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Department of Education Will Violate Federal Law by Joining with Right-Wing Groups to Create a Civics Curriculum

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2025 //
14

The U.S. Department of Education announced that it will work with numerous rightwing groups to design a civics curriculum. It will, of course, be patriotic. It will also be illegal. Since 1970, federal law prohibits any federal official from being involved in curriculum in any way.

The law is clear. Federal officials are prohibited from seeking to influence or direct curriculum in any way.

The federal law is the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232a.

This section says:

“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system…”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon probably doesn’t know that she is breaking the law. Why doesn’t the legal staff at of ED warn her?

Justine McDaniel and Laura Meckler of The Washington Post reported:

The Education Department said Wednesday that it is partnering with conservative organizations to present educational programming about patriotism, liberty and what it described as American values, as part of the observation of America’s 250th anniversary next year.

The initiative is led by the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning group founded by senior veterans of President Donald Trump’s first-term administration. It convened 40 other conservative organizations on Wednesday, including Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty, to begin planning. Christian evangelical groups, such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition, are also participating.

Called the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, the initiative was billed by the Education Department as an effort to renew patriotism and advance “a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”

The department provided few details about what the programming would entail and how it would reach students or schools. The coalition appears to mark another step in the Trump administration’s effort to push a rosy narrative about American history and to use education about civics, a traditionally nonpartisan topic, as a vehicle for that mission.

“We are proud to announce this coalition to ensure every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon, a former chair of the board at the America First Policy Institute, said in a statement.

Categories Civics, Curriculum, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism

Chief Justice Roberts Blames “Lack of Civics Education” for Breakdown in Respect for Law

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2025 //
49

If this weren’t so pathetic, it would be funny.

Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at the Georgetown University Law School about the loss of respect for the rule of law.

Did he point his finger at the President who encouraged an insurrection on January 6, 2021?

No.

Did he blame the loser of the 2020 election who spent four years claiming that the election was rigged and that he didn’t lose?

No.

Did he blame the political party that spent four years asserting not only that the election of 2020 was rigged but that the rightful winner was “crooked” and every member of his family was part of a “crime family”?

No.

Did he blame the President who has openly ignored federal court orders?

No.

Did he blame the President who proposes to abolish due process of law even though it is written into the Constitution?

No.

Did he blame the President who said publicly that he didn’t know whether he is required to support the Constitution?

No.

Chief Justice Roberts is right to be concerned about the shrinkage of civics education, but he is wrong to ignore the reason for that shrinkage: No Child Left Behind made test scores the central goal of education, which diminished everything in the curriculum other than reading and math.

Because so many young people have not received civics education, they are likely to be misled by a charlatan whose actions model contempt for the rule of law and the Constitutuon.

And, worse, it was the Roberts Court that proclaimed that the President while carrying out his duties has absolute immunity and is above the law.

The Supreme Court, in short, overturned the deep-seated principle taught in civics classes that “no man is above the law.”

Mr. Chief Justice, if you want to know who encouraged disrespect for the rule of law, look in the mirror.

Categories Civics, Civil Rights, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Justice, Trump

New York Will Not Comply with Trump’s Ban on DEI

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2025 //
7

Michael Elsen-Rooney of Chalkbeat reported that New York will not comply with Trump’s demand to ban Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The Trump Department of Education warned states that refusal to comply might lead to a suspension of federal funding.

The Department’s demand is illegal. Federal law explicitly forbids any interference by federal officials with the curriculum or program of any public school.

Elsen-Rooney wrote:

New York will not comply with an order from President Donald Trump’s administration to certify that school districts are eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, state Education Department officials said in a Friday letter obtained by Chalkbeat.

The letter represents some of the earliest and most forceful pushback to Thursday’s threat that gave state education agencies 10 days to guarantee that no public schools in their states have DEI programs the Trump administration deems illegal — or lose billions of dollars in federal education funding.

Federal officials cited the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning race-based affirmative action in college admissions in arguing that any school DEI program used to “advantage one’s race over another” violates federal Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

But New York officials countered that the state has already certified on multiple occasions that it follows federal anti-discrimination law, and that the U.S. Education Department has no legal right to threaten to withhold federal funding over its own interpretation of the law.

The state Education Department “is unaware of any authority that USDOE has to demand that a State Education Agency … agree to its interpretation of a judicial decision or change the terms and conditions of [New York State Education Department]’s award without formal administrative process,” wrote Counsel and Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley.

“We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion. … But there are no federal or State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI,” Morton-Bentley continued. “And USDOE has yet to define what practices it believes violate Title VI.”

The state will not send any “further certification” of compliance with federal law, the letter concluded.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civics, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Evil, Fascism, Freedom to Learn, History, New York, Racism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Dana Milbank: Trump & Musk vs. The U.S. Constitution

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
2

In this essay in The Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank offers to give Elon Musk private lessons about the Constitution. At no extra fee, he will let Donald Trump join the class. Both men are woefully ignorant of the foundational principles of American law. Musk was raised in South Africa, when apartheid was in force, so his ignorance is understandable. Trump has no excuse.

