don’t change the English language to cater to 1 percent of the population, all right?” Watters said. “These people live in a very small fraction of this country, and I’m fine with it. It’s a free country. Do your thing. But that 1 percent has to accept that the whole rest of the country doesn’t do that thing. And they have to have a little humility and kind of jive with it.”

Co-host Dana Perino also chimed in with a claim about the term “birthing people” which she insists is “the new ‘Latinx.’” According to Perino, Democrats now realize that “didn’t make sense” it ultimately “alienated” potential voters.

The co-hosts then moved on to discuss the actual role of the NEA as they criticized their perspective on “school choice.” That's when Greg Gutfeldattempted to compare the teachers union to the KKK.

“Anybody at this point who opposes school choice is protecting a destructive system that harms minorities who don’t have other options, and that makes them truly racist oppressors. The NEA is the KKK with summers off. It’s true. They’re racist,” claimed Gutfeld who previously expressed concern about comparisons of the KKK to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).}:

“If you are not allowing an opportunity for people who can’t afford a good education to have a good education, you are trapping kids in a life that does not get much better,” he continued. “You worry about gang crime and you worry about gun violence, but by that time it’s too late, right? Public school, man, they destroy a kid before he even gets there by opposing any kind of opportunity to escape it.”

READ MORE: Fox News could be subject to major financial setback as judge OKs lawsuit over false election claims: report

Shortly after the clip of Gutfeld's remarks began circulating on social media, Twitter users began weighing in with critical responses.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/02/18/what-it-really-means-when-trump-devos-their-allies-refer-public-schools-government-schools/

some lnx not here

Answer Sheet

Analysis

What it really means when Trump, DeVos and their allies refer to public schools as ‘government schools’

[pix President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, shown in2017, refer to public schools as “government schools.” (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)]

Valerie Strauss

Feb. 18, 2020

If you were listening to President Trump deliver his State of the Union address this month, you heard him refer to public schools as “government schools.” It was not the first time, and you can expect to hear it with increasing frequency from him, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and their allies as they push to increase programs that use public money for private and religious school education.

Trump and DeVos use the term most often with the adjective “failing” attached as a broad denunciation of the public school system, which advocates see as the nation’s most important civic institution. The president and education secretary say their goal is to provide families with the most education options even as they disparage the one that enrolls most of America’s schoolchildren and continues to get high marks from the public.

It isn’t entirely clear where “government schools” originated in this context. This term showed up in a1929 encyclical from Pope Pius XI on Christian education in which he calls “unjust and unlawful” any “monopoly, educational or scholastic, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools, contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary even to their legitimate preferences.”

In 1954, a white Southern segregationist [not confed dabney/]who opposed school desegregation used it, as did free-market economist Milton Friedman in 1955. In the mid-2010s, conservatives in Kansas invoked the term during a battle over public education funding. Now, Trump and DeVos use it as they push their No. 1 education priority: Getting Congress to pass a $5 billion tax credit program that would allow use of public money for children to attend private and religious school.

“Government schools” is invoked mostly by people who are suspicious of public institutions and see government as a problem rather than a solution. That sentiment was perhaps best encapsulated by President Ronald Reagan in an Aug. 12, 1986, speech in which he famously said, “'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

In this line of thinking, schools should be operated like businesses because the private sector and competition always produce better results, which critics say is not supported by evidence. Many of the people who use the term “government schools” also oppose unions and have been antagonistic to the two major teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — and the right of public workers to bargain collectively.

Traditional public schools continue to enroll the vast majority of American schoolchildren despite the growing number of alternatives, and opinion polls shows the public still supports them despite serious problems in some districts. The latest and best-known poll on the subject, the 2019 PDK poll of the public’s attitudes on public schools, found that 76 percent of parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade gave their own child’s school an A or B grade, even though just 19 percent of Americans overall gave the nation’s schools an A or B.

Trump has been saying “government schools” ever since he took office in 2017 to appeal to people who are suspicious of government. DeVos has been using the phrase even longer.

In her home state of Michigan, she and her husband, Amway heir Richard DeVos Jr., spent millions of dollars on an unsuccessful effort in the early 2000s to change the state constitution to allow school vouchers and successfully pushed for a law that would allow for charter schools to open there. The DeVoses have long supported Christian schools, too, and have donated millions of dollars to them over the years.

In 2015, DeVos made clear her position on traditional public schools: She called them “a dead end” during a speech at the SXSW EDU conference in Austin that year. She said:

“We are the beneficiaries ofstart-ups, ventures, and innovationin every other area of life, but we don’t have that in education because it’s a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. It’s a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia or Uber. We won’t see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students.” [mrs zuck fail NJ? Gates fdn?]

