Of all the disruptive decisions – to use an adjective that does not betray my indignant unease – that Donald Trump has made, the one with the deepest and most disturbing ideological significance is that of dismantle the federal Department of EducationThe government of the most powerful country in the world believes that education does not deserve its own department, as it has had for the past 45 years (it was created in 1979). It is true that federal states have the majority of powers, but the gesture of disregarding their own powers already reveals the importance given to education: something simply expendable. Trump and Musk believe it's fine if overnight they fire, as they have, more than a thousand officials from this department. Zasca!
They make it clear that their work was not only useless, but downright harmful. They reveal their undisguised desire to point to the world of education as unreliable, as enemy territory. Schools as a den of undesirable progressives who promote "inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content." This was written in the Republican electoral platform, which, however, emphasized guaranteeing the right to "pray and read the Bible" in schools. Trump has no problem bringing the cultural and political war to the heart of education. Like those here in Catalonia who have been trying for years, with the complicity of the justice system, to establish a linguistic divide in schools. The not insignificant difference is that in the United States, it is the country's president who is leading the attack.
An attack that also directly targets equal opportunities, since until now the federal department's main mission was to provide aid to the most vulnerable students, both for reasons of income and those with disabilities. Although they have said they will save them, there are serious doubts that without the public workers who manage them, this money will reach its destination. What has suddenly settled among the receiving centers and, above all, among the affected families is a deep feeling of helplessness and uncertainty. From high geopolitics and high economics to the most humble homes, the Trump administration, instead of inspiring confidence, is generating instability, chaos, and fear. A curious and symptomatic way of ruling.
And what must be going through the heads of US educators? Trump's explicit political message is that there are many who are untrustworthy and, therefore, must be rounded up, intimidated, and, if possible, fired. It's the same fear he's begun to spread among university professors and students. Anyone who takes to the streets to demonstrate for Palestine or anything else risks being expelled or even imprisoned. Independent thought and freedom of opinion have come under suspicion. Universities hostile to the president will not receive funding. The land of freedom is effectively saying goodbye to academic freedom. The attack is twofold: with financial strangulation and with a witch hunt. McCarthyism is back. It's easy to sow panic. For example, a French university professor was just denied entry to the United States because his cell phone had recorded personal comments against Trump; he was labeled a "terrorist." Here we know very well that "terrorism" is a gumball used to remove the necessary disaffection from circulation.
In Trump's United States, education must now serve not to create well-educated, free, committed, and critical citizens who think for themselves, but to create obedient and submissive citizens. That is, to indoctrinate in the single Trumpist truth. God, country, and... Trump! Look where, Carlism finally triumphs, but transferred to North America and with a millionaire, ill-mannered, plebeian king. Truly, the United States is traveling back in time, to the worst authoritarian populism of the 20th century and the worst traditionalism of the 19th. At their hands, the world in general, and the world of education in particular, run an uncertain fate, a stark danger of global regression. Let's educate children in freedom before they embrace the false Trumpist freedom.