Milbank writes:

The man President Donald Trump put in charge of taking a chain saw to federal agencies showed once again this week that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the government he is dismembering.

“This is a judicial coup,” Elon Musk proclaimed, reacting to the growing list of federal judges who have moved to halt the Trump administration’s headfirst plunge into lawlessness. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

How did this guy pass his citizenship test?

As the framers wrote in the Constitution, it is the House, not the Senate, that has “the sole power of impeachment.” And the Senate needs “the concurrence of two thirds of the members present” — 67, assuming full attendance, not 60 — to convict.

More important, the framers wrote that judges hold their offices for life “during good behavior” — which has been understood to mean they can only be impeached for corruption. That is how it has been since the 1805 impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, when Chief Justice John Marshall, himself a Founding Father, persuaded the Senate to abandon the idea that “a judge giving a legal opinion contrary to the will of the legislature is liable to impeachment.”

Musk, growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, probably wasn’t taught to revere constitutional democracy. But what’s the excuse of his colleagues in the Trump administration?

They have issued scores of executive orders that flatly contradict the Constitution and the laws of the land. Apparently, they are hoping a submissive Supreme Court will reimagine the Constitution to suit Trump’s whims — and federal judges have reacted as they should, by slapping down these lawless power grabs. As such, the administration is on a prodigious losing streak in court. Judges, in preliminary rulings, have already blocked the administration more than 50 times. Over the past week alone, judges:


• Ended Musk’s access to the private Social Security data of millions of Americans for a “fishing expedition.”
• Halted Musk’s continued destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• Blocked enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service.
• Stopped the administration from terminating $20 billion in grants from a congressionally approved climate program.
• Ordered the Education Department to restore $600 million in grants to place teachers in struggling schools.
• And, most visibly, required the administration to halt the deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison without any judicial review — an order the administration evidently defied.

There’s an obvious reason Trump is getting swatted down so often: He’s breaking the law. Instead of changing course, the administration is now trying to discredit the courts — and the rule of law. White House adviser Stephen Miller denounced “insane edicts of radical rogue judges” and declared that a judge had “no authority” to stop Trump. Border czar Tom Homan went full-on authoritarian on Fox News: “We’re not stopping,” he said of the deportation flights a judge had temporarily halted. “I don’t care what the judges think.”

Trump called the U.S. district judge in the case, James Boasberg (appointed to the bench by George W. Bush and elevated by Barack Obama) a “radical left lunatic” who, “like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” This drew a quick rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts (in case Musk doesn’t know this, he’s also a Bush appointee), who reminded Trump: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Trump later told Fox News that he “can’t” defy a court order — welcome news, except he apparently had done exactly that in more than one case — while arguing that something had to be done “when you have a rogue judge.”

Someone has gone rogue here, but it isn’t the judge. Boasberg’s actions are squarely within the best tradition of the judiciary, for they are in defense of principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that no person in this country, citizen or alien, may be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This is precisely what the Trump administration denied to those it deported and imprisoned.

Violations of due process have been alleged in dozens of the cases against Trump’s executive actions: terminating workers and programs; eliminating grants; violating union contracts; denying care to transgender people; banning the Associated Press from the White House; abolishing civil rights enforcement and everything else the administration calls “DEI”; harassing law firms; and summarily deporting migrants. All of these things were done without notice, without recourse, without adjudication and without clarity about which laws give the president the power to do them.


“Due process” might sound technical, but it was elemental to our founding and remains at the heart of our legal system. Trump’s flagrant denial of due process is so radical that it isn’t only at odds with 200 years of U.S. law — it’s also contrary to another 600 years of English law before that. For the benefit of Musk (who doesn’t seem to know about such things) and his colleagues (who don’t seem to care), perhaps a refresher is in order.

For this, I called Jeffrey Rosen, who runs the nonpartisan National Constitution Center, which finds consensus between conservative and liberal scholars. The concept of due process, he explained, is in the Magna Carta, which in 1215 asserted that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned … except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” Britain’s 1628 Petition of Right, written during parliament’s struggle against the dictatorial Charles I, holds that “no man … should be put out of his land or tenement nor taken nor imprisoned nor disherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law.” The king, who imposed forced loans on his subjects and imprisoned people without trials, was beheaded during the English civil war.


“That example completely inspired the American Revolution,” Rosen explained. “They compared the tyranny of George III to the arbitrary rule of Charles I, saying George III was violating due process of law by insisting that patriots are tried in England rather than in local courts, that they can be put in jail without trial, and their liberty is at the whim of the king.” During the revolution, due-process provisions appeared in the constitutions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Vermont. Similar language was included in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, then eventually repeated in the 14th Amendment to apply to all states.
“The very foundation of constitutionalism, which means a government according to law rather than autocratic whim, is the due process of law,” Rosen told me. “What distinguishes a constitutional officeholder from an absolute monarch or a tyrant is that he is bound by the Constitution and by laws.” Without due process, there is no free market, because private property can be taken without justification or explanation. Without due process, there are no civil liberties, for a person’s freedom can be taken for any reason, or none at all.


