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What's the Big Idea?
Jennifer Berkshire on "The Education Wars"
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In which Dan talks with education thinker and writer Jennifer Berkshire. Jennifer is the co-author of the recent release The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual and co-host of the outstanding podcast Have You Heard? Dan and Jennifer talk about some of the biggest issues facing education in 2025, namely the culture wars, local activism, and the snake oil salesman of educational technology.
As always, I welcome comments and questions on Bluesky (@dankearney) and Instagram (@_dankearney_)
Mentioned in the episode:
Have You Heard? - a podcast by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider
The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider
Alpha Schools
Private school vouchers are now law in Texas from the Texas Tribune
The Wire, a television show by David Simon
Music by Lakey Inspired
This is really about are we going to live in a system where I have to care about any kid besides my own? And I was like, wow, that, you know, I had not thought about it in those terms before, but that's really what it is. And that that you have, you know, you have powerful interests that are pushing us in a direction where the answer to that question is no.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot going on in education right now. Nothing new, I guess, but it does feel a bit busier, or I suppose more precarious and outrageous than ever. This goes for the whole world, right? I heard Isaac Saul on the Great Tangle podcast talking recently about how people are just tuning out, turning off the news because it's all becoming just a bit too much. If you're tuning back in, or you never left, and you're looking to get your feet under you in the education world, a great place to start is this podcast. Okay. I actually was going to say the podcast Have You Heard. It's hosted by educational thinker and writer Jennifer Berkshire, and it's great. So accessible and perfectly contextualized. So as we head into another school year, I thought it would be fitting to invite Jennifer on to talk about some of the biggest issues facing education in 2025. Namely, the culture wars. They're back, or they never left, local activism, and the snake oil salesman of educational technology. Jennifer is the co-author of the recent release, The Education Wars, a Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual. Once you're done listening to this interview, go check out Have You Heard. There are so many fascinating topics on that show. All right. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_00I'm coming to you from Gloucester, Massachusetts, America's oldest seaport. And I chronicle the intersections of education and politics, which means that I am quite busy right now.
SPEAKER_01You are very busy right now. Um thanks so much for taking the time. You know, there I want to talk about your podcast and your book and everything that's going on in this country. Well, maybe not everything. We don't have that much time. Um, it's interesting. I was thinking about how despite how personal education is to everybody, everyone in this country has a deep personal connection to education. There are surprisingly few accessible education podcasts out there. And this is one thing I really admire about have you heard your podcast? Is that it really is an education podcast for people that just live their lives in America, not somebody that has to be deeply uh entrenched in education.
SPEAKER_00That's that's so nice of you to say because I think you're absolutely right. Every once in a while I'll get an alert that we've, you know, like appeared on some list of you know the top education podcasts. Usually there's, you know, it's some like very specific subcategory, and then I'll look at the list and you know, I don't recognize any of the names, and most of them are kind of hostile to public education, right? That they are waving a flag either for a particular approach or a particular product. But I just I think you're right that given that you know it's an enormous institution that touches everyone, it's kind of amazing at how hard it is to find people to just tell you about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I saw someone recently celebrating being named one of the top 100 education policy podcasts. And I just thought there are a hundred education policy podcasts.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And, you know, and I I really only heard of like three of them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But I think it's a I think you make a good point though, the about the hostility that there's just a whole world of online ism, um, especially on the right, I think maybe more than the left, that's just hostile to all things public. And so that podcasting is just an easy avenue to get in there and have your voice heard.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think ever it doesn't everyone have a podcast now. Look at us. You and I both have podcasts.