That speech is why the education world was stunned when Trump tapped DeVos to be education secretary, and why her confirmation became controversial: It was the first time that a Cabinet member was confirmed by the Senate only after the vice president, in this case Mike Pence, broke a tie vote.

In 2002, DeVos’s husband used the phrase “government schools” in a speech he gave at a conservative think tank about expanding school vouchers across the country.He offered a four-part strategy and encouraged choice advocates to stop using the term “public schools.” His comments offered one of the common rationales given by pro-choice supporters for a change in terminology:

“l’ve used the word public schools a fair bit [but] I am beginning to change my own terminology. I would encourage you to either improve on mine or adopt it. ‘Public schools’ is such a misnomer today that I really hate to use that. I’ve begun to use the word ‘government schools’ or ‘government-run-schools’ to describe what we used to call public schools because it’s a better descriptor of in fact what they are. Because the public school creates this aura that if anyone walks in off the street into a quote unquote public school they would be welcome. And you and I both know that in America today, unfortunately, if you don’t live in the appropriate school district you are about as welcome in a particular public school as a virus is welcome on a cruise ship." [PRESUMABLY REFERS TO POOR POC WHO TRY TO ENROLL IN BETTER SCH FROM RICHER NEIGHBORHOOD?]

Traditional public schools are required to accept all students who live in their district or who have been assigned to them by lottery. Private and religious schools are not required to accept any students, and religious schools are allowed to legally discriminate against some students, such as LGBTQ students. [IN FACT CREAM FOR TEST SCORES]

In any case, Richard DeVos also made clear that choice advocates should tread lightly, urging them to “be cautious about talking too much about these activities” so the issue is not “appropriated” and viewed as “only a conservative idea."

Betsy DeVos and her allies are trying to redefine ‘public education.' Critics call it ‘absurd.'

Three years before Richard DeVos’s speech, the term “government schools” was prominent in a 1999 school choice primer for "freedom in education” issued by the ultraconservative Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.[LINK]

The center was founded with a big contribution from the DeVoses, and it hosted an event in 2013 at which Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a prominent DeVos ally, said: “Our governance model includes over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.” He also said, “We can’t just outsource public education to bureaucracies and public education unions and hope for the best.”

Richard DeVos has had a long history, too, of opposing unions; he and his family were instrumental in the Michigan legislature passing a law eliminating union contracts between companies and labor unions that charge dues to members, making it a “right to work” state after it had long been union-friendly.

Interestingly, Friedman — the man many people credit with coining “government schools,” or at least the philosophy behind it — did not support right to work laws. Friedman, a Nobel laureate who advocated free markets, has been called the father of the school voucher movement because of a 1955essay, “The Role of Government in Education.” In it, he argues government’s role should essentially be limited to paying for education, not operating schools. He wrote:

In terms of effects, the denationalization of education would widen the range of choice available to parents. Given, as at present, that parents can send their children to government schools without special payment, very few can or will send them to other schools unless they too are subsidized. Parochial schools are at a disadvantage in not getting any of the public funds devoted to education; but they have the compensating advantage of being run by institutions that are willing to subsidize them and can raise funds to do so, whereas there are few other sources of subsidies for schools. Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children — provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards — and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand.

A year before that essay, Mississippi segregationist Tom P. Brady gave a speech (later expanded into a book) that became an informal manifesto for Southern segregationist leaders. In “Black Monday,” Brady wrote: “The public school is a socialized or politically monopolized institution, and suffers from weakness inherent in all monopolies."

According to Steve Suitts, an academic and author of the new book, “Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement”: “Southern segregationists used the term ‘government schools’ throughout the 1960s to discredit public schools. In 1964, for example, Mississippi white Citizens Council leader William Simmons condemned the monopoly of ‘government school systems.’ The Mississippi Citizens Council later worked to develop a private school system of choice, supported by vouchers, as their leaders condemned ‘government schools’ as ‘socialism in its purest form.’”

The phrase continued to be used by those opposing the system of common schools open to all and funded, operated and governed by the public through local governments.

Strauss is an education writer who authors The Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the LA Times

https://www.**nytimes**.com/2017/07/31/opinion/donald-trump-school-choice-criticism.html

no lnx

Opinion

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

What the ‘Government Schools’ Critics Really Mean

By Katherine Stewart

July 31, 2017

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When President Trump recently proposed his budget for “school choice,” which would cut more than $9 billion in overall education spending but put more resources into charter schools and voucher programs, he promised to take a sledgehammer to what he has called “failing government schools.” That is harsh language for the places most of us call public schools, and where nearly 90 percent of American children get their education.But in certain conservative circles, the phrase “government schools” has become as ubiquitous as it is contemptuous.

