Why They Hate Education – Robert Reich

11 rbanffy 5 7/3/2025, 10:44:18 AM robertreich.substack.com ↗

Comments (5)

incomingpain · 10h ago
>That’s why slave owners prohibited enslaved people from learning to read, fascists burn books, and tyrants close universities. In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance, and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind.

Obviously Reich cant prove any of these things have happened. Only seeking to demonize the republicans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonizing_the_enemy

This is a propaganda technique.

twobitshifter · 8h ago
He had a quote from JD Vance endorsing Orban’s attacks on universities right in the article. They don’t want Universities teaching ideas they disagree with.

“Universities are controlled by left-wing foundations. They’re not controlled by the American taxpayer, and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year.”

I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orban has ever done [but] I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from.

His way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”

rbanffy · 2h ago
What you call a “biased approach to teaching” is merely conforming to the objective reality. What would you suggest to compensate for this “biased approach”? What “conservative ideas” should be taught as fact in universities? Creationism? Racial superiority?
clejack · 9h ago
Reich can't prove what happened? Slaves being prohibited from education? Books being burned?

Reich can't prove the internal working of the president's mind, so statements of intent are speculative to a degree, but if you interacted with a person in such a way that you projected feelings of animosity and hatred towards him, I wouldn't need your explicit admission to determine that you hate him or that you are consistently behaving in ways that appear hateful.

The president's actions have certainly shown a disdain for the education system. Vance has explicitly expressed taking issue with universities and wanting to implement government control. Trump has mandated that universities allow review for their curriculum if they want to receive funding.

This article isn't alarmist, because the actions that anyone would need to be alarmed about have already happened. The only question at this point is whether or not you like the results.

userlander · 9h ago
I think we found a fascist.