Without due process, you have what we see today: a leader using a wartime statute in peacetime to declare certain people to be dangerous gang members without providing any evidence, then imprisoning them without charges and finally denying the authority of the courts and defying a court order requiring the leader to obey the laws as written. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to despotism.

The Trump administration’s attempt to upend 800 years of settled law is staggering, but it is easily lost in all the other chaos the president is spreading. The Federal Reserve this week said that it expects slower growth and higher inflation than it did before Trump took office, in large part because of his tariffs, while falling confidence among consumers and businesses has raised the danger of recession.

In foreign affairs, Israel has restarted the war in Gaza, and Trump has launched a military campaign to see the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen “completely annihilated.”

Trump failed to get Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, despite Trump’s bullying of Kyiv and his termination of efforts to document Russian war crimes — including the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Trump silenced the Voice of America, to the benefit and delight of China, Russia and Iran. Even the annual visit of the Irish prime minister to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day became mired in controversy when MMA fighter Conor McGregor, given the podium in the White House briefing room, proclaimed that “Ireland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness” because illegal migrants are “running ravage on the country.” Responded the prime minister: “Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.”

The new administration’s bows to white nationalism continue apace. It removed, at least temporarily, thousands of pages from the Pentagon website and others that celebrated the integration of the armed forces and the contributions of people of color: a Native American who helped hoist the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the Navajo code talkers of World War II, the Native American who drafted the Confederacy’s terms of surrender, baseball great Jackie Robinson, and a Black Vietnam veteran, on whose page the URL was changed to “deimedal-of-honor.” Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his offer to give “safe refuge” to White South Africans, while at the same time expelling the South African ambassador. The administration has restored the names of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, which honored Confederates — getting around a law prohibiting this by technically renaming the bases for other people with the surnames “Benning” and “Bragg.”

The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, reported this week that the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force shared a post on X on March 14 from a white-supremacist leader asserting that “Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card.” (The aide apparently later unshared the post, whose author led a group that called on Trump supporters to become “racially aware and Jew Wise.”)

The sabotage of the federal government continues, as recklessly as before: dramatically cutting Social Security staff, offices and phone support while simultaneously requiring millions more of the elderly and disabled to apply for benefits in person rather than online; slashing the taxpayer help staff at the IRS and calling off audits; scaling back scientific research at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health. Paul Dans, the former chief of Project 2025, told Politico that there “is almost no difference between Project 2025 and what Trump was planning all along and is now implementing.”

Trump appointed conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon’s daughter and the former White House valet to boards overseeing the U.S. military academies. He took time to visit the Kennedy Center, where he has fired the leadership — and used the visit to share “personal stories and anecdotes, including about the first time he saw ‘Cats’ and which members of the cast he found attractive,” as The Post’s Travis Andrews reported. The administration ordered the release of files on the John F. Kennedy assassination before bothering to remove the Social Security numbers of some people who are still alive.

Trump and his cronies continue to use the federal government for personal gain. Following last week’s promotional event for Musk’s Tesla at the White House, the commerce secretary recommended people buy Tesla stock, and the White House has installed Musk’s Starlink service despite security concerns. At the same time, Trump’s crypto project released a second crypto coin, raising $250 million to bring its total to $550 million — and 75 percent of the earnings go into the Trump family’s pockets. All of this is about as on the level as Trump’s golf game. “I just won the Golf Club Championship … at Trump International Golf Club,” he announced on Sunday, as storms and tornadoes ravaged a swath of the country. “Such a great honor!”

The most ominous development, though, is Trump’s expanding abuse of power to silence critics and disable political opponents. He went to the Justice Department last week and delivered a speech attacking lawyers who opposed him, such as Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann, Norman Eisen and Marc Elias, as “scum” and “bad people” — and the administration has revoked the security clearances of many such lawyers. After issuing executive orders seeking to destroy three law firms because of their ties to Trump’s opponents, the administration has gone after 20 more law firms over their supposed DEI programs.

In the case of the alleged Venezuelan gang members, administration officials and allies are celebrating their defiance of the court. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, which the Trump administration is paying to jail deported migrants at its infamous 40,000-inmate prison, responded on X to Judge Boasberg’s order by saying “Oopsie … too late,” with a laugh-cry emoji. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted it, and Musk added his own laughing emoji. And Attorney General Pam Bondi outrageously claimed “a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” — even though the migrants would not have been released under the court order, which only delayed their deportation.

After a reporter asked the president whether he would cut off Secret Service protection for former president Joe Biden’s children, Trump did exactly that. Trump’s acting head of the Social Security Administration admitted that he had canceled contracts with the state of Maine because he was “upset” at Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, for not being “respectful” of Trump during a public exchange they had. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have asked Trump’s FBI to probe the main Democratic fundraising platform, saying it “has advanced the financial interests of terror.”

Trump cut off $175 million of government funds going to the University of Pennsylvania because of its policy on trans athletes, following the White House’s suspension of $400 million of funds to Columbia University over Gaza protests there and its demand that the school change its discipline and admissions policies. More than 50 other universities are under investigation. Trump’s acting U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, has threatened to punish Georgetown Law School if it doesn’t change its curriculum, calling it “unacceptable” for the school to “teach DEI.”