What most people probably hear in this is the unmistakable refrain of American libertarianism, for which all government is big and bad. The point of calling public schools “government schools” is to conjure the specter of pathologically inefficient, power-mad bureaucrats. Accordingly, right-wing think tanks like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Heartland Institute and the Acton Institute have in recent years published screeds denouncing “the command and control mentality” of “government schools” that are “prisons for poor children.” All of these have received major funding from the family of the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, either directly or via a donor group.

The libertarian tradition is indebted, above all, to the Chicago economist Milton Friedman, who published a hugely influential 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education.” A true believer in the power of free markets to solve all of humanity’s problems, Friedman argued that “government schools” are intrinsically inefficient and unjustified. He proposed that taxpayers should give money to parents and allow them to choose where to spend education dollars in a marketplace of freely competing private providers. This is the intellectual foundation of Ms. DeVos’s voucher proposals.

But the attacks on “government schools” have a much older, darker heritage. They have their roots in American slavery, Jim Crow-era segregation, anti-Catholic sentiment and a particular form of Christian fundamentalism — and those roots are still visible today.

Before the Civil War, the South was largely free of public schools. That changed during Reconstruction, and when it did, a former Confederate Army chaplain and a leader of the Southern Presbyterian Church, Robert Lewis Dabney, was not happy about it.An avid defender of the biblical “righteousness” of slavery, Dabney railed against the new public schools. In the 1870s, he inveighed against the unrighteousness of taxing his “oppressed” white brethren to provide “pretended education to the brats of black paupers.” For Dabney, the root of the evil in “the Yankee theory of popular state education” was democratic government itself, which interfered with the liberty of the slaver South.

One of the first usages of the phrase “government schools” occurs in the work of an avid admirer of Dabney’s, the Presbyterian theologian A. A. Hodge. Less concerned with black paupers than with immigrant papist hordes, Hodge decided that the problem lay with public schools’ secular culture. In 1887, he published an influential essay painting“government schools” as “the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of antisocial nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”

But it would be a mistake to see this strand of critique of “government schools” as a curiosity of America’s sectarian religious history. In fact, it was present at the creation of the modern conservative movement, when opponents of the New Deal welded free-market economics onto Bible-based hostility to the secular-democratic state. The key figure was an enterprising Congregationalist minister, James W. Fifield Jr., who resolved during the Depression to show that Christianity itself proved “big government” was the enemy of progress.

Drawing heavily on donations from oil, chemical and automotive tycoons, Fifield was a founder of a conservative free-market organization, Spiritual Mobilization, that brought together right-wing economists and conservative religious voices — created a template for conservative think tanks. Fifield published the work of midcentury libertarian thinkers Ludwig von Mises and his disciple Murray Rothbard and set about convincing America’s Protestant clergy that America was a Christian nation in which government must be kept from interfering with the expression of God’s will in market economics.

Someone who found great inspiration in Fifield’s work, and who contributed to his flagship publication, Faith and Freedom, was the Calvinist theologian Rousas J. Rushdoony. An admirer, too, of both Hodge and Dabney, Rushdoony began to advocate a return to “biblical” law in America, or “theonomy,” in which power would rest only on a spiritual aristocracy with a direct line to God — and a clear understanding of God’s libertarian economic vision.

Rushdoony took the attack on modern democratic government right to the schoolhouse door. His 1963 [CRM see buchanan chains] book, “The Messianic Character of American Education,” argued that the “government school” represented “primitivism” and “chaos.” Public education, he said, “basically trains women to be men”and “has leveled its guns at God and family.”

These were not merely abstract academic debates. The critique of “government schools” passed through a defining moment in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, when orders to desegregate schools in the South encountered heavy resistance from white Americans. Some districts shut down public schools altogether; others promoted private “segregation academies” for whites, often with religious programming, to be subsidized with tuition grants and voucher schemes. Dabney would surely have approved.

Many of Friedman’s successors in the libertarian tradition have forgotten or distanced themselves from the midcentury moment when they formed common cause with the Christian right. As for Friedman himself, the great theoretician of vouchers, he took pains to insist that he abhorred racism and opposed race-based segregation laws — though he also opposed federal laws that prohibited discrimination.

Among the supporters of the Trump administration, the rhetoric of “government schools” has less to do with economic libertarianism than with religious fundamentalism. It is about the empowerment of a rearmed Christian right by the election of a man whom the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. calls evangelicals’ “dream president.” We owe the new currency of the phrase to the likes of Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council — also bankrolled in its early years by the DeVos family — who, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing same-sex marriage, accused “government schools” of indoctrinating students “in immoral sexuality.” Or the president of the group Liberty Counsel, Anita Staver, who couldn’t even bring herself to call them “schools,” preferring instead to bemoan “government indoctrination camps” that “threaten our nation’s very survival.” // Rush

When these people talk about “government schools,” they want you to think of an alien force, and not an expression of democratic purpose. And when they say “freedom,” they mean freedom from democracy itself.