OPEN LETTER TO DONALD J. TRUMP

Dear President Trump,

     First, let me be clear. I call you “President” solely because you won the 2024 election. I acknowledge the facts, perhaps you should try it some time.

     But that is the only sense that I acknowledge you as President. In every other respect relating to your policies and performance, you are not nor ever will be my president. However, whether or not neither of us likes it, I am your constituent.

     I will not call you “sir.” The notion that everyone you meet or speak with calls you “sir” is the product of a limited imagination. I will not validate your nighttime fantasies.

     Finally, there is nothing that you have done since January 20, 2017, that I approve of. I am not a MAGA supporter. I could go into the endless reasons why I don’t support you or your red hat wearing, cosplaying MAGA minions but for now let’s just leave it that I am no fan.

     I intend to write a series of open letters confident that you’ll never read them. However, life takes many a strange turn and perhaps someone will forward this to you. I’m not holding my breath but hope springs eternal.

     Whether you receive this and read this or not, I will have my voice heard if even in the shrouded recesses of the internet.

     So, today’s topic is your absolutely ill-advised, some might say stupid Executive Order to dismantle the Department of Education. At least you’re consistent. In Nevada, on February 24, 2016, you proclaimed, “I love the poorly educated!” You must because this E.O. will ensure that the number of the poorly educated will expand.

     But then that’s the point, isn’t it? The more poorly educated voters, the greater the number of voters who can be politically and economically flim-flamed by you and your successors.

     Seriously, you struck political gold when you embraced the poorly educated like you might someone who brought you a Diet Coke. You discovered that the real value of this cohort of the population is that not only they neither know nor appreciate facts, but they have little skill in critical thinking.

     That makes them susceptible to anyone in authority who plugged into whatever grievances they might have. You, as a minor but nevertheless a “celebrity,” placed an imprimatur on their self-imposed grievance regime.

     You validated their poor education. And in the process, you scammed this group of people who are susceptible to being scammed by all sorts of people.

     Please don’t get me wrong. I am not disparaging people who haven’t had the educational opportunities you had (New York Military Academy, Fordham and University of Pennsylvania, Roy Cohn), instead I decry the political (and soon to be economic) victimization of these good and otherwise decent people. Victimized by you and your cronies.

     Now here’s something on which we might agree. The education system in America, like a human patient with a serious heath condition, is on life support.

     Let’s go to the numbers. According to the National Literacy Institute, 79% of Americans are literate, 21% of Americans are illiterate. Think about that – 21% of Americans can neither read nor write.

     The Institute tells us that only 54% of adults have a literacy rate below the sixth grade; 20% have a literacy rate below the fifth grade.

     According to the Institute, globally the literacy rate for individuals 15 years old and above is 86.3 percent. 

     Developed nations (of which we claim to be) boast a 96% literacy rate. Least develop countries struggle with a 65% literacy rate. We’re closer to the latter than the former.

     These low levels of literacy cost the American economy $2.2 trillion per year. Compare that with the with the 2024 budget of the Department of Education’s budget of $268 billion.

     At first blush it appears that dismantling the Department of Education is a rotten economic decision for a guy who puts himself out as a successful businessman, six business bankruptcies aside. At second blush it still appears to be a rotten economic decision.

     One might think that someone claiming to be an astute businessman would double down on the Department’s budget, not blow the thing up. But people often claim to be that they are not.

     An immediate concern of the above rates is how they impact our civic literacy. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a survey of 2000 respondents revealed that more than 70% of Americans fail a basic civic literacy quiz on topics like the three branches of government, the number of Supreme Court justices, and other basic functions of our democracy. Just half were able to correctly name the branch of government where bills become laws.

     While two-thirds of Americans say they studied “civics” in high school, only 25% say they are “very confident” that they could explain how the government works.

     The American Bar Association (ABA) issued a 2024 report that found 74% of respondents claimed that American democracy was weaker than it was five years ago and identified the spread of misinformation and disinformation as the cause.  Sixty-three percent are not informed about how democracy works, and more than a third believe it is the public’s responsibility to safeguard democracy. Twenty-five percent believed it was the Judiciary’s responsibility to safeguard democracy, while another 21% thought it was the duty of public officials to safeguard democracy.

     Lost in this was any recognition of the citizens’ responsibility to safeguard democracy.

     This all concerns me very much because prior to going into law, I taught history, government, law, and economics in a public high school. And to be clear, I taught classes that you might call C.R.T. or D.E.I. Most professionals would consider the subject matter of those classes to be “history.”

