The Republican War on Education

To follow up on a blog I wrote a few days ago about the Right’s antipathy toward education, new examples have come to light that signal we really are in an all out war over the minds of our children. Not to be out-cut by fellow wingnut and potential presidential candidate Scott (Crazy Eyes) Walker, Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has proposed a bill that will cut higher education in the state by $387 million.

Advanced Placement history courses are being attacked by Tea Partiers and Christian fundamentalists around the country for being overly negative and not teaching American Exceptionalism. It’s especially bad in Oklahoma where Republican Rep. Dan Fisher has introduced House Bill 1380 that would give the state sole control of curriculum and assessment. Dan thinks the current AP history course spends too much time pointing out what’s bad about America.

People like Dan who serve in state legislatures and on local school boards across this country want to replace education with indoctrination, facts with flights of fancy. They want to dumb down our children to the point where they are unable to think critically and will live lives of unquestioning loyalty to Jesus and the Homeland.

How can America be called exceptional if its population lacks the ability to think and reason? If the Walkers and the Rauner’s and the morons in Oklahoma are successful, we will fall further and further behind the rest of the developed countries in education, and our one-time position as a world technological leader will be only a distant memory.

Most maddening about all of this is the hard cold fact that less educated citizens are attracted to conservative politicians and principals. Republican leaders know this and, especially at the state level, are doing their damndest to create a new generation of loyal party members.