Education for the 'us first' crowd

Now that Election Day has come and gone, my reckoning on the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. Putting aside Donald Trump’s historic upset over Hillary Clinton, the issue I have struggled most with is the divisiveness and anger that was exposed during the campaign. The toxicity of this race had a way of invading everything, like the Blob. It was almost impossible to avoid at times, and the bad juju felt palpable on the streets of Washington. Many times I’ve wondered what happened to the hope so many Americans felt and shared on that cold day in January 2008 when millions lined the streets of Washington to hear and rejoice in the inauguration of the nation’s first black president?

On that day, it truly felt as if we turned a corner in America. I still remember my then 84-year-old father being totally amazed that he had lived to the see Americans coming together to celebrate the inauguration of a black president. Here was a man who celebrated the birth of his fourth daughter only a day before four other little girls were killed in a bomb explosion at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Maybe, just maybe, the issues that divided us for so long were finally beginning to fade.

It is true the last eight years have not been easy. Many Americans continue to suffer economically since the Great Recession of 2007-09. But current national statistics don’t reveal a country in freefall or severe economic distress. To the contrary, economic growth has been consistently strong, the unemployment rate is down, and millions more people have health care. So why are so many people unhappy and angry about life in America?

People of all stripes have attempted to answer this question in recent months. Eric Alterman’s article in The New Yorker, “The Hole in Obama’s Legacy,” was particularly thoughtful. I also found the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance both fascinating and uncomfortable. Vance offers the reader a personally informed analysis of white middle-class America and the people who almost assuredly helped elect Donald Trump. Closer to home, my own husband, born and raised in rural Alabama, talked to me about how the pyramid has flipped for so many people in rural and rustbelt America. Where they were once masters of their own fate, these Americans now feel vulnerable and insecure, and at the mercy of powerful elites with more education, money, and mobility.

As I try to make sense of what this election means to my country and my chosen field, education, I am struggling with a pervasive sense of cynicism, not anger.

I don’t fear what a Trump administration will do to education. I don’t think he has a vision for education one way or another. He will pick a few issues, task his political appointees with make some headlines, and then leave the rest for lesser minions who care about education. My concern is more for grand idea of public education and the vision of creating a system that offers opportunities and understanding for all. Education, once a shared value for individuals and families seeking a better life, no longer feels like a tie that binds us together as a nation. If this election was a referendum on anything, it was that public education is not really about all boats rising . . . it is about your own boat winning.

I am not sure how a fragile public education system stands up against the kind of “us first” anger this election revealed. Like so many things in America, education has the potential to become another self-serving enterprise that pits the wealthy against the poor, the powerful against the meek, and the dark against the light. In the months ahead, the Trump administration will begin to show its cards, and we will see if the rhetoric of the campaign translates into actual policy. The real question: Will education in America become a personal quest for the best possible option, or will it remain a unified effort to provide for the public good? If the aspiration for making America great does not include a high-quality public education for all students, then we really have lost the hope we all felt that on the beautiful day in 2008.

Citation: Ferguson, M. (2016). Education for the ‘us first’ crowd. Phi Delta Kappan 98 (3), 74-75.