The humorist Andy Borowitz said this today:
I commented:
That’s funny to blame the educational system for electing Trump. Trump is trying to destroy public education because he says it is too “woke” and is turning children into radical communists.
Which is it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The “… ignorant enough to vote for Trump …” is off the mark. One of the primary causes of Trump getting elected the second time is the abandonment of the poor and middle class by the two major political parties. When is the last time either party did anything effective for those two groups?
Such disillusionment with the major parties leads people to look to an outsider and Trump, while he claims to be a Republican isn’t even close to0 being one.
There are other cau8ses, but this one is a biggie. It is not “ignorance” fueling Trump support, it is pissedoffedness.
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But it’s pissedoffedness at the wrong things. Being pissed at “WOKE” is like being pissed at humble. Those who fall for it think the know what it means because it’s targeted at their insecurities and resentments. But in reality it doesn’t mean anything because the whole goal is to keep people from talking about the real problem by wasting their time talking about nothing. Meantime, oligarchs continue to run roughshod over our government, dismantling any vestige of democratic influence and given a blank check to destroy our planet, exploit workers, and use common people like so many play things. And we can’t do anything about it because the most mobilized voting block is more afraid of trans kids getting swimming trophies and whether or not the brown person working on their roof, caring for their elders, or providing their food has the right paperwork.
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While you can’t explain away near 50% of those who voted, voting for a fascist , racist vile seditionist flippantly . The Idea that it can be explained by some sort of dialectic materialism doesn’t cut it. (Lofgren talking about Ohio). Taking Long Island for example : The median income in Nassau County 143 k one of the highest in the Nation. Crime in Nassau one of the lowest in the Nation. The Bronx with a median income of 48k one of the poorest in the Nation and its crime rate although way down still one of the highest in the Nation . Nassau went for Trump 52 % The Bronx for Harris 70% . Don’t shoot the messenger I get it 79 trillion in wealth has been transferred from the Bottom 90% to the top 1% since 1975. Yes as Mad Sociologist basically said ;we are now an oligarchy . And Neo liberal Democrats including Obama did nothing to halt it. But you know who does not know we are an oligarchy . Trump voters. I deal with them daily . How can they vote for an anti worker oligarch who laughs with the richest oligarch in the world about firing striking workers . There is a reason that pundits and pollsters keep getting things wrong. As G Eliot Morris said to Krugman. They think the voting public is like them, think like them. Sadly too few do. . As described by Lofgren in 2010 . “There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic (or policy ) . These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).The media are also complicit in this phenomenon…. (the ) media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the “centrist cop-out.” “I joked long ago,” he says, “that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’” I spend far too much time dealing with Trump supporting Building Trades . No President in the history of the country has done as much for this group of voters than Biden. Between 3 Massive infrastructure bills and Executive orders the Union Building Trades were booming . The needle barely moved from 2016 and 2020 to 2024 (0.2%) with this cohort. Further we had the longest period of below 4% unemployment since the 1950s (24 months) . All though we were told by the media that people don’t care about unemployment. ” Ignore it everyone is hit by inflation”. . Try telling that to an unemployed person. Try asking the 8 million or so people who lose or quit their job every month whether they care about being able to find a new Job easily in a tight labor market. Which lead to the highest Voluntary quit rates on record as workers especially on the bottom were able to tell employers to take this Job and shove it . Causing wages to rise higher than inflation by 2023. The picture I paint may be too rosy. In every income bracket below the 80th percentile Median wages were up however that still leaves a whole lot of people who were below the median . But as in the Bronx did those voters vote for Trump????.As people told pollster after pollster including the Federal Reserve, their personal finances were okay but the National economy sucks .It must have been all the traveling they were doing that they learned all about the National economy . Or possibly in the packed restaurants or fast food joints. I can’t say that Education is the problem. 12 million Democrats who voted in 2020 stayed home for a myriad of reasons including Gaza. . I don’t know that education ever truly gave voters the tools they needed .
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True. Just like somewhere around 75% of parents like their children’s public school, yet many of these same people buy into the failing public school propaganda that the media sell.
