PUBLIC EDUCATION: THE WISDOM OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS VERSUS THE GREED OF THE BILLIONAIRE OLIGARCHY

There's a peculiar irony in watching a nation founded on the radical notion that an educated populace is democracy's lifeblood systematically drain that very lifeblood for profit. It's rather like watching someone sell their own heart on eBay because a billionaire convinced them that cardiac function is best left to the free market. Yet here we stand in 2025, witnessing the Trump administration's enthusiastic dismemberment of the Department of Education—scattering its functions like confetti at a privatization party—while the ghosts of Jefferson, Adams, and Madison presumably spin in their graves with such velocity that we could power the Eastern Seaboard if only we had the foresight to attach turbines to their coffins.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's begin with a tale of two visions, separated by roughly 250 years and an immeasurable chasm of intent.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS: RADICAL DREAMERS OR DANGEROUS SOCIALISTS?

One can only imagine what Fox News would have made of Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge." Picture the chyron: "JEFFERSON PROPOSES GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF CHILDREN'S MINDS." Tucker Carlson's heir apparent would furrow their brow in performative concern: "Now he wants free education for everyone? What's next, free healthcare? Free housing? Where does it end, Tom?"

Yet there stood Jefferson, that dangerous radical, declaring public education "the most important bill in our whole code" for preserving freedom. The audacity! The man who penned "all men are created equal" (yes, yes, we'll address that hypocrisy momentarily) genuinely believed that democracy required an educated citizenry capable of critical thought, civic engagement, and—heaven forbid—the ability to recognize when they were being bamboozled by demagogues.

John Adams, never one for subtlety, put it even more bluntly: the education of "every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and the poorest" must be "maintained at the public expense." Not some people. Not the deserving poor. Not those who could afford it. Everyone.

James Madison, the intellectual architect of the Constitution, warned that "a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy." Looking around at our current political landscape, one suspects we're experiencing both simultaneously—a tragic farce, if you will, or perhaps a farcical tragedy. Madison would likely be unsurprised, though deeply disappointed, to see his prophecy fulfilled with such theatrical gusto.

The Founders' reasoning was elegantly simple: republics require informed citizens. Monarchies can function with ignorant subjects—indeed, they often prefer them. But a government by the people, for the people, cannot survive if the people are too poorly educated to understand what's being done in their name. An uneducated populace is democracy's suicide note.

Even the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787—before the Constitution was ratified—set aside federal lands to support public schools, declaring that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged" as necessities for "good government." Forever. That's a long time. Longer, apparently, than the collective memory of those currently wielding power.

The curriculum these revolutionary radicals envisioned wasn't about creating compliant workers or maximizing standardized test scores. It focused on:

• Reading, writing, and arithmetic: The tools of self-sufficiency and civic participation
• History (especially Greek, Roman, and American): So citizens could recognize tyranny's patterns and resist corruption
• Geography: To understand one's place in the world
• Moral and civic instruction: To cultivate virtue, character, and devotion to the common good
• Classical languages, rhetoric, and logic for advanced students: To create a "natural aristocracy" of talent—not wealth—for leadership

Note what's absent: nothing about training obedient workers for factories. Nothing about teaching to tests. Nothing about maximizing shareholder value. The goal was creating citizens capable of self-governance, not consumers capable of self-checkout.

Benjamin Rush advocated for a "general, and uniform system of education" to create cultural cohesion and shared republican values. Noah Webster—the "Schoolmaster of America"—took this further, deliberately Americanizing language and textbooks to break from British cultural dominance. His Blue-Backed Speller sold 100 million copies, creating linguistic and cultural unity across a diverse, sprawling nation. Webster understood that true independence required intellectual independence.

Now, we must pause here for the elephant in the room—or rather, the enslaved human beings in the room. Yes, the same Founders who waxed poetic about universal education owned other human beings and denied education to enslaved people, women (beyond rudimentary instruction), and Indigenous peoples. Jefferson's soaring rhetoric about natural aristocracy of talent rings rather hollow when he systematically denied millions the opportunity to develop their talents. This hypocrisy is neither excusable nor irrelevant.

