As he had promised to his concerned followers during his electoral campaign, President Donald Trump has begun taking steps to dismantle the Department of Education this past week. On March 18th, he surrounded himself with school-aged children seated at desks scribbling away alongside him (anything for a good photo-op) as he signed the executive order seeking to loosen the power of government oversight on national education, fueled by his claims that the Department has failed the American people and deserves to be rendered obsolete. While what will come from the department’s dissolution remains to be seen, this step is just one of many being taken by the current administration to delegitimize the value of education for the nation’s citizens. From targeted budget cuts to political squabbles, the American education system is being heavily scrutinized and dissected by a country that doesn’t even seem to understand how necessary education is. But this push against education (a push against learning, really), was not solely created by the president’s actions; in fact, the United States has perhaps unknowingly endorsed the spread of disinformation and the rise of the anti-learning ideology that’s taking over—and we have very few to blame aside from ourselves for it. So let’s examine what has propelled this anti-education initiative.

Trump’s Tirade Against Education

There’s no better place to start than with President Trump’s recent axing of the Department of Education and what it means for the advancement of his political agenda—after all, he has proudly proclaimed he “love[s] the poorly educated.” 

Education reform was one of Trump’s many topics of interest during election season, and for good reason—his platform was built on the premise of change, especially when it came to dismantling existing government initiatives that conflict with his mission to bring the spirit of unquestioning nationalism back into American culture. And to his followers, this includes any previous attempts to make education diverse, accessible, and necessary for all. In a January press release, the Office of Education and Outreach labeled DEI initiatives in education “illegal discrimination and wasteful spending” that promotes “divisive ideology.” Within the same month, Trump championed alternative schooling in his Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families executive order—his promise to “support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children” was a campaign standout, especially for conservative faith-based families that believed their school-aged kids were being indoctrinated into too-progressive, “woke” ideologies. Mind you, some of the ideologies in question are subjects like pronouns, which are a part of speech taught within any basic English grammar curriculum, and racism, which, well, need I say more about why it’s important to learn about racism and discrimination? But I digress.

In a conversation with PBS News Hour’s Geoff Bennett, Laura Meckler of the Washington Post clarifies that the Department of Education’s (ED’s) role in national implementation of standardized education is largely misunderstood. The most current iteration of the Department was established by Congress as a Cabinet-level agency during the Carter presidency, with a mission to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” Learning for Justice highlights five of the high-impact functions of the ED, with the Office for Civil Rights (which ensures equal and nondiscriminatory access to education for all) and the Federal Student Aid office (which is involved in the distribution of financial aid for higher education programs) being some of the most notable derivations of the Department. These financial cuts carry particularly troubling implications when it comes to these offices’ ability to serve students with disabilities, low-income university aspirants, non-white or immigrant learners, and other marginalized groups. Financial aid projects like the FAFSA and Pell Grants, residency and immigration assistance for foreign students, legislation like Title IX and IDEA (which protect girls’ and disabled students’ access to equal sports accommodations and scholastic opportunities, respectively), all of these benefits and protections that would usually be heralded under these departments’ jurisdiction are now being discarded or scrutinized by Musk’s DOGE.

To the average Trump supporter, these steps may seem ideal, even laudable. There is a framing of empowerment and assertive control that comes with the President’s promise to hand the reins of their children’s education to parents, and opponents of DEI and adjacent movements would be especially satisfied to see these liberal-inclining initiatives be discarded. But with this newfound power to “freely” raise children comes a responsibility to educate them that parents may not be properly equipped for, leaving them to scramble for alternative methods that could end up harming their children more than helping them—one of which is called “unschooling.”

The “Unschooling” Movement

It’s no coincidence that this search for educational reform is also a growing subject of interest on social media platforms, with “unschooling” gaining traction and driving discourse within the past year. Also referred to as self-directed education, the pedagogy of unschooling relies on the child’s initiative and interests to guide their own learning (as opposed to the more rigid structured experience that you would expect from public education or even homeschooling curriculums). A survey conducted nationally by the Department of Education in 2022 indicated that sentiments about public education have notably shifted since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the “lockdown” period. Paired with the current President’s campaigning for educational independence, many families are interested in the promises of effective unschooling: “[Parents] view [self-directed education] as a vehicle for providing a richer educational experience… By saying—in nearly equal measures—that they value employment, academics and social/emotional life skills, families are asking for an educational system that can deliver on the promise of full personhood.” But there’s a vast difference between fostering an autodidact approach to education, and damaging your child’s mental development in the name of laissez-faire “freedom” from the traditional educational system. There is still insufficient research and statistical information to fully understand both the benefits and the negative aspects of the “unschooling” movement, but some of its critics understandably voice concerns about the possible neglect and lack of structure that will harm an unschooled child’s ability to socialize, learn, and meet basic literacy and comprehension standards.

All of this to say, this isn’t meant to demonize homeschooling or alternative methods of education—when done well, these learning styles can prove to be just as successful (if not more) as traditional public education. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are dismissive of how crucial these formative learning years are for their children’s development, and neglecting them by letting them watch cartoons and doomscroll on TikTok all day is not an effective form of education. In fact, we are already encountering some of the effects of this lenient “education” style from seeing how the lockdown learners are faring (unfortunately, not well). While many jump to blame Zoom meetings and remote classrooms for their children’s academic difficulties, it would be unfair to exclude the possibility that these students’ learning environment and the guidance they received (or the lack thereof) also affected the way they participated and engaged in their learning. You may be thinking, Oh, if only there were publicly-funded programming and resources designed to interest the youth and cultivate the desire to learn in them… oh, wait, there are… sort of.