SPEAKER_01Look at us, exactly. Not criticizing anyone for having a podcast. I wonder though, I mean, you just you're at 200 episodes now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really amazing that it's been it's been that long. It's it dates back to, if you can believe it, 2015. So it's been going on for 10 years. How is that even possible?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, congratulations. Can you remember back, can you remember back that far to the early days, what what motivated you to start the podcast and how you sort of put it together initially?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it started as something completely different, which is, you know, I wrote a popular blog about the excesses of education reform called EduShyster. And it started out as an anonymous blog. And then over time, you know, I first I came out as myself, and then it, you know, I would I used humor to poke fun at what I thought was um a kind of obliviousness to political reality, but also the overselling of particular approaches, right? That everybody was supposed to get on board with this thing that was gonna make the test scores go up, up, and up. And if you questioned it in any way, then you hated kids and not just not just any kids, but kids of color in particular. And so I I wrote this, I would make fun of this on my blog. And then over time it morphed into something more serious. And I started traveling around the country, I would raise money, and you know, I would go like to New Orleans and interview people, and one of my specialties became that you know, I would always try to seek out people I'd had deep disagreements with and talk to them. And so the original idea was, well, what if you turned that concept into a podcast? Wouldn't that be great? And it never didn't quite happen. I I started the podcast with a guy who used to work for the National Office of Teach for America. And so we did um, I don't even think it was 10 episodes together. It was some small number of episodes, and they were very short. Um, but was great, what was great about him was that he knew how to raise money. And so before we even started, we had raised this pool of money that enabled me to do some traveling, to buy some equipment. And then that really sort of laid the groundwork when he got bored quite early on. I don't want to make a hurtful joke about Teach for America. Um, and I I needed somebody new to join me. Um, you know, like there was already kind of a structure in place, and there was some funding to pay a producer, so it all worked out, and I'm really grateful to to Aaron French, who was my Teach for America friend, for helping get it off the ground.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Um yeah, it's really cool. Um, I love, I particularly like the way you structure the podcast. I mean, it's not just sort of a QA, like what I'm doing here, basically. You have a really interesting narrative thread with themes, and it's very well done.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. And part, you know, part of that is like learning over time what our strengths and weaknesses were. And so originally, you know, Jack and I would interview people together from his kitchen table in Somerville, Massachusetts. Every once in a while he would come up to where I live, but that was very rarely. And then, you know, like because he's an academic, his questions take a really long time to ask. And so then I started thinking, you know, like it's it's a shame to waste this, right? Like Jack's strength is not in asking the question, it's in what goes into the question. So what if we made asking the question more efficient, but then, you know, like we'll bring him back in in the middle of the episode, and then he gets to hold forth. And so over time, I feel like we've settled on a structure that makes everyone happy. But where there's deep disagreement is half of the listening audience feels like I am just a relentless bully of Jack Schneider, and the other half finds it infuriating the way that he constantly undercuts me. And I've been in the room with people who who hold those two views with equal vehemence. Wow.
SPEAKER_01But you've really accomplished something then.
SPEAKER_00I think so.
SPEAKER_01I mean, being able to have two distinct characters on the podcast is great. I mean, it really the the creative tension is palpable. I I uh back back to your original blog um that you were writing on 10 years ago. I mean, I've just been reading about uh just in the past week, Google pushing out all these AI tools into their education suite, Google Classrooms particular, that so many teachers use. And and people who sort of, oh this is amazing, this changes everything. I can't wait to use this, and then other people saying, like, hold on a second here. They pushed it out, it's just on by default.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01One person writing, maybe we should think before we launch. Why is education so susceptible to these kinds of fixes? You talked about the 1825 project in a recent episode, this idea that we've we've always had quick fixes in education. Why is education so uh vulnerable to this kind of thinking?
SPEAKER_00So that 1825, Project 1825 episode was a conversation with education historian historian Adam Latz, who's really one of my favorites. And he writes about the very first attempt to sell a silver bullet. And the idea was that the kids were gonna teach themselves, and that that was how you would save money, and there you have it right there, right? That everyone knows that you know there's really no replacement for the thing that costs the most, which is labor. But again and again and again, you see people fall for some shortcut around that. And and and so what's amazing, and we just did an episode about AI, and I think people who have been poking holes in the ed tech sales pitch for quite some time now cannot believe that you know the very same arguments are being rolled out again, only attached to a different set of products. And that should be your big red flag there, and that we can roll back all the way, you know, back to 1825 and see this happen again. Um, a couple of years ago, we did an episode with historian Larry Cuban about AI, and I spent an unbelievable amount of time creating an AI clone of Jack's voice. And just so that I could make it say something far-fetched about how the invention of the overhead projector had revolutionized K-12 education.