But here's the thing: the principle they articulated—that democracy requires educated citizens and that government has a duty to provide that education—was genuinely revolutionary and remains valid. The tragedy is that they failed to apply it universally. The greater tragedy is that we're now abandoning even the principle.

The arc of American history, at its best, has been the gradual expansion of that founding vision to include those originally excluded: the poor, women, African Americans, immigrants, people with disabilities. Public education became the great equalizer, the engine of social mobility, the institution that transformed the promise of "all men are created equal" into something approaching reality.

Which brings us, inevitably and depressingly, to the present.

THE BILLIONAIRE OLIGARCHY: MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE OR JUST REALLY GREEDY?

If the Founding Fathers saw public education as democracy's foundation, the modern billionaire oligarchy sees it as democracy's problem. An educated populace asks inconvenient questions like "Why do you pay less in taxes than your secretary?" and "Shouldn't workers share in productivity gains?" and "Is it really necessary for you to own a superyacht with a smaller yacht inside it?"

Much better to have a population educated just enough to operate the machinery and follow instructions, but not so much that they start getting ideas about collective bargaining or progressive taxation.

The assault on public education didn't begin with Trump, though his administration has pursued it with the subtlety of a wrecking ball at a Fabergé egg exhibition. This has been a decades-long project, meticulously planned and lavishly funded by billionaires who discovered that controlling education policy is far more effective than controlling individual schools.

The playbook has been consistent:

Step 1: Starve the Beast

First, systematically defund public schools through tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. When schools inevitably struggle with inadequate resources, point to their struggles as evidence that "public education has failed." It's rather like poisoning someone and then citing their illness as proof that they were never healthy to begin with.

Step 2: Test and Punish

Implement high-stakes standardized testing regimes that reduce education to bubble-filling exercises. When schools serving poor communities—already struggling with inadequate funding—perform poorly on these tests, label them "failing" and threaten closure. Ignore the fact that test scores correlate more strongly with zip code wealth than teaching quality. Disregard the reality that you're measuring poverty, not learning.

The Common Core standards, initially funded by Bill Gates to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, exemplified this approach. Sold as raising standards, they actually narrowed curriculum, eliminated creativity and critical thinking, and transformed classrooms into test-prep factories. Teachers became proctors; students became data points.

Step 3: Promote "Choice"

Introduce charter schools and voucher programs as innovative solutions to the "failure" you've deliberately engineered. Frame it as empowering parents with "choice"—because who could oppose choice? It's like opposing freedom or puppies.

Never mind that charter schools can cherry-pick students, exclude those with disabilities or behavioral issues, and avoid the accountability measures imposed on public schools. Never mind that vouchers drain resources from public schools while subsidizing private and religious schools that can discriminate in admissions. Never mind that study after study shows charter schools, on average, perform no better than public schools—and often worse.

The "success" of many charter and voucher programs comes primarily from segregating affluent students from poor ones—creaming off the easiest-to-educate children while leaving public schools with the most challenging and expensive students and fewer resources to serve them. It's educational gentrification: the wealthy get boutique options while the poor get the crumbling infrastructure left behind.

Step 4: Demonize Teachers

Launch sustained attacks on teachers' unions and the teaching profession itself. Portray teachers as greedy, lazy, and incompetent—despite their college degrees, ongoing professional development, and salaries that often require second jobs. Blame them for societal failures while paying them less than mid-level managers at Target.

The cognitive dissonance is remarkable: teachers are simultaneously so powerful that their unions control all of education policy, yet so incompetent that they can't educate children. They're overpaid, yet we can't attract talented people to the profession. They have cushy jobs with summers off, yet we face massive teacher shortages and burnout.

Step 5: Weaponize Culture Wars

When the economic arguments for privatization prove unconvincing, pivot to cultural grievances. Suddenly education isn't about funding or pedagogy—it's about critical race theory (which isn't actually taught in K-12 schools), transgender bathrooms, and "woke indoctrination."

These manufactured controversies serve dual purposes: they distract from the privatization agenda while dividing communities that might otherwise unite to defend public schools. Parents who might collaborate to demand better funding instead battle over which books to ban. It's a masterclass in misdirection.

