While people around the world were inspired by the resilience, fearlessness and savvy of the students who created a national gun-control movement
in the wake of the Parkland shooting, American right-wing leaders
looked at these kids and saw evidence of the urgency to destroy public
education and replace it with religious private schools and charter
schools.
Right wing shock jocks like Mark Levin said the Parkland student
uprising proved that schools were “propaganda mills” that were down on
“genitalia assignment, bathrooms, and gyms; whether it’s the school
lunch program that’s even politicized … radical environmentalism is
advanced, capitalism is trashed.”
The anti-education group United States Parents Involved in Education
released a statement condemning students who want to be safe from mass
shootings, blaming this view on “children are not being taught accurate
history of the United States and the reasons for American
exceptionalism.”
Rush Limbaugh just flat-out lied, claiming that only public schools –
and not religious schools – are targeted by shooters. Ted Nugent called
student leaders “ignorant and dangerously stupid.” Tom Tancredo, a GOP
ex-Congressjerk and former high-school teacher, called for teachers and
administrators to be punished for failing to prevent student leadership,
condemning “reports of students being punished for NOT walking out of
class and teachers being disciplined for questioning the educational
character of the event.”
Public education has become a flashpoint for resisting authoritarianism
and oligarchic rule. At the same time, support for charter schools –
always a stalking horse for mixing church and state, reinstituting
segegration, and lining the pockets of fly-by-night education profiteers
– has plummeted among Democrats, as progressives have abandoned their
unquestioning support for charters and demanding high-quality public
schools.
