Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get why some people around education would feel down. Student performance is abysmal, chronic absenteeism is through the roof, and higher education is a hot mess. But it mostly seems to be the bigger-picture stuff that’s weighing on people’s minds, and I get that, too. I’m no great fan of Donald Trump, I don’t want RFK Jr. in the cabinet, and I think there are way too many toxic grifters on the very online right. Our politics and media are still deeply polarized (even if most Americans aren’t). Social media is a sewer. People spend too little time interacting in person and too much time on their phones, and that goes double for school-age youth.
And then there’s simmering distrust of media, science, higher education, and . . .
Bear with me. Now we’re onto what’s got me feeling upbeat.
Like I said, there’s simmering distrust of media, science, and higher education. It’s the well-deserved and overdue consequence of having traded professional restraint for performative activism (on behalf of the #Resistance, Covid virtue signaling, or what-have-you). Fortunately, there are hints that the more self-aware members of these fraternities are having second thoughts about politicized invocations of “science” and casual allegations of bigotry and may be feeling freer to question reigning orthodoxies.
More generally, I feel like we’ve dodged a bullet. Two months ago, one of our two major parties was pledging to end the filibuster—and, with the departures of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, looked like it would have the unified support of its Senate caucus to do so. That would have lit the match on a bonfire of tit-for-tat constitutional arson that could’ve soon blazed out of control. Moreover, after four years of crickets while the president launched illegal schemes or engaged in divisive rhetoric, the legacy media, unions, and public interest groups are now keen on rediscovering the virtues of checks and balances.
Trump’s increasingly multiracial coalition, featuring historically high GOP support among Latino, Asian, and Black voters, has taken the edge off our racialized politics. Broad support for policing, immigration enforcement, parental rights, and school choice is shifting American politics back to a healthy center, after the wild pendulum swings following Trump’s first win and Covid.
In education, it feels like 2024 has seen simple truths slowly come back into vogue: that we’re failing our students, that results matter, that the science of reading is a good thing, that it was lunacy for anyone ever to dismiss the importance of discipline and hard work, and that fashionable campus jargon doesn’t help educators connect with their communities. It’s heartening to see extended school closures authoritatively recognized for the catastrophic failure they were, teen cell phone usage deemed an unhealthy addiction, and a steady trickle of schools and colleges gingerly backing away from progressive fixations like “Latinx” and land-larceny acknowledgments.