Step 6: Capture the Regulatory Apparatus

Use unlimited political spending—enabled by Citizens United—to elect politicians who will implement your agenda. Install education secretaries like Betsy DeVos, who never attended public school, never sent her children to public school, and spent her career trying to destroy public schools. It's like appointing a vegan to run a steakhouse, except the steakhouse serves 50 million children.

Fund think tanks, advocacy groups, and astroturf organizations to create the appearance of grassroots support for policies that benefit billionaires. Produce studies—often methodologically dubious—showing that privatization works. Control the narrative.

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: A BRIEF, EMBATTLED HISTORY

The Department of Education was created in 1979, and conservatives have wanted to eliminate it since roughly 1979 and thirty seconds. Ronald Reagan ran on abolishing it. Every Republican platform since has called for its elimination or dramatic reduction.

Why such hostility? The department's actual functions are relatively modest: it distributes federal aid to schools (especially Title I funds for low-income students and IDEA funds for special education), enforces civil rights laws, collects educational data, and conducts research. It doesn't control curriculum, hire teachers, or run schools—those remain state and local functions.

But the department represents something conservatives despise: the federal government's commitment to educational equity. It ensures that students with disabilities receive appropriate services. It protects students from discrimination based on race, sex, or national origin. It channels resources to schools serving the poorest communities.

In short, it makes education slightly less unequal than it would otherwise be. And for those who benefit from inequality, that's intolerable.

The current administration's approach—dispersing the department's functions to Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, and State—is ingeniously destructive. These agencies lack educational expertise and infrastructure. Schools will navigate multiple bureaucracies for programs previously coordinated through one agency. Delays, confusion, and dysfunction are inevitable.

Which is precisely the point. The goal isn't efficiency—it's sabotage. Make federal education programs so dysfunctional that states and districts give up on them. Create chaos that justifies further dismantling. It's the "starve the beast" strategy on steroids.

The administration frames this as a "hard reset" and "restoring local control." But local control is a euphemism for inequality. Without federal oversight and funding, wealthy districts will thrive while poor districts collapse. Students with disabilities will lose protections. Civil rights enforcement will evaporate. We'll return to the pre-1960s system where educational opportunity depended entirely on the accident of birth.

THE BILLIONAIRES: A ROGUES' GALLERY

Who's behind this assault? Let's name names:

The Walton Family (Walmart heirs): Spent billions promoting charter schools and vouchers. Their motivation is partly ideological (free-market fundamentalism) and partly self-interested (lower taxes, union-free workforce). The irony of the family that pioneered poverty-wage retail jobs championing "educational opportunity" would be amusing if it weren't so destructive.

Bill Gates: Spent billions on education reform—Common Core, small schools, teacher evaluation based on test scores—with consistently disastrous results. To his credit, Gates eventually admitted some initiatives failed. To his discredit, he implemented them at massive scale before determining whether they worked, treating America's schoolchildren as guinea pigs for his untested theories.

Betsy DeVos: The DeVos family fortune (Amway) funded school choice advocacy for decades. As Education Secretary, DeVos worked tirelessly to defund, deregulate, and privatize public education. She once said that education reform would "advance God's kingdom," suggesting her agenda was as much theological as pedagogical.

Charles Koch: Funded libertarian think tanks and advocacy groups promoting privatization. The Koch network views public education as government overreach and teachers' unions as obstacles to their free-market utopia.

Mark Zuckerberg: Donated $100 million to Newark schools in a reform effort that locals called a "colonial" imposition. The money largely went to consultants and charter schools rather than improving existing public schools.

These billionaires share certain characteristics: they attended elite private schools or universities, they've never taught in public schools, they have unlimited resources to impose their theories, and they face no consequences when those theories fail. They're educational tourists—visiting briefly, disrupting extensively, and departing before the damage becomes apparent.

Their motivations vary—ideological conviction, tax avoidance, union-busting, genuine (if misguided) philanthropy, messianic complex—but the result is the same: the systematic dismantling of public education as a common good and its replacement with a market-based system that exacerbates inequality.

THE EVIDENCE: DOES PRIVATIZATION WORK?

The empirical evidence on charter schools and vouchers is decidedly mixed, which is a polite way of saying "mostly disappointing."

Charter Schools: Multiple studies, including Stanford's CREDO research, show that charter schools on average perform no better than public schools. Some charters excel; many underperform. The variation is enormous. The "successful" charters often succeed through selective enrollment, high attrition rates (pushing out struggling students), and longer school days/years (which public schools could also implement with adequate funding).

