A recent poll out from the Wall Street Journal and NORC-University of Chicago gives a grim view of how Americans view their financial, cultural, and educational prospects, with results pointing to a “record-low” level of happiness. While many poll questions focus on the state of the economy, culture wars, and housing costs, there are also a number of questions on education that show, while we once viewed academic achievement as a path to prosperity, we’re far more bearish now.

Here are the results for the poll’s edu-centric questions:

• When asked, ‘how much confidence do you have in your local schools,” only 26% said “a great deal” and 30% said “some;” 33% said “very little” or “none at all.” 
• People were split on whether states should offer education vouchers to parents for private or parochial education: 34% “strongly/somewhat favor” the idea and 37% “strongly/somewhat oppose.”
• 56% of those polled think a college degree is “not worth the cost” because people often graduate without specific job skills and a large amount of debt to pay off. 

Take your pick of the numerous possible causes for our national ennui: political polarization, Covid-19, racism, inflation, climate change, gun violence, January 6th, social media, sky-high college fees.

Here’s another: I think our obsession with “wokeness,” especially as it expresses itself in K-12 education, is part of the problem. 

Yes, systemic racism permeates American society. Yes, non-cis people feel under attack, and rightfully so, especially as red states rush through farcical education bills under the code-name “Parents’ Rights” that promote intolerance and homophobia  Yes, firing a principal because a 6th-grade art teacher showed her students a photo of Michelangelo’s statue of David is batshit crazy. 

Yet think of all the DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) administrators hired over the past year with, as far as I’ve seen, no thought put into measuring effectiveness. It’s the worst kind of virtue-signaling, with no effort to, say, see if these hires result in more students of color taking AP and honor’s classes, or reduce incidents of racism, or retain more Black and Brown teachers. {Via a new paper from the Third Way: “Instead of hiring an ‘equity coordinator,’ how about giving your underserved students the highest performing teachers?”)

Or consider the priorities of the New Jersey’s Education Department which, in the wake of catastrophic learning loss, puts its efforts into lowering standards, warping the meaning of “equity” into “equal outcomes,” and bulldozing over parent objections to gender identity lessons.

You’re either woke or racist. There’s no middle ground.

So where do we go from here? 

A few weeks ago Nate Cohn at the New York Times tried to define what “woke” means and I think he’s onto something that is relevant not just to education politics but to our current mood. Cohn says there’s a split in the Democratic Party between what erstwhile-ascendent conservative Sarah Palin called  “that hopey, changey stuff” and what he calls the “new left,” which believes equal rights is a “veneer” that conceals and justifies structural inequality while “liberal beliefs impede efforts to challenge oppression.”

To the new left, fundamental changes in our racist, sexist, homophobic system must happen this minute—no incrementalism allowed— even to the point of suppressing speech if certain voices “would offend and thus could exclude marginalized communities.” If you love America, or even just like it, you’re a villainous traitor immune to the suffering of others. It’s all or nothing.

Yet in my experience all or nothing doesn’t work, in education reform or other attempts at systemic change. Instead, this approach usually backfires, ricocheting back into exactly what you were trying to escape, regardless of the urgency. Think about the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind, built on the myth that 100% of students could reach proficiency in academics, a stick with no carrot. Think about the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top, which threw data-driven teacher evaluations, Common Core learning standards, and aligned assessments at schools all at once instead of taking it one step at a time.

Both imploded (with the caveat that we still look closely at achievement gaps among different cohorts of students, even if we don’t implement effective interventions).

More recently, look at the “Parents Rights” movement. Two weeks ago a video of a confrontation between representatives of the National Parents Union and Moms for Liberty was making the rounds on social media. I can’t figure out exactly what they’re debating (those portraying this encounter like a rumble out of “West Side Story” are wrong) but it has to do with these red-state proposals that seem (to me) mostly concerned with student bathroom use and misconceptions about Critical Race Theory.

Let’s take a step back: who is really “against” parents’ rights? Um, no one. Andy Rotherham: “Seething contempt for the idea that parents should get a say in their children’s education is really not a great political strategy in a country with a lot of parents who vote.”

But that’s the pickle where the far left finds itself, advocating for erasing certain parent voices in order to attain swift change that, experience tells us, won’t endure. And it’s the same conundrum facing anti-abortion advocates who, in their determination to erase women’s medical autonomy, are building what today’s New York Times calls a “political cul-de-sac…a tightly confined absolutist position that has limited [Republican] options.”

In this sense, the far left and the far-right are mirrors of each other, both seeing the world as black and white (no pun intended) with absolutism the only acceptable path, whether this means policing art teachers’ slides or how doctors minister to patients. It’s all open borders vs. “build the wall,” drag queen read-alouds vs. harsh limits on gender freedom, irredeemable white folk society vs. racist dog whistles. But their m.o. is the same, isn’t it? Burn it all down!

I get it. I used to want to burn down our version of public education too, rife as it is with myriad inequities baked in through local control and deferential politicians. Sometimes I still want to. Right this minute Trenton children are relegated to schools with a 10% reading proficiency rate because their parents can’t afford to rent or buy their way into districts ten minutes away with a reading proficiency rate of 75%. 

But you don’t create sustainable change by silencing those you disagree with or circumventing civil rights. 

The only thing burning right now is the hope for meaningful change in an educational system that cries out for more than we offer.