SPEAKER_01AI is an interesting one. I mean, I've I'm quite interested in it myself and kind of play around with it, but it it feels like on the one hand, we're being told this will change everything. It's this it's the biggest thing ever to come to in many things in life, education in particular. But then also on the other hand, we also should just dive in as quickly as we can. You'd think if it was that revolutionary and big, we caution would be a better mindset if it's really going to change everything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, I got uh three different people this morning sent me despairing messages and a link to a New York Times story about Bill Gates and OpenAI going all in on teacher training and you know, and seeing the parallels of the role that Gates played starting in 2010, right? And again, no lessons have been learned. And I think that so much of this has to do with the fact that the people who are the most intent on disrupting K-12 education, and I'm using air quotes to say disrupting, are the ones who know the least about it. And so they I'm I'm shocked right now that you have people making similar arguments that we heard during the the Gates Common Core era, and they don't know anything about it, right? It's it's literally, it was a decade ago. It's been completely memory-holed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think they're benefiting from the fact that in in our current media and social media environment, we have very short memories. And so we just these ideas can be recycled pretty quickly, actually. People just forget, like, oh, that was that was ancient history. No, that was actually just 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, but there's schools, you know, this uh alpha school project, right? They're just with no teachers, it's just like AI. Um, and I saw somebody, some hype man for this, not that school, but for this idea saying, you know, hey, if you're a teacher, if you're an administrator, how is your school going to compete with this school? And it's like, well, now you've hit on it. Now you've really hit on the word compete. You've really got to the unintentionally got cut to the core of what's going on here. This competitive mindset, um, market-based mindset around education, as I know you and Jack have talked about extensively.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and you have to put what's happening with AI and the relentless sales pitch that you know we're going to personalize it by attaching every kid to a chat bot, right? You've got to connect that with what's happening in the larger political context, right? That that right now, at this very moment, you know, you have school districts across the country that are reeling from the news that the Trump administration is withholding $7 billion in funding, right? And so that we are going to be seeing fiscal fallout from whether it's federal cuts or states having to figure out how do they balance um rapidly growing private school voucher programs with their public school funding, um, uh even as they've cut revenue. And so the appeal of something that promises to do teaching for very little or nothing, you can imagine why that would speak to a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Yeah, and we're recording this less than a week after the pass of passage of that massive legislation, whatever you want to call it, the beautiful bill. And I it has some really stark impacts on education. I mean, one that really jumped out to me was the the way that the Medicaid cuts impact Title I schools. I no, I didn't realize how much schools receive their health, uh, mental health, food programs through Medicaid.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And, you know, so one one of my pet peeves about the way that education gets covered is that people tend to be focused on the school and what's happening in the school, but not paying attention to the larger political context around it. And that's such a great example. So you have schools that are dependent on Medicaid funding, but now part of what the bill does is that it shifts the burden of cost onto states. And so states are now going to have to decide: are we going to continue to ensure our neediest residents, or does something else have to give? And what do you think is the largest budget item in virtually every state? It's K-12 education.
SPEAKER_01And uh it's like anywhere state budgets are stretched, they're gonna look to save money. Silver bullets often are about saving money.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_01Do you think I I I wonder this when I hear politicians and officials talking about things like same-sex marriage and abortion? And when it comes to attacks on public education and excuses for making cuts, how much of it do you think is genuine? And how much of it is just cynicism and opportunism? I I was always curious when I see talking heads on TV railing against something in the culture wars. And I does this person actually care, or is this just political cynicism?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that I think that's such a good question. And I really felt like um in Texas, for example, where the governor has spent, you know, most of the last year plus um traveling the state selling his controversial voucher program. I really felt like he was leaning into the culture wars in the most cynical way possible, right? That arguing that, you know, a rising tide of transgenderism was threatening to swamp the Texas K-12 public school system. Um, and then as things were looking iffy towards the end of the legislative session, he returns to the argument about students coming to school dressed in as furries and using litter boxes. And how cynical do you have to be uh to do that? But then, you know, you also hear it's it's just it feels almost like um like uh it's just an automatic register for politicians, right? The kind of default about complaining about schools. Because again, we can go back to really the earliest days of of public schools. You can go back to to Massachusetts when they first required schools, uh really uh students to start going to school so that they'd be able to read the Bible and keep the devil at bay, right? Like the minute that happens, the minute that's when you start to hear politicians complaining about the quality of the schools. And I think you always from that point on you see cynicism woven together with opportunism, woven together with some kind of authentic concern, and that gets repeated for the next we're now on to 400 years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the the culture wars, your your book is called The Education Wars. And I want to talk about that. But it I when I saw the title, and I it reminded me of um a a line from one of my favorite shows with the wire. I don't know if you ever saw that show.
