How the Culture Wars Are Undermining Public Education

Interview by
Cal TurnerSara Van Horn

In the past month, both Louisiana and Oklahoma have passed laws mandating that all state-funded schools display the Ten Commandments — an explicit rejection of the idea of secular public education. In 2023, the state of Florida pressured the College Board to remove references to “critical race theory” from AP African American History curricula, a year after enacting “Don’t Say Gay” policies that aimed to stop teachers from discussing LGBTQ subjects in their classrooms. Meanwhile, half of all US states have put “school choice” policies in place that, instead of funding public education, provide parents with vouchers to educate their students at home or in private schools.

In The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider trace the connections between these seemingly disparate battles, revealing how and why the Right has launched this political onslaught on US public schools. From attacks on the rights of transgender teens to the backlash against critical race theory, these culture wars are part of a conservative strategy to privatize US education by eroding public schools’ broad base of popular support. In response, Berkshire and Schneider offer strategies for championing a historically fundamental mission of public education in the United States — to provide equal opportunities to all children.

Cal Turner and Sara Van Horn spoke to Berkshire for Jacobin about the biggest threats to public education, the problem with “funding students, not systems,” and what, exactly, the culture wars are distracting us from.

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