Know Your Enemy
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School Wars (w/ Jennifer Berkshire)
🕑 Added 2022-01-29 01:52:11 +0000 UTCIt seems almost every big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopting their rhetoric and their terms of debate, and have been for a long time—despite supposedly being the party of teachers' unions. Does it have to be this way?
We put that question, and many more, to our guest Jennifer Berkshire, the coauthor (with Jack Schneider) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and co-host of the education podcast Have You Heard. Jennifer guides us through the recent history of conservatives' war on public education—fights over desegregation, the Reagan administration's A Nation at Risk, the "parents' rights" movement of the 1990s, Obama-era ed reform, and the CRT gag-orders sweeping the nation today. Along the way we tease out some illuminating contradictions in the right's nationalist coalition, which seeks to cultivate a shared, sanitized story about American history while simultaneously dismantling the only system by which that narrative can be imposed. We also cast a critical eye on the triangulating, moderate Democrats who have utterly failed to provide a galvanizing, alternative message about the purpose of public education. As Jennifer makes brilliantly clear, the crisis of American education is real; the question is, who will be empowered to solve it?
Further Reading:
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (The New Press, November 2020)
Jennifer Berkshire, "The GOP Has Revived Its Obsession With Parents’ Rights," The New Republic, Dec 9, 2021
— "The GOP's Grievance Industrial Complex Invades the Classroom," The Nation, Oct 28, 2021
— "Corporate Democrat Goes Down to Defeat in Virginia,'" The Nation, Nov 8, 2021
— "How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party," The Baffler, Nov 17, 2017
Sam Adler-Bell, "Behind the Critical Race Theory Crackdown," The Forum, Jan 13, 2022
Sarah Jones, "We're Having the Wrong Conversation About Schools," New York Magazine, Jan 12, 2022
Comments
Sean Lewis
Hi, I just joined up at the YAF level so this is my first comment. There was a reference to NH in this episode and I really think a deeper dive into the Free State Project is warranted. It would be in line with how the GOP has changed. Also, the infusion of both conservative religious views (as there are networks of churches involved with the FSP as well as affiliate groups like the Government Integrity Project et al) and the exercise of state power via a Libertarian lens (see your recent Blake Masters episode). All in all, this would be a great topic in order to examine how the mainstream GOP, in a state that has historically fielded "liberal" republicans (pre-Obama), has radically changed. It's also a case study of how the GOP launders the more extreme views of the new Libertarians in an effort to gain power while, perhaps, not fully realizing their party is being eaten from the inside out. You can take a look at the US Senate primary featuring a former General who wants to abolish the 17th amendment beating the pants off of an "establishment" State Senator/former Senate President who was recruited by McConnell for this race. Also, our "affable" GOP governor (and son of George HW Bush's first chief of staff - John Sununu) is trying to thread the needle of reelection with a far more radical GOP base so he can run for President in 2024. Also, I think it would be cool if NH got a shout-out. Love the show!
Thomas Peake
Great episode. It prompted me to pick up Jennifer Berkshire’s most recent book, which is great I guess the question I’m left with for Matt and Sam is whether a lot of this CRT stuff feels like a smokescreen to carry out the same sort of anti-public school policies that GOP elites have been pushing for for decades. Do we talk enough about the water that these new right wingers carry for their forebears, and do we give them too much credit for being more grassroots/populist/authentic/ideologically distinct than they really are?