SPEAKER_00It was that's so it's I like a nice story. That was a little too grim for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it was a little grim, but but there's a line in that in that series. There's two police officers talking, they're I don't know, at stakeout or something, and and one of them makes a reference to the drug, the war on drugs. And the other one says, you can't call this a war. Wars end. And I wonder, you know, with the education wars, the culture wars, do they ever end, or we is this just you know, baked into who we are, the the battle over education?
SPEAKER_00It really is amazing when you go back through history and you see the same issues flaring up again and again and again. And so just recently we had the Supreme Court decision where the Supreme Court sided with uh conservative parents who wanted to be able to opt their kids out uh from public school teaching regarding these were in particular, these were LGBTQ themed lessons, but the the Supreme Court decision is basically giving parents the right to opt their kids out of anything that might conceivably undercut their religious beliefs. And I saw somebody online asking, you know, like, oh, can you imagine the sorts of things that parents are going to raise as a result of this ruling? And I was like, well, of course I can because, you know, like we have lived through this again and again. Um, in the 1990s, when there was a big parent rights flare-up, parents in New Hampshire were outraged about an assignment that asks students to keep a diary. Um, because again and again there's this worry that somehow teachers are getting access to their kids' innermost thoughts, and they're going to use that to manipulate kids. Or, you know, like again and again, you see parents outraged over schools administering surveys. Um, one of the first things that the Trump administration did was axe those surveys, right? And because again, like these are this is the school trying to peer into the private realm of the family. And so the issues themselves change depending on what else we're fighting about at the time. But you're absolutely right. The stuff, you know, like it flares up, it dies down, but education wars is not a good way to describe it because that assumes that there's some end and there is not.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm not criticizing the title of the book. I just thought it all. The book is called The Education Wars, a Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual, uh, co-written by you and Jack. How did you decide to write this book? Book you've described as a very uh practical, portable book. Uh, how did you decide to uh to to to put this together?
SPEAKER_00We had not intended to write a book after we wrote the last one, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door. I really felt like we had said everything we had to say. And then, you know, once again, we found ourselves in this very intense situation where not only were the culture wars back, but they were being linked to a push for school privatization that just felt more intense than what we had seen before. And I knew from my conversations with people in communities around the country that they always felt like they were alone in this. And so the idea was really simple to just that Jack would bring the historical perspective, and then I would pull in my interviews with people from around the country, including conversations from in the podcast, and that that would uh better prepare people to withstand what they were up against and and hopefully help them see that they weren't alone. And and so what's been great is that you know, like I I have gotten to travel, I think last count it was something like 15 states. Um I am uh next I'm about to make my very first trip to South Dakota. Oh, exactly. And and the the reaction, like it the book did not take the world by storm in the sense that you know it became like a uh media-driven book phenomenon. But to the extent that it it was received with you know great appreciation by the grassroots, I would say that it it absolutely accomplished what we hoped it would.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up grassroots because I think your book makes this connection to local, the local in a way that we just often lose sight of in our media saturated. You know, Jess Piper from Missouri's in there and and talking about, you know, the people she talks to in her rural communities, they're not railing about the issues that you hear on Fox News or on X. They're talking about real things facing their kids at school. And I wonder how you are kind of thinking about that disconnect between what we're fed at the national level and what people are actually living at the local level.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know, we're um we have an episode coming out this week about local democracy, and that's a theme that comes up again and again that, you know, like as tense as a school board meeting can be right now, being forced to be in a space with your neighbors humanizes people in a way that the national discourse really works against. And I think one thing that I have taken really like I found reassuring over the last couple of election cycles is that those attempts to nationalize local elections around school culture war issues have really been falling flat. Um, so just recently there were municipal elections in Texas, and it's astonishing to look at the results and see, wow, in virtually every single community, the bomb throwers, the folks that were running on Fox News sound bites, they lost. And they lost because people who live in the communities, you know, whether they consider themselves Democrat or Republican, have had it with that. And so I think that those local lessons are so important. And, you know, like I just I think we can't do enough to remind people of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I certainly did not mean to imply that there aren't those bomb throwers at the local level. Uh, there are, I I um I was talking uh recently with Jesse Hegopian, and he's an educator in Seattle, you know. He um and he's just done some incredible work. But he made a really good point that for so many of these groups on the right, whether they're local groups or these more nationalized groups like no left turn education, they will advocate for things like parent rights or activism for some people. They mean it for some people, they don't mean it for everybody.
