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Notes -
Of course. Education as a public good is…like, part of our national mythos. Didn’t you watch Schoolhouse Rock as a kid?
Some of this is a legacy of our early years, which were unusually literate, usually for Puritan reasons. That was propagated through the Laura Ingalls Wilder tradition and on to modern children’s literature. There’s also the influence of Prussian and British schooling. And all this is before the modern Civil Rights movement, which was defined by educational policy.
What I’m getting at is that it ain’t just Democrats. No Child Left Behind was passed in 2002. Before that, students were the first line in the War on Drugs. The GI bill has shaped American families since WWII. Prior to 2020, antivaxxers were best known for bringing back measles in the public school system. A significant fraction of the middle class will choose their home to get a better-rated school district.
Education is one of the legs of the stereotypical American Dream. Is it any surprise that the major political parties act accordingly?
It's the same in most of the west though. In fact, if anything the US is more laissez-faire than many other western countries in respect to education - homeschooling is literally illegal in mine, for example.
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