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So true. Shouldn’t it be obvious that the way to oppose fascism involves running strong candidates for office who support liberal democracy, not with watered down corporatism hid behind a façade of wokey woke? Mamala Kamala was never going to be the president of the United States of America. What was even her platform other than smiling too much and calling Trump a nincompoop?
It’s been said here many times, and it’s true: Winning elections is the responsibility of candidates, not of voters.
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It’s a self reinforcing cycle. Neoliberal reforms designed to replace public schools by insisting that public schools were failing and needed to be held accountable via objective measures (bubble tests) have produced students who can fill in the right bubbles on a particular test (not even tests in general), but can’t think critically. Then the right moves in and invokes a war against WOKE. This sounds right to a generation that can’t analyze or evaluate claims, but are primed to respond to already culturally reified prejudices. So, we further erode public schools by banning WOKE…which means banning books and censoring curriculum. More students graduate with useless bubble skills. But now they are ignorant of any form of critical perspective. They’ve been taught that schooling is for “marketing themselves.” They can’t see the world beyond their own self reference. So, we elect more people who appeal to our selfishness and insecurity by scapegoating “those people.” Rinse and repeat. The model for this is The Free State of Florida that just recently banned all but the state approved sociology text.
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When I taught, my focus was critical thinking and making sure natural inquiry remained (as you said it was programmed out of the kids). True story (as I was fed up with “just going along to get along”) mentalities. I taught art (real art, not teacher crap) to middle school and mostly at risk high school students (I tell you the real thinkers — the marginalized — smartest kids I knew, but shoved aside). One day I held up a roll of masking tape and said, “This is a pitcher of milk.” First period. Second period. Third period…no one disagreed. At the end of the day one kid said, “Charvet are you crazy? That’s a roll of tape. Why you be playing with us?” I said “Thank you. Thank you for speaking out and not just going along with me because I am the teacher.” You know, if we stay within the lines, the lines are our friends. So many tales from the trenches. But peace out.
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Politicians have made public education a political football. Since it is a large decentralized target, it is difficult for public education to defend itself against the ongoing assault. Public schools reflect who we are and our values so we should start looking in the mirror and do some soul searching, but public schools should stop being America’s punching bag and neither should the hard working teachers that do their best that work under some incredibly difficult obstacles and circumstances. After a long career in public education in two states, it is my opinion that the vast majority public schools focus on education, and they are rarely agents of “wokeness” or MAGA mania. If we want to improve academics in public education, we need to invest in them, return the art and craft of teaching to educators, support them in this important mission, and stop weaponizing propaganda against them.
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Voting stats show how nonsensical Borowitz’s claim is.
Voters 50yo & up elected Trump. They were the majority of the 2024 electorate; 52% voted Trump, 47% voted Harris. The subgroup aged 50yo – 64yo stands out: 56% Trump – 43% Harris. These voters graduated K12 between 1978 – 1992!
Judging from the under-50yo voters, I guess we’ve already “fixed” this “problem.” Voters aged 30-44yo voted +4% for Harris; those 18-29yo favored Harris by +9%.
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Great point!
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This reminds me of a story that the Irish writer and teacher Frank McCourt used to tell in his wonderful brogue.
“Khrushchev says, ‘I want a little ball in de sky.’ And sure enough, dey put a little ball in de sky.
Then President Kennedy says, ‘Why don’t we have a little ball in de sky?’
I know why… it’s those damn teachers!”
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I think that what created Trump voters are the media, religion, and authoritarian parenting. The only people I know who were concerned about “woke” agendas in schools all attended megachurches. Even when their kids attended the same school as my own kid, they had this idea that kids were being taught “woke” gender identity ideas. And I know for a fact that this was not the case.
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Oh for pity’s sake, another blame the schools meme. Stop, just stop with this crap that it’s the public school’s fault for whatever ills they are currently lamenting, it’s getting old. When Chris Christie was governor, his favorite much repeated phrase was, “our failing schools.” Christie really hated the NJEA and enjoyed attacking that group 24/7. And NJ has one of the highest rated school systems in the country.