Trump, in his appearance at DOJ, said negative coverage of him on CNN and MSNBC “has to be illegal.” He proclaimed that Biden’s use of the pardon, a constitutional power, to preemptively protect members of the House Jan. 6 committee from Trump’s harassment was “null and void.”

He fired the two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission, his latest defiance of federal statutes protecting independent commissions. His administration fired the board of the independent U.S. Institute of Peace and seized control of its building, physically removing its president and threatening prosecution.

Then there are the summary deportations of people Trump finds undesirable. The administration has arrested and is seeking to deport a Columbia graduate student who is a green-card holder with no criminal record because of his role in Gaza protests. It deported a Brown University doctor even though a judge had issued an order requiring 48 hours’ notice before her deportation.

In the House, Trump’s allies raced to obey his instructions, filing impeachment articles against Boasberg on Tuesday. Freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) submitted the articles, joined by five others. House Republicans have also moved to impeach four other federal judges over disagreements with their rulings.

Thus are Trump and his allies ignoring 215 years of precedent, going back to Samuel Chase, that objections to courts’ opinions are to be resolved through the appeals process, not impeachment.
Thus are Trump and his allies turning their backs on 810 years of precedent, going back to the Magna Carta, in which we protect ourselves from tyranny through the due process of law.

But this is where we are. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a delectable Freudian slip, proclaimed in a briefing this week that “we want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.”


If that is the goal, the Trump administration is to be congratulated on a job well done.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Ignorance, Justice, Musk, Elon, Trump

Carol Kocivar: It’s Time to Talk to Your Child About Threats to Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2025 //
13

Carol Kocivar is former President of the California State PTA. She has worked as an attorney, journalist, and ombudsperson and is the parent to two children who graduated from the San Francisco public schools

She posts on Substack, where this appeared.

She writes:

Scary as this may seem, it is time to talk with your children about how our democracy is threatened.

I know.  I know. Those are strong words.  I certainly am not suggesting that we ask first graders whether the president should have more power than the Congress or the Supreme Court.
But I am looking at this through the lens of history– with the knowledge that Hitler and Mussolini strengthened their hold through the indoctrination of youth.

Our children are not born with democracy in their DNA.  It is our responsibility to ensure that each generation has the knowledge and skills to support and preserve our democracy.

Political outreach to children is already underway. Below is an example of a Kid’s Guide on the internet. 

“With the triumphant return of President Trump to the White House, Americans everywhere are celebrating his return and what it means for our nation. And, as our kids are the future of our country, it’s important for them to understand how Trump will make America great again. That’s why we created The Kids Guide to President Trump, and right now we’re giving it away for FREE!”


Kids are taught about the Constitution in school
In elementary school, students should already have some basic knowledge about how our government is supposed to work. By the time they have completed the 8th grade, they should know the basics of our constitutional democracy. 
For example, the California History/ Social Science frameworks provides that 8th graders should be taught about separation of powers, checks and balances, the nature and purpose of majority rule, and the ways in which the American idea of constitutionalism preserves individual rights.

  • They should know, for example, that the president is not a king.  
  • They should know that the Congress passes laws, not the president.  
  • They should know that the President and his staff cannot refuse to follow court orders.
  • They should know the president does not have the right to refuse to implement spending decisions of Congress.
  • They should know their rights include freedom of speech.

What can parents do?

In age appropriate language, discuss current events with them.   I was going to say discuss it at the dinner table but you probably have a better shot at their attention as you drive to and from sports events.

Seek out incidents that challenge the basic principles of our democracy and discuss them.

What do they think? How does that square with what they know about the constitution?

Explain why you think it is important that they understand what is happening in the country.

Discuss money for schools.  Does their public school need more or less money?  What do they think about cutting funding for their school? 

Talk about the importance of voting.  Can voting change public policy?

Ask what would help them become more involved in issues that affect their school? Their community? Their country?

It’s up to us to preserve democracy for our children.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Parents, Students, Trump

John Thompson: We Must Revive Civics Education

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
9

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, reviews a book about how to teach civics in this era.

He writes:

Lindsey Cormack’s How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It) “offers an engaging and practical approach to discussing political issues and the inner workings of the U.S. government with children.” And guess what? How to Raise a Citizen doesn’t dump the entire challenge on schools and educators, as was the norm for corporate school reformers! She presents “a tool for parents, educators, and anyone eager to fill this gap.”

Cormack explains that, “Nationwide assessments reveal that civic knowledge hasn’t improved since 1998, and “Scores on Advanced Placement government tests are consistently among the lowest across all AP offerings.”

Cormack pushes back on the 21st century test-driven, competition-driven ideology which demanded that individual teachers must be accountable for data-driven, supposedly transformative change.  How to Raise a Citizen calls for mindsets which the Billionaires Boys Club insisted were “excuses” made by teachers with “low expectations.” She writes that “we need parents to play a key role, and to support integrating civics into every grade, starting early and building on concepts just like we do with other subjects.” Cormack challenges society to:

Imagine if parents took on this role by discussing government and politics at the dinner table, encouraging their children to ask questions and showing them how to get involved in community and local government activities.

