How Trump aims to reverse the “horrible betrayal” in US public education

Donald Trump’s inaugural speech recycled one of the US President’s pet peeves, namely the US public education system, which he believes to be corrupting American youth.

“We have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them,” he told his audience at the inauguration ceremony on January 20.

“All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly,” he added to deafening applause with promises to “reverse” the “horrible betrayal” that has been visited on the American people.

But what exactly has Trump in mind when he refers to these drastic changes to the public school system, which neither he nor his children attended?

Trump himself was driven to his private school, Kew-Forest School in the Queens neighborhood of Forest Hills, by the family chauffeur until bad behavior saw him moved to a military academy, reports PBS.

All five of his children by his three marriages were educated at private schools, including the youngest Barron from his current marriage to Melania.

First off, the new President is determined that more Americans get a private education by expanding the “school choice” programs with tax breaks for people wanting to send their kids to private schools.

Republicans believe the government should help parents pay for private schooling but teachers’ unions and many Democrats say such a program negatively impacts the public system that educates 50 million US children, Reuters reports.

One of Trump’s main beefs with the public system is that it offers students a perspective on America’s history that clashes with the traditional version.

In his July 4 address in 2020, Trump maintained that students were led to “believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but villains,” leading to the toppling of statues such as that of George Washington, The Washington Post reports.

While it is unlikely Trump will be able to dismantle the US Department of Education as promised, the changes he has in mind will turn it on its head.

Cuts to funding will mean critical services targeted at low-income students and pupils of color will suffer, resulting in poor educational outcomes for these groups, say experts.

Trump could also alter how the department investigates civil rights complaints to “reshape civil rights enforcement towards their (the Republicans’) ideological purposes,” Rachel Perera, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, told The Guardian.

In fact, Trump has promised to get the department to investigate “anti-white” civil rights violations, which could interfere with race discrimination investigations, Perera added.

Led by Linda McMahon, the department will also attempt to change the public school curriculum which will involve a ban on race and s e x education.

“While they seek to reduce or eliminate [the department], they are directly seeking to insert the federal government in reviewing and determining appropriate curriculum content for students and programming run by schools,” said Sarah Hinger, the deputy director of the ACLU racial justice program, in The Guardian.

“We’re really seeing a whole flip of the idea of the federal government’s role in education,” she added.

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