Thursday, March 9th, 2023

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are co-authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School and co-hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard? We discuss the ideology behind the unmaking of public education and the dangers of losing one of our most prized public goods.

One of the original visions of public education was about building individual democratic citizens for a polis, an American society. Schools are at the forefront of expanding civil rights, whereas private schools can discriminate on all kinds of grounds. The current intense push to dismantle public education is part of a larger effort to roll back the gains of the civil rights revolution from the 1960s.