Republicans are winning governorships and may soon flip Congress by pitching intolerance, purging textbooks that detail our racial history and maligning youths deemed different.
It’s an odd turn for Democrats, a party rarely so reticent when it comes to trumpeting the long-held values that underlie public schools, notably the respect for human difference, be it defined by cultural heritage, language or gender.
Today, the hot button issue of education — so viscerally felt by local parents struggling over how to best raise their children — has been seized by the political right. But, historically, politicians from both sides of the aisle have long pressed righteous messages about the role of public schools. For centuries, the institution of public schooling has offered a stage upon which civic leaders proclaim how children should behave and the values teachers ought to uphold.
Civic leaders in the 19th century required students to place their toes on a line etched across the classroom floor as they recited facts and Scripture, enforcing what they deemed proper Protestant behavior. Standard textbooks offered Christian prayers, replete with moral lessons of virtue and piety, advanced by education progressives of that time.
Such religious ideas continued to shape schooling in the 20th century. Those seeking to modernize Los Angeles in the early-20th century expelled Molokan girls for wearing headscarves at school, a sign of modesty dear to Russian immigrant parents.
This messaging — that schools served as the institution for embedding American values in the next generation — helped justify liberal efforts to invest in public schools. In the depths of economic depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed Congress to renovate schools and deliver emergency pay for teachers, even advocating equal funding across communities.
Three decades later, Lyndon B. Johnson created Head Start preschools, sparking federal commitment to early learning through public education. Signing the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965, on Palm Sunday, Johnson said, “My minister assured me that the Lord’s day will not be violated by making into law a measure which will bring mental and moral benefits to millions of our young people.”
But schools became a priority for conservatives, too. Ronald Reagan excelled in tying moral messages to school reform proposals. As governor of California, he posed as the avuncular moral sage, railing against student protesters and saying he would “clean up the mess at Berkeley.” Reagan claimed that a “morality and decency gap” had beset college campuses like University of California, Berkeley. It was time to impose a code of conduct for faculty members to “force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency.”
Reagan campaigned in 1980 against integrating schools, then pitched vouchers and tax credits for evangelicals and well-off parents opting for religious or all-White schools. “From the early days of the colonies, prayer in school was practiced and revered as an important tradition,” Reagan claimed, “considered a natural expression of our religious freedom.”
But sinking in the polls amid a deepening recession in 1983, Reagan flipped on education. He rejected the politics of stoking division over the nation’s schools and instead embraced “A Nation at Risk,” a White House report insisting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens the very future as a Nation.” Reagan fused the shared moral imperative of defending our nation from foreign competition with the urgency of lifting educational quality. Just like Roosevelt and Johnson before him, Reagan aimed to rally voters behind improving schools in unifying harmony.
In 1989, the newly elected Republican president, George H.W. Bush, again looked to schools to achieve national unity. He convened 49 of the nation’s governors in Charlottesville and embraced ambitious and unprecedented national goals for schools: eliminating illiteracy, expanding preschool and holding teachers responsible for student achievement.
Nudging Bush toward national activism was Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. As chair of the National Governors Association, Clinton pushed Bush to endorse six unprecedented national goals for education, including extending pre-K to more families and becoming first in the world in math achievement. (The United States made great progress on the first, not so much on the second.)
When Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993, he and his fellow “New Democrats” seized the school reform messaging, trumpeting traditional ideas of “personal responsibility.” This became Clinton’s clarion call, as his administration sought to hold teachers accountable in delivering equitable results for children and families.
Clinton urged school uniforms for students nationwide, “so teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets.” Seeking to echo voter worries over the amoral character of secular schools, Clinton ratcheted up his moral signals. “Schoolrooms will be more orderly, more disciplined,” he said.
Much of Clinton’s moral messaging was attacked by those on the left who preferred tolerance and cultural diversity, rather than centralized moralizing. But Clinton was reading public opinion. He saw a way to generate support for schools by highlighting their moral value and rigorous curriculum.
Presidential activism on school reform culminated in 2001, when Bush’s son, President George W. Bush, supported No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan federal effort that enlisted governors to upgrade schools. Bush promoted a gentler conservatism, seeking to lift schools for all families, not set enclaves against one another. It was moral virtue with a dose of political tactic: higher-quality schools would serve all families, not a select few.
In short, efforts to elevate public education and signal the unifying force of common schools need not be partisan. Similar initiatives took place on the state level during the 1990s and 2000s. Take Roy Romer, the former Colorado governor and Clinton contemporary, who became superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2000.
Romer did not fall victim to division around issues of charter schools, nor did he exploit cultural or racial differences. Rather, he rallied around the common good: more effective schools that lifted all children. And it worked, as voters approved billions of dollars in new school revenue, financing the construction of 130 new school facilities, from early-learning centers to small high schools. Under his leadership, teachers moved to focus on core reading skills for all children.
Romer didn’t get sidetracked by the moral suasion of any single group or issue that would divide civic activists. Rather he pressed policies that unified Angelenos: taking up Clinton’s earlier call for universal pre-K and raising the early literacy of all children. Over the next two decades, he watched pupil achievement climb, as traced by federal assessments.
Democrats — searching for a morally resonant center — can learn from this history. President Biden need not descend into the right’s ugly attempt to divide America and denigrate children, all the while overriding the authority of families and local school boards. After all, parents have long-embraced public education, nearly three-fourths report they are “completely” or “somewhat satisfied” with their nearby schools.
If anything, Republicans’ sharply divisive rhetoric on schools — aimed at their base of Christian conservatives — offers an opportunity. Biden can regain Democrats’ traditional advantage on public schooling by coupling investment and high quality education with Clinton’s recognition that schools also serve as moral laboratories. Historically, this strategy has provided an effective political message — one that triumphs over more divisive messages that echo intolerance among ultraconservatives.
