In this intensely polarized political era, the war between the left and the right is waged on multiple fronts: abortion, race, LGBTQ+ issues, unionization, immigration, wealth inequality — even the nature of democracy itself. But there is one political battlefield, incorporating many of these skirmishes, that perhaps is the bloodiest of all: education.
Long an obsession of the right, the content in public school curricula draws heated debate among various political persuasions. (We’ve all seen the viral videos of some parent ranting at a school board meeting about so-called inappropriate books in the school library.)
But something larger, outside the library and the classroom, is at play here. There is a prolonged and targeted effort, decades in the making, among the rankings of the political right. There is a force seeking to wind back the clock before the 1950s, before mandated school integration.
That force — an attempt to resurrect segregation — is the Republican-led effort to institute universal school vouchers.