How about right wing hate radio and the right wing media in general as the cause for our present situation. Thirty plus years of venomous right wing propaganda (Limbaugh comes to mind) being spewed on the public air waves and through other media such as Fox News has caused a lot of damage and enabled demagogues like Trump and Vance to succeed. Liberal voices on talk radio have almost completely been disappeared. So many of the billionaires in this country are right wingers who have the money and clout to be a megaphone for right wingnuttery.
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I see media as a symptom, not a cause. The cause is growing degree of income inequity, which spiraled up in the ‘80s, and has not stopped increasing. Social mobility came to a virtual halt by 1989.
This followed a period of nearly 50 yrs of incremental QOL improvement among all subgroups, steady upward mobility, establishment of a vast middle class. That creates a sense of what’s normal & to be expected among the two to three generations who lived it. The rug got pulled out in just a decade, and is still out of reach. Growth & stability are still within living generational memory—so a huge # of angry citizens pointing blame in all directions. Most tend to scapegoat groups more vulnerable than themselves, and close eyes to the culprits who seem too powerful to assail.
Media is a for-profit sector which has been struggling to maintain viability for decades (since the digital revolution in late ‘70s). Consequences of dereg/ failure to enforce regs, as with other private sectors: monopolies run by oligarchs. Those holding the vast bundle of moneybags always are advantaged by those who blame each other. And polarized politics sells media; it’s fed and intensified by sensationalized, alarmist clickbait, giving new meaning to “no news is good news.”
So, no question media plays into and exacerbates the anger and despair created by growing rich-poor gap. But the steady fall of income/ purchasing power for middle & lower-middle classes is real, not invented by the media.
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Maybe he had a point. We need real teaching about the dangers of totalitarian forms of government that steal the right of self-determination from a voting public. We need to teach the importance of being involved in our political process. We need to teach the importance of a free press, free of the influence of money. We need to teach about the difference between political leaders who are corrupted and those who serve. We need to teach about the times in our history when a ruling sub-group took advantage of other members of a society for their own economic hegemony.
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it is the culture; since Abu Ghraib we have had this element in the culture; the schools will do their best but they can’t root out the racism, hatred, bigotry in the communities…. 911 changed the “trajectory” of defense and the psychological mechanisms are following paths that lead to depravity in the response; a self-defensive system is built in to each person’s psychological defense mechanisms; it took over 10years for the APA to apologize and tell us they were not ethical in teaching. the “war tactics of rendition” that were administered … once they are in the culture and promoted in military training (or criminal justice training) it is harder for educators to overcome — we need ministers, doctors, medical personnel. I remember when I was teaching graduates at the college and one woman from criminal justice program said “there are too many immigrants in our city and it is all Paul Tsongas’ fault “. I spoke with the department chair for c.j. but I was adjunct factulty. I am not saying the C.J. department caused it — but usually the students from that department had different memes like “do the crime do the time{ in undergraduate classes.
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From the New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/29/dyslexia-and-the-reading-wars
Dyslexia and the Reading Wars
Proven methods for teaching the readers who struggle most have been known for decades. Why do we often fail to use them?
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The “educational system” does not necessarily refer to public schools, but could mean the broad range of educational programs that low information Trump voters participated in, such as charter schools, voucher schools, religious schools, non-sectarian private schools, as well as home schools.
Similarly, it is very disheartening that so many Xtians voted for someone whose message and actions consistently promote discrimination against people from other groups, especially those who have been historically marginalized, such as people of color –which is diametrically opposed to the preaching of Jesus and the bible.
As others have noted, it may be more about growing up in closed communities with limited exposure to truth or diversity and lots of experience with rightwing hatred towards those who are different, as well as fake news programs/political websites etc…
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I feel like Democrats/liberals were caught flat footed and didn’t have a formidable response to the onslaught of attacks on public schools in 2020-2021 (i.e. CRT and trans panic, COVID mitigations, etc.), because they spent the 20 years prior beating up on schools nearly as much as Republicans did.
Even today, I see liberal-coded social media users blaming the school system when people don’t know something they think the people should know. Here in Florida, social media accounts that espouse liberal views say they plan to homeschool their kids due to the antics of DeSantis and company. Like, what?
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Thinking of Obama choosing Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education , and also if decades of corporate deformation of public schools by meddling, arrogant men such as Gates and Zuckerberg.
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