Cormack then explains, “We need parents to play a key role, and to support integrating civics into every grade, starting early and building on concepts just like we do with other subjects.”

Both parents and educators should first focus on young children, helping them build a “vocabulary and awareness of governmental structures.” Then they should help middle schoolers and high schoolers to “handle broader concepts and ideas” so they “can and do engage in community involvement.”

By high school, there should be a team effort for “turning theory into action.” Cormack explains, “Experts agree that a high-quality civic education requires ‘action civics,’ in which students learn by doing rather than just reading. Simulations of elections, legislative hearings and courtroom activities are examples of active learning shown to be impactful and memorable.”

A resource to enhance history and civics programs explores national, state, and local elections and offers diffe…

I am struck by three points that Cormack makes. First, the adults should guide efforts where the goal is deep learning about the political process, not politicizing lessons by guiding outcomes favored by one political group or another.

Secondly, this reprioritization of active learning “has to happen day in and day out, during presidential election years and all others.” Committing to this, we can raise a generation of informed, active citizens ready to take on the challenges of our democracy.

Thirdly, she makes a case for hopefulness.

How to Raise a Citizen reminds me about the ways my high school students and I taught each other how to actively participate in our democracy. My principal knew that I would refuse to follow vertically aligned curriculum pacing guides which teachers were supposed to obey so that we would “all be on the same page” regarding the teach-to-the-test schedule.  Our class’ schedule for teaching state “Standards,” as opposed to standardized tests, was different whenever there was a presidential or mid-term election, or when state or local politics took over the headlines, or when extreme events, like the Murrah Building bombing, 9/11, or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan occurred.    

I would “horizontally” align our civics and/or history lessons in terms of what was being taught in other classes, and events in the community. For instance, when English classes started reading Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, I would teach about Ellison’s experiences growing up in Oklahoma City, such as the cruel joke that was played on him that inspired the famous “Battle Royal” scene.

Our inner city students’ reading levels ranged from 2nd grade to college levels. We would use graphs, photos, audio and film clips, and other interventions to help all of them comprehend challenging concepts. Above all, they saw high-level instruction as a sign of respect, and responded by learning how to learn in a holistic and meaningful way.  

The students were especially insightful when guest lecturers visited, and during field trips to places like art museums, “Deep Deuce,” where Ellison grew up, and the state Capitol. This was especially true when a veteran of the Sit-In movement joined us in repeated trips to the Capitol. Legislators were always enthralled by the students’ wisdom.  

When teaching abortion rights, I would reveal to my students, who mostly held anti-abortion beliefs, that I had been a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, but everyone was free to their own opinion. I told them that I preferred the role of a teacher and referring to students as “pro-life,” as opposed to calling them “anti-choice,” which had been my job as a lobbyist.

Students frequently were more conservative than me regarding social issues, and some would come to class a day after a stimulating discussion, and pass on responses made by their parents or grandparents when they discussed our lessons from the previous day. One even brought his preacher to class, resulting in a diverse and meaningful conversation.  And since I taught with the door open, parents walking down the hall would come in and join the discussions.

For instance, one father overheard our lesson on the Tulsa Massacre, which then was called the “Tulsa Race Riot.” He asked the class what name the massacre should be given, and then shifted gears and taught a lesson about anti-Jewish Pogroms. The kids figured out what he meant and shouted, “The Tulsa Pogrom!”

The next day, he came back and gave us a photo of Malcolm X shaking Martin Luther King’s hand, and taught a lesson on the Booker T. Washington to Malcolm X tradition and the W.E.B. DuBois to Martin Luther King tradition. (Clara Luper, the leader of the nation’s longest lasting Sit-In movement, did almost the same thing in another class; the students were thrilled when she challenged me by saying the Malcolm X tradition deserved respect but I shouldn’t give it respect equal to the MLK tradition.)

And that brings me to Cormack’s third basic point, bringing hope that schools, families, and communities can come together and nurture a commitment to civics education, and a 21st century democracy. A few years ago, I would have seen her optimism as a self-evident truth. Now, I worry that our failures to teach civics and history have helped undermine our society’s commitment political institutions. But, I try to focus on cross-generational and cross-cultural conversations. Cormack’s book, and memories of my students’ successes, restore my hope that we can push back against systemic challenges, and, as she emailed me, “build pathways for students and schools to thrive.”

Categories Civics, Curriculum, Education Reform, Ethics, Teaching

Trump Signs Executive Order Threatening to Punish Schools that Teach About Racism and Gender

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2025 //
15

Trump signed an Executive Order threatening to cut off federal funding from schools that “indoctrinate” students on issues related to race and gender. The order is titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”

Let’s start by acknowledging that this order is in direct violation of a law that was passed in 1970 to prevent the federal government from imposing any curriculum on the nation’s schools. This provision has been repeatedly renewed. Neither party wanted the other to impose its views on the schools, which is what Trump seeks to do.