     I went into teaching because I wanted students to understand the world they were about to inhabit. I worked hard to reach my students and structured my classes to meaningfully engage them. To me, this was one of the most important subjects for soon to be adult citizens to, if not totally master, at least be well exposed to.

     Those statistics also concerned me as an attorney. It’s easier to work with clients who have at least a rudimentary understanding of the Justice system. If clients only know what they see on Judge Judy, they don’t know very much.

     Each year I would take my law students on a trip to the local county courthouse. There they could observe civil and criminal trials, engage with court personnel, and even interact with a trial judge. I’m certain that the impact of these trips varied from student to student, but they all learned that the mechanics of the justice system was no joke.

     As an aside, recently you did your best to give lie to my efforts. Hope you’re proud.

     The reason for a system of public schools is to provide an education in our heritage, our history, and in a variety of other academic subjects so that when students grow into adulthood, they are able to navigate and and engage in our democratic and economic systems.

     The purpose is not to exploit or indoctrinate young minds as some have suggested. It is to prepare them for the opportunities and challenges they would soon face. Public schools are a vital part of the realization of Jefferson’s recitation of people’s natural right to life, liberty, and happiness. Public schools are indispensable providing for the public good, not just for one generation of students but all the generations to come.

     But over the past 50 years, schools have been inundated with mandates without the necessary resources. Taxpayers have continually resisted paying more in taxes to support their public schools, while demanding that the level of educational performance not be diminished.

     Teachers are always the whipping boys and girls in these conflicts. Believe me when I say this, there was nobody I worked with who couldn’t have earned more money in the private sector. They work as teachers because it’s their calling, not merely their jobs.

     Not that I expect you to understand that motivation.

     Before you get your shorts in a twist, let me say that none of this is your fault. These issues, the result of demeaning teachers, underfunding schools, increasing the scope of school services without providing commensurate resources existed long before Trump 1.0.

      I’ll skip past your first term with you did nothing to improve the state of public education.

     What I will say is your fault is that instead of tackling this threat to our economy and democracy, you doubled down on the diminution of public education, or really education in general.

     Dismantling the Department of Education not only sends the wrong message about the value of a good education, but it validates those hostile to a robust examination of our culture, history, economy, and science.

     Moreover, dismantling the Department of Education deprives local and state school departments of a vital resource to help and enhance their mission – to help kids.

     Preserving the Student Loan program will hopefully preserve the assistance that tens of thousands receive. But putting this program in the Small Business Administration which has no experience in administering programs such as this will prove not to have been the best decision. The ensuing mayhem is foreseeable but maybe that’s the point.

     Preserving assistance to special needs students hopefully will continue the vital programs to our most vulnerable students. But relocating them to The Department of Health and Human Services may not be the best idea, as there was a valid reason why the education component in the old Department of Heath, Education and Welfare was removed and established as a stand-alone cabinet level department.

     Let me suggest the book On Governing, Joseph Califano’s contemporaneous account of the issues resulting in the formation of the Department of Education. I guessing you won’t read this as you have a reputation of not being a “reader.” But I had to try.

     Offloading education back to the states is not only a ludicrous idea, it’s downright dangerous. There already are gross disparities between student performance across the states. States providing the necessary resources to public schools generally get good results. States providing less support to public schools get fair to poor results.

      And please spare me the trope that market forces will force schools with poor academic results to improve.

     And under this new offloading regime, students who need the most academic help will in some cases receive the least.

     And there is an indication, under the budget to be voted on within the next two weeks, that much of the funding that previously went to the DoE will be directed towards charter schools, thereby further depriving public schools of the funding vital to their success.

     However, given the nature and location of many of these charter schools, this could fill a Bible salesman with glee! Wait, aren’t you a ….. ?

     Your disparagement of the breadth of American education from pre-k to Ph.D programs, is stunning. Ransoming $400 million due to Columbia University – money it was supposed to receive – unless the administration bent the knee and acceded to your dictates is reprehensible for more reasons than I can describe here.

     Your actions over the last 65 days are nothing less than an all out assault on one of the most important institutions in our society. It is beyond contestation that all levels of our public education enhanced the lives of countless Americans, contributed to our national strength and wealth, and made our country the envy of the world.

     Look, it is clear that there are tremendous problems with the quality of education in America. There are broad disparities between groups of students in almost any school district. There are broad disparities between students in different states. These are evidenced by the statistics cited above.

     But you did nothing more than throw more gasoline on an already roaring fire. Maybe you were honest when you said you love the poorly educated.

     These are serious issues requiring serious responses. I fear we won’t get them because as all evidence indicates, you are not a serious person. But I invite you to prove me wrong.

     Until that time,

     Geoff Schoos