SPEAKER_00Correct. Yeah, and I think that that's I think that's a really important point and one that we really tried to get explain in our in our book, that you know, that that's like that's such powerful rhetoric. Um, but if you actually look at what they're calling for, but also how they relate to these larger trends that we're seeing around quote unquote uh religious freedom, right? And that basically you use religion to undercut the rights of all the other parents. And so the other thing that we really wanted to use the book to help people with was to see how the fights we're having right now over schools and what's taught and how it's taught, how those relate to these larger currents.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you've talked about how that chapter in the book has been sort of is resonated in a way maybe you didn't expect uh with people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I think to a lot of people that's kind of a mystery, that question of what does religious freedom have to do with all of this? And and I think for my insights um for this, Jack's insights always come from history, which is great because any question you can ask him, have we ever seen this before? And yes, his answer will be quite long, but he'll be able to explain that in fact we have seen this before and he'll tell us how it ended. But I was looking around at the states that are near me, New Hampshire and Vermont in particular, and that how these groups are seeing two, three, and four lawsuits ahead to start to make the case that, you know, the the state, you know, that uh those are both rural states where the state funds private schools because there are so many communities that aren't big enough to be able to sustain their own public schools. And so you start to see the lawsuits line up, that the states first they have to fund religious private education, and then that the religious schools have to be able to discriminate as part of their religious identity, and that the ultimate goal is to force these states to get rid of their, you know, basically their constitutional uh dictates around human rights, right? To just use that language to narrow the definition of who has rights and how those rights get enforced, were there any of all the people you spoke with in writing the book, were there any that surprised you?
SPEAKER_01Was there any stories or quotes or individuals you interacted with that really sort of uh maybe zagged to your zig or made you think in a different way?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say the interview that I did with Beth Lewis, who runs the group Save Our Schools in Arizona. And and she, you know, the situation is in Arizona is so crazy because they were the first state to enact universal school vouchers. The program now costs a billion dollars a year, and it's starting to affect the state's ability not just to pay for public schools, but all sorts of programs. Like they had to uh they had to end uh an investment in water infrastructure because they couldn't afford to pay for that and to pay for for vouchers. And and they have a program where basically the the parent gets the money and then decides, you know, how they want to spend it and what they want to call education. And so so Beth, you know, sort of stepped back from the craziness that is Arizona and said, you know, this is really about are we gonna live in a system where I have to care about any kid besides my own? And I was like, wow, that, you know, I I had not thought about it in those terms before, but that's really what it is. And that that you have, you know, you have powerful interests that are pushing us in a direction where the answer to that question is no, you are under no obligation to care about anyone. And think about how that relates to America First, for example, right? That we're living through a moment where the most powerful people in the country are saying, no, you're not under any obligation to care about anyone else anywhere in the world except for Israel. And um uh, but uh, but that that think about how neatly that maps on to education and this wild push that we're seeing now to redefine schooling, not just in free market terms, but in hyper-individual terms. That's a train going by.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, nice. I love it. Brings me back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's headed right to Beverly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, the uh art school there. That's where my uncle Montsourage. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that stops where my uncle lives right there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, it it's it's you know, our social media in particular is supposed to like bring us together, but it in a lot of ways it atomizes and makes us more like me, me, me, me. Everything you see is about, you know. Um interests, money, big money. And you've talked poking with Jack about this. The the this link between maybe local organizations or local concerns, but then how money distorts and influences and amplifies certain things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question because I think that those of us who are loud defenders of public education are we often over-emphasize the extent to which everything that happens is a result of the influence of money. Right. And so I see all these people, they're big, you know, dot connectors, right? That they have those those little sister organizational charts showing you like this person's connected to this person, right? They're taking money from gates, they're taking money from, and that that can um one, people find it really insulting when you tell them that their, you know, their position is a result of money. Um, and um, and it can end up ignoring other things that are important as well, like what we were just talking about, right? An ideological