In a recent decision, a federal judge struck down a bill advanced by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry. The bill sought to mandate the Ten Commandments on all public school walls.
Landry justified the move as a gesture of historical relevance, attempting to cast the Ten Commandments as the foundational text upon which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were built. There’s a kernel of truth to the argument—certain Judeo-Christian ideas found their way into early American legal principles. But anyone paying attention can see the troubling implications of such a mandate: introducing explicitly religious text into public schools walks a fine line, and in this case, crosses it. It’s an ironic assault on the very principle that the First Amendment seeks to uphold—the separation of church and state.
President-elect Donald Trump, on the cusp of his return to the Oval Office, has once again signaled his desire to dismantle the Department of Education—a radical idea in conservative politics. Ronald Reagan floated a similar notion in the late eighties, and Bob Dole took up the torch in his 1996 campaign against Bill Clinton. Each effort failed to gain traction—but the fact that this idea keeps surfacing is revealing.
These calls to eliminate the Department of Education are often couched in the language of fiscal responsibility, framed as a quest to cut “needless” government spending. However, Trump’s intentions, and those of the broader conservative movement, seem to reach beyond budgetary concerns. Over the past decade, the right has cast education—particularly higher education—as a pernicious force, a “liberal indoctrination” factory. The attacks have intensified, emboldened by lawmakers like Jeff Landry, who attempted to enforce the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools under the guise of historical relevance. Such moves carry more than a hint of political and religious indoctrination, and they suggest an even more ambitious agenda.
As Trump prepares to assume power again, this antagonism toward education might only deepen. With the wind at their backs, conservative lawmakers may feel emboldened to chip away at the bedrock of public education, undermining one of the country’s most vital institutions. What we’re seeing now is not merely a debate over federal spending or curriculum choices but a struggle over the future of a well-informed citizenry. The impulse to dismantle educational institutions, one department at a time, poses a threat to the principles of a democratic society.
Education has long been the natural adversary of authoritarianism. A well-educated electorate is a force that resists manipulation; it’s an electorate that understands its interests and will not easily be led to vote against them. It is, perhaps, for this reason that Republicans today seem so keen to undermine the foundations of public education, or else to reshape it in ways that align with a conservative worldview. We’ve seen this impulse take shape most recently in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has championed a “neutral” approach to teaching slavery—a concept so vague and troubling that it leaves one wondering what historical truth, if any, might survive such a rewrite.
The trend is unmistakable: education, traditionally tasked with cultivating critical thinking and preparing students to help build a more just world, is now threatened by forces intent on dulling its edge. The goal seems to be to keep the electorate uncritical enough to maintain a political order that benefits figures like Trump.
Eliminating the Department of Education is, of course, unlikely to happen. Even if the Republican-led Congress were to pass a bill dismantling it, they’d need a 60-vote majority in the Senate, which they simply don’t have. Besides, the department’s essential functions would almost certainly be absorbed by other agencies such as the department of health, as it was before the creation of the department of education, likely sustaining much of its work under different names. Yet, the point is not the logistics of abolishing the Department of Education; the point is what such a desire reveals about the state of American conservatism. It speaks to a deep and growing hostility toward an educated public—an aversion to the very thing that keeps authoritarian impulses in check.
Education in America’s red states has struggled for years, and Louisiana in particular has recently found itself at the very bottom of national rankings. The causes behind this are intricate, rooted in economic disparity, insufficient investment, and systemic neglect. The problem is certainly not that students are unfamiliar with the Ten Commandments.
What Louisiana—and many states like it—needs is not a religious agenda in the classroom but robust educational support. We need greater funding for our public schools, which the Department of Education helps provide; we need higher pay for our teachers, who are often forced to choose between their profession and their livelihood. Above all, we need citizens to stand against the relentless assaults on our already fragile education system, to push back against the distractions and distortions that seek to weaken it. At stake is the future, the chance to build a better, more informed tomorrow.
