Before President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty program in the 1960s, education was, at best, a hit or miss proposition for millions of Americans.
Left to the states, funding depended on how wealthy each state was and how much that state valued education. For example, children living in wealthy areas — such as Maryland or Washington — could receive a quality education, where children in poor areas — such as Alabama or Mississippi — were often left behind.
What this meant was people who were poor could rarely rise above their status because the education they needed to follow their dreams or to get ahead was denied.
Why bring this up now? Under Project 2025, a Republican-backed plan by the Heritage Foundation for the next Trump administration, education would revert to the states.
Under this plan, education would be seen as a private good rather than a public one. It also flies in the face of Idaho’s constitution which guarantees free public education.
The proposal would end the U.S. Department of Education and, specifically, early childhood education programs such as Head Start and free school lunch programs.
Cutting the education department would go a long way to returning educational opportunities to where they were before the 1960s, providing quality schools for the wealthy and leaving the middle class and poor behind. No longer would people be able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get ahead; they would be stuck where they were born in society.
Removing public educational opportunities cuts the chance for people to learn, to be able to gain the skills to move themselves out of poverty or just into a higher income bracket. If a state does not consider education a priority, the citizens suffer.
Project 2025 proposes school vouchers to parents in place of government funding for state schools, but again, this leans toward the wealthy 10% rather than helping the whole.
Another major issue here: Providing school vouchers does not equal guaranteeing a quality education. The school using the vouchers may run light on basics such as reading or math, or they may skip subjects such as hard science, keeping a child from receiving a well-rounded education to aid their critical thinking skills.
Ending early education programs would also create havoc for poor and lower middle-class families. Early education programs bring not only basics such as reading, but they also offer important socialization skills. As a result, many of these young children will not understand how to work with others, much less have the basics of the alphabet or numbers. This also puts any student at an immediate disadvantage, one where recovery would be difficult.
Under the proposal, ending free school lunch programs would also be a keystone project. The programs were put in place in 1946 through the National School Lunch Program when President Harry S. Truman was trying to prop up food prices by providing meals to school children.
In recent years, the program has been adjusted for each state’s poverty level. The program is especially important to children of color. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said 70% of the school lunch program participants are children of color, most notably Native American and Alaska Natives.
Feed the Children reports that one in every five children in the U.S. Lives with food insecurity, and 16.9% live in poverty. Little to no food can lead to problems in growth, asthma and anemia plus behavioral problems in young children. Free lunches help these children survive.
Much of American politics are based on the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremey Bentham, which dictates one should do that which does the most good for the most people. Project 2025 denies that, instead reverting to the “divine right of kings” philosophy of Authoritarianism.
If enacted, Project 2025 would lead America back to the “divine right of kings” philosophy, which was justifiably abandoned in 1689, and not just in education but also in health care, the mandates for many government agencies and so much more.
America is a democracy, there is no reason why it should return to the philosophy of kings. If, indeed, the “most good for the most people” philosophy and democracy are to be kept, quality education is necessary. That often requires federal help for poor states.
Tallent was a journalism faculty member at the University of Idaho for 13 years before her retirement in 2019. She is of Cherokee descent and is a member of both the Indigenous Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. She also writes for FaVS (Faith and Values) News.