The law says:

“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration…of any educational institution…or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials.” P.L. 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, Section 432.

What Trump ordered is illegal.

Trump is expressing the views of far-right extremist groups, like “Moms for Liberty,” who hate public schools for teaching honest accurate history about racism. They want teachers to say that there was racism long, long ago, but not any more. They vehemently oppose any discussion of systemic racism (they call such discussion “critical race theory,” which of course must never be mentioned).

Any discussion of the reality of racism is forbidden by this order.

Even more threatening to the extremists is what they call “radical gender ideology.” That would be any discussion that acknowledges that LGBT+ people exist. They believe that just talking about the existence of such people–widespread on television, movies, and the Internet–makes children turn gay or even transgender.

Trump’s executive order threatens to withhold federal funding from any school where yea gets “indoctrinate” their students to consider the existence of systemic racism or sexuality.

It is Trump’s hope that with the actions he take, non- binary people–that is, LGTB+–will cease to exist.

Trump’s friend Elon Musk posted yesterday a graphic showing that in the distant past, there were two genders; in the recent past there were “73 genders.” Starting in 2025, his post said, there will be only two genders. Musk is the father of a transgender daughter, who was originally named Xavier. With his gleeful tweet, he seems to be trying to erase his daughter.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civics, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Lies, Race, Racism, Republicans, Trump

Canadian Member of Parliament Offers to Take California, Oregon, and Washington State

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
17

Trump has suggested that Canada, a huge and sovereign nation, should become the 51st state of the U.S.

Elizabeth Evans May, a member of the Green Party in the Canadian Parliament, suggested instead that California, Oregon, and Washington State should become provinces of Canada.

Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch blog posted this video.

Because Trump suggested that Wayne Gretzky should be elected Prime minister of Canada, She felt compelled to explain to Trump how the Canadian system differs from the American system. The people don’t elect the prime minister. The members of parliament do.

Explaining the basic facts of history and government to the undereducated Trump is a never ending task. He clearly learned nothing about such subjects in high school or college.

Categories Civics, History, Hoax, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

Joyce Vance: Bring Back Civics Education!

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2024 //
20

Joyce Vance is a veteran federal prosecutor; she was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern district of Alabama from 2009-2017. She writes a blog called “Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.” She usually writes about the law, the justice system, and Trump’s efforts to avoid accountability for his misdeeds. But in this post, she addresses the root cause of his appeal: low-information voters who are hoodwinked by his lies and believe he will fight for them. Ha. Not funny.

She writes:

It’s no wonder that Project 2025 calls for putting an end to the Department of Education. Trump’s electoral success depended on so-called low-information voters, members of the electorate who couldn’t or didn’t distinguish between the tough talk and tough guy image the candidate portrayed and the reality of the policies that come with his win. That’s often true for MAGA candidates, who are inexplicably able to attract the voters who are harmed by the policies they subsequently pass, as with tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and the working-class voters who didn’t benefit from them, but made them possible.

The Washington Post had this story today about the hopes of low-income voters who went for Trump in 2024, like a single mom who said she sometimes has to choose between buying toilet paper and milk and told reporters, “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich … I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.” So far, that’s not looking good.

This very predictable reporting about voters suffering from buyers’ remorse is emerging even before Trump takes office. These people hope he won’t do exactly what he said he would during the campaign and has been focused on during his transition with programs like the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s DOGE—cut government spending that they depend on. Whether it’s low-income people, mixed-status immigrant families, people who rely on Social Security, or parents with immune-compromised kids who rely on immunized classrooms, people voted against their own self-interest and are now facing that reality.

There are no do-overs in presidential elections. Successful disinformation campaigns or campaigns where image trumps consequences have lasting effects.

But spin, or disinformation—however you want to characterize it—designed to redirect voters away from focusing on bad facts about candidates can work, and this past election proved it. This T-shirt ad that the algorithm fed me earlier this week is an example of how Trump’s criminal conviction was sold to voters: the mythical outlaw, not the corrupt criminal. It’s hard to believe Americans fell for that, but they did, giving Trump a pass and letting him cultivate an image that was one step further out there than Sarah Palin’s maverick. 

Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.

Stepping on education and staunching the flow of information is a key goal for any authoritarian. Remember when Trump told an evangelical group during the campaign that if they voted in 2024 it would be the last time they had to vote? That’s something that Americans, hopefully, will not fall for, because the 2026 midterms will be key. If guardrails are going to be rebuilt, that’s where an important part of it will happen. And while we’re all burned out from the last election, this next one will matter; we will need to reengage, because a big Democratic win could staunch the bleeding from unfettered acquiescence by the legislative branch to Trump, who currently commands majorities in both chambers. That means the provision of accurate information and accurate analysis of that information to voters who will put it to use is important. But what does that look like in a country that voted for Trump?

