Feminism & Public Education

I've been thinking a lot about the role early education plays in the development of citizens as feminists or not. And not just as feminists, but also as thoughtful and moral people. This is a relevant topic since just moments ago it was announced that the President's contentious pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, will be confirmed with VP Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. There are more than a few immediate concerns that arise from this. The Center for American Progress wrote on Twitter just now, "For the GOP Senate majority, $4 million in donations from Betsy DeVos and her family spoke louder than the voice of 100ks of constituents." In this new era where corruption in politics is able to exist so blatantly and openly and yet thrive, it will be even harder to raise the next generations with the old-fashioned American ideals of honesty and integrity. The new head of all America's public schools bought this position and has no experience or expertise in education, let alone any earthly understanding of how to effectively manage a huge government bureaucracy. That in itself is sickening, but what does it have to do with feminism?

I believe we discussed briefly in class the idea that a lot of what we learn in middle and high school about racism, sexism, and these more complex oppressive structures in society is extremely limited. Taking one's first few liberal arts courses in college is a jarring and rewarding experience, it feels a lot like unlearning the oversimplified and sometimes outright dangerous preconceived notions that the public education system taught you in English or social studies classes. I never thought complexly about structural racism, feminist identity, or systems of oppression before coming to Manhattan College - now these ideas are inherent to my understanding of the world and my place in it.

As feminists and social justice advocates, a key goal should be ensuring that children are educated at an earlier and earlier level about these complex issues so that college doesn't have to require so much un-learning. And crucially, access to education about structural inequalities is in itself often elitist and classist since someone who has no opportunities to afford a pricey liberal arts higher education may never learn the true significance of them at all. It's a dark day for our country when a woman who does not even believe in the goals of having free and quality public education is now the supposed protector of that system.

How much further behind will our schools and our students (the voters of tomorrow) fall during this administration? Will abstinence-only education become the law of the land and cause even more damage to the lives of uninformed young women and men at a time when funding for contraceptions and access to legal abortion is also in jeopardy? How many history classes will be allowed or encouraged to teach from textbooks that sugarcoat SLAVERY - ensuring that the next generations of Americans have an inherently wrong understanding of racism in this country? How will we ever deal with income inequality between races and socioeconomic classes when more funding will be spent on private charter schools for a minority of students, but the majority of kids in underfunded schools (with the worst being in communities with primarily immigrants and people of color) will be without a solution?

The privatization of America is a scary concept because so often privatization comes with an agenda so foreign to morality and supposed American ideals of meritocracy, and no where is this more dangerous than our education system. If there is anything we should fight to make more equal it is our education system. Through education we can create empowered, thoughtful, historically-aware, and even feminist citizens. Or we can continue to waste that opportunity. Education is a feminist issue, and the confirmation of Betsy DeVos is a feminist nightmare we most continue to oppose.

This reminds me of one of the best quotes from my all-time favorite TV show The West Wing, a quote about education from the character Sam Seaborn that says, "Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense." Well, we can dream.