Why Conservatives Hate Elmo

With the popularization of (and easier access to) television in the 1960s, parents sought opportunities for their children to learn outside of school—cue the origins of educational programming. Television soon welcomed cartoons and shows featuring charming characters with fun, bright stories and valuable life lessons, designed exclusively with young viewers in mind. Children are the country’s future, and what better way to invest in their mental development and success than by strengthening their desire for learning and their core values while keeping them entertained? Sesame Street, for instance, was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, airing in 1969 with the backing of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society agenda. With the Civil Rights Movement at the forefront of the political landscape, the preschool educational programming was vocally intentional about its positive portrayal of diverse communities, having been largely based around Harlem and created for inner-city children, especially Black children who were disadvantaged by “the educational deficit that poverty created.” And for a while, this merging of media and education seemed a perfect solution to helping the young ones learn and be excited about it. Unfortunately, Sesame Street is one of the many programs suffering from cut funding and platform displacement, and has even received criticism from conservatives calling it “government propaganda” over its radical messaging of empathy—because caring for your fellow human being by encouraging kids to vaccinate, or by singing songs about how everyone is unique and beautiful, is apparently liberal indoctrination.

The interest in defunding informational sources such as PBS (formerly home to Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the like) and even NPR is very telling of how strongly right-leaning figures are pushing for uneducation. While the need for positive role models for children is still present, the social context we are engaged in today believes that this style of programming’s inclusivity is controversial and unnecessary. As Ira Wells writes for The Walrus, “Republicans became increasingly convinced that publicly funded media and education are inherently hostile to their own political interests. ‘To stop public funding is good policy and good politics,’ the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 states. The government can’t afford “more than half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year,’ nor should it compel ‘the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views.’” Considering the mass layoffs within the entertainment industry and education sector, the tense and politically fueled criticism, and a general decline in interest for this programming style, it’s a dark time for lovable little muppets that want to teach kids their shapes and ABCs. 

And the uptick in popularity of artificial intelligence as a “learning” resource doesn’t help.     

AI’s Role in Uneducation                                                                                                                                                                                    

If you’ve given a social media algorithm any indication that you’re college-aged recently, you might have encountered viral short-form classroom content featuring barely-hidden subliminal advertisements for some AI-powered homework helper or answer-decipherer. The recording “student” always conveniently catches the cheater’s screen displaying the program or site being used, and unsurprisingly, viewers in the comments are thrilled to learn of a new way to cut corners instead of condemning the cheater’s behavior. I’ve briefly written about AI and its role in compromising digital information before, but even beyond that, I bring up these ads to talk about another problem I associate with the rise of AI in education (at the expense of sounding bitter and old-fashioned): the sacrifice of ethics and effort in exchange of mere convenience.  

Merrimack College professor Dan Saforian-Butin writes about the performative spectacle of “learning” that is posed by the use of artificial intelligence in higher education: “[AI] collapses the entire process of teaching and learning (thoughtful, recursive, effortful) into an instantaneous, efficient, and polished transaction—no struggle, no iteration, no friction. It creates the perfect performative illusion of teaching and learning.” While cheating in an academic setting is nothing new, the widespread acceptance and integration of artificial intelligence within the educational environment goes beyond just dishonesty. The tech-bro claims that AI is a revolutionary tool that will “democratize knowledge” all fall flat when you see that so many machine-learning models are still glaringly inaccurate and sloppy. But despite the automation that AI provides its users being detrimental to their literacy and critical thinking skills, it seems that this isn’t what matters to someone who employs it—rather, the “performance” of learning does, further highlighting the “crisis of purpose” that Saforian-Butin describes. So, why bother showing up to class if you aren’t actually there to take knowledge in? To be fair, it is arguable that there’s certainly a cultural aspect to this widespread push for AI—in a nation that claims to be a meritocracy, the playing field has been historically uneven. Not only that, but to young adults entering an unstable workforce, it may seem like there is no tangible recompense for doing things “the right way,” which involves much more effort and more exhaustion for a dwindling return on their investment. In the grand scope of things, it’s easy to compromise the educational experience for the sake of “going through the motions” and following the steps we were told would secure financial success for us—but it shouldn’t come at the cost of our learning experience.

—

It feels as if the American education sector can’t catch a break as of late. There are admittedly a lot of flaws in this system, but it’s unlikely that defunding the department meant to address these very issues is the best course of action. Amidst the AI implementations and the alternative schooling methods and the scathing comments from government-representative accounts bullying a toddler-coded muppet on social media, we’ve lost sight of the importance of learning and being educated, whether that takes place in a government-regulated classroom setting or not. More urgently than ever, learners need to be challenged and not sheltered, to confront perspectives that differ from their own, to see the value of diverse voices and of compassionate understanding, to love knowledge, to simply learn. And insulating the nation from knowledge through the censorship and destruction of educational resources is nothing short of irresponsible and reprehensible, no matter how positively anyone may try to spin it. The recent dismantling of the Department of Education is but a small fragment of a larger anti-intellectualist movement aiming to discourage learning, and it will only prove to be antithetical to the best interests of Americans who deserve to have an education.