vision of the world where you believe that that we shouldn't rely on the state to take care of everybody because churches should do it. But I think what's been really interesting is that, you know, because we have this situation where the wealthiest people in the country, people like a Betsy DeVos or a Jeff Yass in Pennsylvania, because their single top prior policy priority is school vouchers, we see them playing this corrosive role at the state level and that all sorts of people reacting to that in real time. And so I spent so much time this spring interviewing conservatives in Texas who were furious, not just about school vouchers, but the way that big money was used to knock out uh representatives who were anti-vouchers, the way they felt like their voices were being lost or silenced because the you know, the opinion of Jeff Yass mattered so much more. And at the end of the legislative session, somebody um in the legislature had a tweet that said, you know, congratulations to the conservative grassroots. And somebody responded, I think you mean the yass roots.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I could see that. I mean, in it in it, and it there is a limit to the the the to the persuasive powers of money. You know, I I think Andrew Cuomo just proved that in New York's mayor race, right? Just because you have the money and even the the name and the titles and the experience doesn't mean anything um necessarily, um, particularly when I think there is true grassroots energy.
SPEAKER_00So and I think that's so true. And I and and I'm always gonna be looking for examples of where our rigid red-blue lines start to break down. And I thought that that was so interesting that you had these conservative activists in places like Tennessee and Texas who were, you know, who were really opposed to school vouchers in large part because they saw it as a billionaire. They would call it a billionaire globalist scam. And I thought, wow, this is really interesting. I have to know more because I am not seeing this story told virtually anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01Is that do you think some of that is just I mean, there there is money out there being spent to try to influence, but you know, to your point about the dot connectors, is it is is do we just love that story as humans is like the little bit of like conspiracy theory almost in a way? Like, I mean, I kind of get into that. I'm like, oh wow, no, they're they funded that movement in Virginia or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. It's do your own research, education edition. And boy, you know, did I do a lot of that in my in my blogging days. And and uh um and and I think it's really important. I I really appreciate the people who do that work, right? Like we and and and a publication like ProPublico, right? They they they've done they've done uh a great job, but don't don't stop there, right? Keep going. Because I think what's turning out to be really important in the second Trump administration is understanding the ideas that are animating them and who are the voices that that are impacting the discussion, because it's not just money, right? It's also the idea that we've gone too far in trying to make the country more equal. And that just looking at who's writing the checks won't help you understand the the ideological stakes there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Trump is, I mean, in education, it's it's it's he's particularly dangerous because he doesn't have any ideas himself. He does, I don't think he cares, right? So these other voices, as you say, are filling the vacuum and pushing, you know, who knows what agenda. But so you have those voices who are just going to push hardcore ideological beliefs. So where does the bridge building come from, do you think? How do we how do we overcome that? And you know, to go back to Jess Piper and these local communities where people can come together, school boards, as you said, where else can and how else can bridge building happen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I think it's really important that everything that the Trump administration is trying to do, if you look at at how his various policy agenda items are polling, as soon as it gets to education, it's always the least popular. You know, that like whether we're talking about immigration and deportations, get it anywhere near a school, and people are wildly opposed to it. That's important. Um, uh cutting funds to public schools. That that the support for that is in the like something like 12% of people support that. That's important because it means that we can start to build connections between people who maybe, you know, like they get really worked up about the latest outrage. But now, now we're talking about cuts to what their school offers. And we just, you know, we saw this in a very vivid demonstration of this in Florida this spring. So Florida now has an enormous voucher program, four billion dollars, and they've got a problem, right? They still they're gonna fund an unregulated voucher program, but they've also got a public school system that the vast majority of kids are still in. And so the legislature says, you know what, we're we'll just we'll cut funds to advance placement, career and technical education, and IB programs. Well, how do you think that went over? It went over really badly, and it didn't matter whether people in those communities had voted for Trump, which an awful lot of them did, and how they feel about Ron DeSantis. They do not support this agenda at the level of their own schools. And I think, you know, like to the extent that we're able to build a movement to push back against some of this awfulness, that's where it's gonna start.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it reminds me of long time polls, and this this is where we need Jack to fill us in.