Vouchers: The evidence is even worse. Gold-standard studies in Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio found that students using vouchers to attend private schools actually performed worse than comparable students who remained in public schools. The Louisiana study showed particularly dramatic negative effects.

Why? Private schools accepting vouchers are often low-quality institutions that couldn't attract paying customers. They lack accountability, certified teachers, and academic standards. Turns out that markets don't magically improve education any more than they magically improve healthcare or firefighting.

Segregation: Both charters and vouchers increase racial and economic segregation. They allow affluent families to opt out of diverse public schools, leaving behind concentrated poverty. The "slight improvement for affluent cohorts" you mentioned comes largely from this segregation effect—not better teaching, but better peer groups.

Special Education: Private schools can refuse students with disabilities or provide inadequate services. Charter schools often counsel out such students. Public schools must serve everyone, including the most expensive and challenging students, with diminishing resources.

Financial Fraud: The charter and voucher sectors have been plagued by fraud, embezzlement, and profiteering. Operators have purchased real estate, hired relatives, and siphoned funds with minimal oversight. When charters fail—and hundreds have—students are disrupted and communities are left with empty buildings and broken promises.

The fundamental problem is that education isn't a market commodity. Students aren't customers; they're developing human beings with varying needs, abilities, and circumstances. Schools aren't businesses; they're civic institutions with obligations to everyone, not just profitable students. Applying market logic to education is a category error—like trying to run a family like a corporation or a friendship like a transaction.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS VERSUS THE OLIGARCHS: A COMPARISON

Let's make this explicit:

Founding Fathers' Vision	Billionaire Oligarchy's Vision
Education as a public good and civic necessity	Education as a private commodity and profit center
Government duty to provide universal education	Government interference in the education market
Educated citizenry as defense against tyranny	Educated citizenry as threat to oligarchic power
Curriculum emphasizing critical thinking, history, civic virtue	Curriculum emphasizing job training, compliance, test-taking
Natural aristocracy of talent, regardless of wealth	Actual aristocracy of wealth, regardless of talent
Education to create informed, engaged citizens	Education to create compliant, productive workers
Schools as community institutions serving the common good	Schools as businesses serving shareholders
Teachers as respected professionals shaping citizens	Teachers as interchangeable service providers
Success measured by civic participation and character	Success measured by test scores and profit margins
Equality of opportunity through universal access	Inequality justified by "choice" and "competition"

The contrast couldn't be starker. The Founders—for all their flaws and hypocrisies—understood that democracy requires an educated populace and that providing that education is a governmental responsibility. They saw education as an investment in civilization itself.

The modern oligarchy sees education as a cost to be minimized and an opportunity to be exploited. They want workers educated enough to be productive but not educated enough to question the system that enriches them. They want to extract profit from a sector that serves 50 million children while bearing none of the responsibility for those children's wellbeing.

THE STAKES: WHAT WE LOSE WHEN WE LOSE PUBLIC EDUCATION

If the oligarchy succeeds in privatizing education, we lose far more than a government department. We lose:

Social Cohesion: Public schools are among the few remaining institutions where Americans from different backgrounds interact. They're messy, imperfect experiments in pluralism. Privatization replaces this with Balkanization—separate schools for separate communities, united by nothing.

Equal Opportunity: Public education, despite its flaws, remains the primary engine of social mobility. It's how immigrant children learn English, how poor children access books and technology, how talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds get opportunities. Privatization replaces the ideal of equal opportunity with the reality of inherited advantage.

Democratic Citizenship: Public schools teach civic values, shared history, and democratic participation. They create citizens, not just workers. Privatized schools have no such obligation—they can teach whatever ideology their funders prefer, accountable to no one.

Local Democracy: School boards are often the most accessible form of democratic governance—where ordinary citizens can participate, run for office, and influence policy. Privatization replaces elected boards with appointed charter boards and corporate management, removing democratic accountability.

Community Anchors: Public schools are often community centers—hosting events, providing services, employing locals. They're civic infrastructure. When they close, communities lose far more than education.