One thing that is clear from the ease with which Trump seems to have stripped so many voters of their common sense is the need to restore civics education in this country. That’s a long-term plan and a big topic that we need to take on over time, but it’s not too early for us to begin to think about what we can do in the coming year ahead of the midterms. For one thing, if it’s right for you, even if it’s a stretch, consider running or seeking appointment to a school board. Republicans got the jump on Democrats in this arena. It’s time to catch up. Or, if that’s not in your lane, make the time to show up at school board meetings and demand civics education in our schools. Progress in this area will take time, but we can all set a good example and encourage people around us to do a better job of understanding what matters in government. Ironically, if 2017 is any indication, people caught off guard (although who knows how) by some of the worst excesses Trump is likely to engage in will be ready to be better informed and reengage in democracy. Capturing that moment will be important.

One of the goals of Project 2025 is terminating the Department of Education. There is growing Republican support for that plan at the state level by leaders who want to restore state control (much like conservatives sought restoration of abortion policy to the hands of red state officials in Dobbs). Enter Trump’s nominee to head the Department, Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration (SBA) for him from 2017 to 2019.

Trump’s appointment of the professional wrestling magnate has drawn little comment as the media has focused on Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and others. Suffice it to say she does not appear to possess much of a background in public education. She was on the Connecticut Board of Education for one year, but there has been reporting she received that appointment after lying about having a degree in education. When that report came to light while McMahon was running, unsuccessfully, for a Connecticut Senate seat, she said that “she mistakenly thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student teaching, and that she had written to the governor’s office the previous year to correct the error after another newspaper noticed the mistake.” (I, too, did some student teaching in college, but I was always clear my degree was in political science and international relations.)

McMahon is a longtime Trump ally and financial backer, apparently key qualifications for the job. After two years at the SBA, she stepped aside to run Trump’s America First Action PAC. Other qualifications: Yahoo News reported that “Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary was once pile-driven by a 7ft wrestler and feigned being drugged unconscious while her husband cheated on her.” Yahoo went on to recount that “Mr. Trump served as a sponsor and host for WWE events in Atlantic City in the late 1980s and years later appeared in the ring himself, when he took a razor to the head of Ms. McMahon’s scandal-ridden husband, Vince, as the wrestling boss wailed. In 2013, WWE inducted Mr. Trump into its hall of fame.” 

The National Education Association ran an editorial opposing McMahon’s confirmation. They called her “unqualified” and wrote that she “spent years pushing policies that would defund and destroy public schools.” That sounds like a good fit if your agenda involves destroying the Department of Education. Start at the top.

NEA President Becky Pringle said, “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.”

So while we begin to think about ways to repair democracy, medium-term goals like winning midterm elections, and long-term goals like restoring civics education, spare a moment for some short-term plans: write to your senators about McMahon’s nomination. It’s flying largely under the radar screen, and it should not be. Do not obey in advance, and do not make it easy for Trump to destroy democratic institutions like the Department of Education with the complicity of your state and federal elected officials. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to public education. We have to insist that free, publicly funded, high-quality education is available to every child. Our engagement as citizens is everything. Let’s get to work.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Open the link to see the illustrations.

Categories Civics, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Fake News, Fascism, Fraud, Ignorance, Lies, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Democrats Offer a New Vision for America

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2024 //
7

Heather Cox Richardson describes the Democratic National Convention and Kamala Harris offering a vision of community, of neighbors helping neighbors, of government removing barriers to opportunity and lifting up those who need help.. She notes that the party has gone beyond identity politics: Harris did not mention her race or gender even as her nomination was history-making because of her race and gender. Instead of the tired tropes of the past, she appealed to traditional American values.

She writes:

The raucous roll call of states at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, as everybody danced to DJ Cassidy’s state-themed music, Lil Jon strode down the aisle to cheers for Georgia, and different delegations boasted about their states and good-naturedly teased other delegations, brought home the real-life meaning of E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” From then until Thursday, as a sea of American flags waved and attendees joyfully chanted “USA, USA, USA,” the convention welcomed a new vision for the Democratic Party, deeply rooted in the best of traditional America. 

Under the direction of President Joe Biden, over the past three and a half years the Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. This week’s convention showed that it has now gone further, recentering the vision of government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, called upon to make it serve the interests of communities.     

When the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, the United States was facing a deadly pandemic and the economic crash it had caused. The country also had to deal with the aftermath of the attempt of former president Donald Trump to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and seize the presidency. It appeared that many people in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, had given up on democracy. 

Biden set out to prove that democracy could work for ordinary people by ditching the neoliberalism that had been in place for forty years. That system, begun in the 1980s, called for the government to allow unfettered markets to organize the economy. Neoliberalism’s proponents promised it would create widespread prosperity, but instead, it transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. As the middle class hollowed out, those slipping behind lined up behind an authoritarian figure who promised to restore their former centrality by attacking those he told them were their enemies.

When he took office, Biden vowed to prove that democracy worked. With laws like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats directed investment toward ordinary Americans. The dramatic success of their economic program proved that it worked. On Wednesday, former president Bill Clinton noted that since 1989, the U.S. has created 51 million new jobs. Fifty million of those jobs were created under Democratic presidents, while only 1 million were added under Republicans—a striking statistic that perhaps will put neoliberalism, or at least the tired trope that Democrats are worse for the economy than Republicans, to bed. 

Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination convention suggested a more thorough reworking of the federal government, one that also recalls the 1930s but suggests a transformation that goes beyond markets and jobs. 

Before Labor Secretary Perkins’s 1935 Social Security Act, the government served largely to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. But Perkins recognized that the purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the community. She recognized that children, women, and elderly and disabled Americans were as valuable to the community as young male workers and the wealthy men who employed them.

With a law that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services, Perkins began the process of molding the government to reflect that truth. 

Perkins’s understanding of the United States as a community reflected both her time in a small town in Maine and in her experience as a social worker in inner-city Philadelphia and Chicago before the law provided any protections for the workers, including children, who made the new factories profitable. She understood that while lawmakers focused on male workers, the American economy was, and always has been, utterly dependent on the unrecognized contributions of women and marginalized people in the form of childcare, sharing food and housing, and the many forms of unpaid work that keep communities functioning. 

This reworking of the American government to reflect community rather than economic

relationships changed the entire fabric of the country, and opponents have worked to destroy it ever since FDR began to put it in place. 

Now, in their quest to win the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz—the Democratic nominees for president and vice president—have reclaimed the idea of community, with its understanding that everyone matters and the government must serve everyone, as the center of American life. 

Their vision rejects the division of the country into “us” and “them” that has been a staple of Republican politics since President Richard M. Nixon. It also rejects the politics of identity that has become identified with the argument that the United States has been irredeemably warped by racism and sexism. Instead, at the DNC, Democrats acknowledged the many ways in which the country has come up short of its principles in the past, and demanded that Americans do something to put in place a government that will address those inequities and make the American dream accessible to all.

Walz personifies this community vision. On Wednesday he laid it out from the very beginning of his acceptance speech, noting that he grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people, with 24 kids in his high school class. “[G]rowing up in a small town like that,” he said, “you’ll learn how to take care of each other that that family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you. Everybody belongs and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.” The football players Walz coached to a state championship joined him on stage.

Harris also called out this idea of community when she declined to mention that, if elected, she will be the first female president, and instead remembered growing up in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.” Her mother, Harris said, “leaned on a trusted circle to help raise us. Mrs. Shelton, who ran the daycare below us and became a second mother. Uncle Sherman. Aunt Mary. Uncle Freddy. And Auntie Chris. None of them, family by blood. And all of them, Family. By love…. Family who…instilled in us the values they personified. Community. Faith. And the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated. With kindness. Respect. And compassion.”

The speakers at the DNC called out the women who make communities function. Speaker after speaker at the DNC thanked their mother. Former first lady Michelle Obama explicitly described her mother, Marian Robinson, as someone who lived out the idea of hope for a better future, working for children and the community. Mrs. Obama described her mother as “glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation.” 

Mrs. Obama, Harris, and Walz have emphasized that while they come from different backgrounds, they come from what Mrs. Obama called “the same foundational values”: “the promise of this country,” “the obligation to lift others up,” a “responsibility to give more than we take.”  Harris agreed, saying her mother “taught us to never complain about injustice. But…do something about it. She also taught us—Never do anything half-assed. That’s a direct quote.”

The Democrats worked to make it clear that their vision is not just the Democratic Party’s vision but an American one. They welcomed the union workers and veterans who have in the past gravitated toward Republicans, showing a powerful video contrasting Trump’s photo-ops, in which actors play union workers, with the actual plants being built thanks to money from the Biden-Harris administration. The many Democratic lawmakers who have served in the military stood on stage to back Arizona representative Ruben Gallego, a former Marine, who told the crowd that the veteran unemployment rate under Biden and Harris is the lowest in history. 

The many Republicans who spoke at the convention reinforced that the Democratic vision speaks for the whole country. Former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) identified this vision as “conservative.” “As a conservative and a veteran,” he said “I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy. That…is the soul of being a conservative. It used to be the soul of being a Republican,” Kinzinger said. “But Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party.” 

“[A] harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us,” Harris said. And she reminded people of her career as a prosecutor, in which “[e]very day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and said five words: ‘Kamala Harris, for the People.’ My entire career, I have only had one client. The People.”

“And so, on behalf of The People. On behalf of every American. Regardless of party. Race. Gender. Or the language your grandmother speaks. On behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey. On behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with. People who work hard. Chase their dreams. And look out for one another. On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth. I accept your nomination for President of the United States of America.”

The 100,000 biodegradable balloons that fell from the rafters when Vice President Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president were blown up and tied by a team of 55 balloon artists from 18 states and Canada who volunteered to prepare the drop in honor of their colleague, Tommy DeLorenzo, who, along with his husband Scott, runs a balloon business. DeLorenzo is battling cancer. “We’re more colleagues than competitors,” Patty Sorell told Sydney Page of the Washington Post. “We all wanted to do something to help Tommy, to show him how much we love him.” 

“Words cannot express the gratitude I feel for this community,” DeLorenzo said.  

Categories Civics, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Gender, Harris, Kamala, Race
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