SPEAKER_00But oh yeah, I know where this is headed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the difference between how do you feel about education and how to feel about your own school, right? And so there's like there's a huge gap because you know you can be you can have all kinds of theories and you can be propagandized to think away nationally, but when it comes to your own school and your own child, no, there's no there's no changing your you know what you see, what you experience, that's that's what you believe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that really is his one of his favorite things to talk about. Like he he works that poll into any conversation, like educated real education related or not.
SPEAKER_01But it's a great, I mean, that's one of the best. I I've I've loved that that data point for years because it helps explain so much about our deep personal beliefs and experiences with school. We all have it, and then it becomes you know politicized, but you know, you can politicize things that people are only vaguely or tangentially um you know have a connection to, but education's not one at a local level. All right, Jennifer, thank you so much. Um, I did want to ask though, to wrap up about coming back to the podcast. Yeah. Have you heard? I love this podcast so much. It is there an episode in your catalog of 200 plus episodes. Is there an episode that really um that you cherish more than others, or one that you, when you think about the show, that's the one that comes to mind first?
SPEAKER_00You know, I'm I I have exactly the one, but I'm just I just uh oh yes, okay. No, I couldn't remember what it was called. Um, so there's one that I feel like I'm always thinking about. And uh it was called The Damage Done. And it was with a young former teacher named Nora Delacore, who I just I love her, I think she's so smart. And she describes living through this transition during the Obama years when it was decided from on high that the best way to prepare kids for the careers of the future was to expose them to a lot of informational texts, short passages, and then test them on this. And she describes, you know, like watching the fallout from that in the lives of her own students. And then she connects that to, I thought very smartly, to things like mental health problems, that the just this sort of lack of any sense that kids have of being part of something bigger. And and you know, this she uh she taught in a uh uh school in Springfield, Mass for kids, a lot of whom were in the juvenile justice system, and the the profound impact that Macbeth had on them, and that that they didn't have enough time in the the they don't have semesters in the school year to finish the play. Yeah, didn't they?
SPEAKER_01They ended up like stopping the school. Yes, they had right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00They ended up stopping. So that that had a real impact on me. I still think about that one a lot. And then um, there's one I'm working on right now. I teach inside a Massachusetts prison, and one of my great frustrations is that there's no recording in the prison. And so there's no way for me to convey how amazing this is. But Boston College, which runs the prison education program I'm part of, now has a growing cohort of students who've been released and are on campus. And so I'm working on an episode right now with them. And so you're gonna get to hear about how they perceive the difference between being in college on the inside and the outside, but also how do they perceive the traditional students? And I thought some of that was just really hilarious. Like they they show up on campus in the age of chat GPT and they're shocked.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. That that's what an admirable project you have, though, that um in teaching in prison.
SPEAKER_00It's it's really I really recommend it. If anyone, um, if anyone ever has the opportunity, like it, it is just it's such an amazing experience. And because it's kind of a tech-free zone, there's just a lot. They're really kind of like the last true students left, right? Like they're deeply engaged in the material, they're learning for the sake of learning, they're making sense of their own lives and educational experiences. And, you know, like they can't look at their phones because there aren't any.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Uh, Jennifer, thanks so much for taking the time to talk. You're such an interesting person. The podcast is incredible. Uh, the book's out, and um, I want to thank you for uh spending some time with me this summer. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jennifer Berkshare. If you did, you'll absolutely love have you heard. Uh, it's a really great podcast. Recent episodes included uh her work uh teaching in a prison, uh, the AI hype, and ethnic studies, and how effective it's been, and does that matter in today's hyperpolarized world? And uh, hope today's conversation just gave you uh something to think about, uh, some hope as we head into this new school year and all the attacks on education, the attacks in the media, the attacks in funding, and um staying rooted in what's going on, staying aware of how you can help, what you can do, uh is the first big step. Uh so I appreciate you listening. Go check out Jennifer's work, and uh, I'll see you back here on what's the big idea. Uh, if you're starting a new school year, I wish you the best of luck. I'm starting one here in Los Angeles. Uh, it's go time. So uh I wish you all uh a warm, welcoming, safe, uh, and uh meaningful school year.