Professional Teaching: Public schools employ certified teachers with job protections that allow them to advocate for students without fear of arbitrary firing. Privatized schools often employ uncertified teachers on temporary contracts, creating high turnover and preventing teachers from challenging harmful policies.

Universal Access: Public schools must serve everyone—students with disabilities, English learners, homeless students, students with behavioral challenges. Privatized schools can exclude anyone who's expensive or difficult. The students left behind attend increasingly under-resourced public schools, creating a two-tier system.

In short, we lose the very idea that we have collective responsibility for all children, not just our own. We lose the notion that education is a right, not a privilege. We lose a cornerstone of democratic society.

RESISTANCE AND HOPE: IT'S NOT OVER YET

The good news—yes, there's good news—is that the privatization agenda faces significant resistance.

Teachers: Despite relentless attacks, teachers continue advocating for their students and their profession. The wave of teacher strikes in 2018-2019 (West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and others) showed that educators can mobilize politically when pushed too far.

Parents: Many parents, having experienced charter schools or voucher programs, have turned against them. They've seen the broken promises, the selective enrollment, the lack of accountability. Grassroots opposition has defeated voucher proposals in multiple states.

Researchers: Scholars like Diane Ravitch—a former privatization supporter who became its most prominent critic—have exposed the failures and fraud of the reform movement. The evidence against privatization has become overwhelming.

Civil Rights Groups: Organizations like the NAACP have opposed charter expansion, recognizing that it exacerbates segregation and inequality. They've challenged the notion that privatization benefits minority communities.

Voters: When voucher proposals appear on ballots, they usually lose. Americans, across the political spectrum, value public education even if they're frustrated with its current state.

The challenge is that the oligarchy doesn't need majority support—they need only to capture key decision-makers through campaign contributions and lobbying. They can lose at the ballot box and win in legislatures. They can be unpopular and still get their policies implemented.

But democracy, for all its flaws, has a way of eventually asserting itself. The question is whether it will assert itself before irreparable damage is done.

CONCLUSION: CHOOSE YOUR VISION

We face a choice between two fundamentally different visions of education and, by extension, society.

One vision sees education as a public good, a shared investment in our collective future, a right of citizenship, and a bulwark of democracy. It recognizes that we all benefit when all children are educated—that the child in the struggling school across town might become the doctor who treats us, the engineer who designs our infrastructure, the citizen who votes wisely, or simply the neighbor who contributes to community life. This vision accepts that education costs money and that those costs should be borne collectively and progressively. It trusts teachers as professionals and treats students as developing citizens, not future workers or data points.

The other vision sees education as a private commodity, a consumer choice, a business opportunity, and a means of reproducing class advantage. It recognizes no collective responsibility beyond one's own children. It views education spending as a cost to be minimized rather than an investment to be maximized. It treats teachers as interchangeable service providers and students as customers or products. It accepts—even celebrates—inequality as the natural result of competition and choice.

The first vision is imperfect, difficult, and expensive. It requires sustained commitment, adequate funding, and constant improvement. It demands that we care about other people's children as much as our own. It's messy because democracy is messy.

The second vision is simpler, cheaper (for the wealthy), and more efficient (at producing inequality). It requires no collective commitment, no shared sacrifice, no concern for the common good. It's tidy because markets are tidy—winners and losers, sorted efficiently.

The Founding Fathers, for all their flaws, chose the first vision. They understood that democracy is an ongoing experiment requiring educated citizens to sustain it. They knew that freedom requires not just political rights but the intellectual capacity to exercise those rights wisely.

The billionaire oligarchy has chosen the second vision. They understand that oligarchy is easier to maintain with an undereducated populace that lacks the knowledge to recognize exploitation or the solidarity to resist it.

The Trump administration's dismantling of the Department of Education is just the latest battle in this long war. It won't be the last. The question is which vision will prevail.

I'll leave you with Madison's warning, updated for our times: "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy."

We're living through both. The question is whether we'll write a different ending.

The Founders gave us the blueprint. The oligarchs are trying to burn it. The choice—for now—remains ours.

Choose wisely. The future of the republic depends on it.

And maybe, just maybe, attach those turbines to the Founders' graves. At the rate they're spinning, we could at least get some renewable energy out of this disaster.

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." — Thomas Jefferson

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