What would you rather have in America’s schools; high test scores or students who are empathetic and have strong critical thinking skills? What good is it for an individual, or for American society, if students test well but also think that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election? What good is it if they have no interest in providing a strong safety net so that no Americans need to live in poverty?

Today, a full three-quarters of Trump voters falsely believe the election was “rigged and stolen, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll – more than ever before. Just 9 percent, meanwhile, think Biden “won fair and square” – down from 13 percent a year ago. This is clearly stinkin’ thinkin.’ High school graduates have spent more than ten thousand hours in class, and they still cannot recognize the obvious. They are so jaded that they fall for the most unlikely of conspiracy theories.

It’s been a dozen years since we first heard of the Tea Party. They were the predecessor to MAGA. One of their strategies was to expand right-wing influence over what is taught in schools by fielding more candidates to run for school boards. Pandering to voters through fear, Tea Partiers and their allies won a number of elections and began the process of censoring more of what was being taught in schools. In the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the right has greatly increased its efforts to win school board seats and further suppress free and open thinking in our schools. New books are being added to the “banned list” such as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hate U Give.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently wrote:

There is a quote from Ralph Reed that I often return to when trying to understand how the right builds political power. “I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members,” the former leader of the Christian Coalition said in 1996. School board elections are a great training ground for national activism. They can pull parents, particularly mothers, into politics around intensely emotional issues, building a thriving grass roots and keeping it mobilized.

Recently the right has created a straw horse in demanding that “Critical Race Theory” not be taught in our schools. First, there are hardly any schools teaching it. That does not stop people on the right from winning school board and other legislative seats because they convince many voters that white people are being denigrated. Second, what precipitated the modern opposition to teaching CRT was the 1619 Project published by the New York Times and the Pulitzer Center. The project is not about theory; it is about history. Specifically, it addresses the origins of slavery in the United States and the impact that slavery has had for over 400 years on the lives of African-Americans, and other Americans. Our history has always been heavily weighted towards teaching about white people. If we are going to become better equipped to live in the multi-cultural society that we have, it is essential for all students to learn the history of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian- Americans, Native Americans and other minorities are included. Let us not forget that by 2045, we will be a minority-majority nation.

So, what can non-MAGA people do to support more open learning in our schools? The first thing is to recognize that our schools are in crisis, and have been for some time. The evidence is clear; more than seventy million adults voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Plainly their education was short on important values like critical thinking and empathy.

Part of the problem with our schools is that they suffer from a major problem in our body politic. I’m talking about “fake news,” which almost entirely comes from the right. Our schools unwittingly teach fake news. They do a poor job of helping students recognize fake news when they hear or see it.

Similar to our political system and our society in general, our schools are very competitive with one another. The conflicts are basically fought on two levels, substance and image. This is a central reason why so many students, and adults, have skewed views of the world.

Examples of substance being taught in schools would include teaching children how to read, providing students with opportunities to take science labs, encouraging students in social studies class to play a role in a model UN or a mock legislature, or providing students with real opportunities to be involved in school decision-making.

Unfortunately, much of school is about image and bragging rights. A big part of that is the obsession with standardized tests. Like sport contests, standardized tests are measured with numbers. Those numbers can be compared, and that means they provide platforms on which schools can compete, just like football or basketball. Students are under enormous pressure to do well on standardized tests in order to make their teachers look good, their school look good, their district look good, and their state look good.

This means that many teachers are teaching to the test. Much of that involves memorization. So, students are presumably learning how to do well on tests, both those that are standardized and those that are part of their regular classroom studies.

Teachers are also under enormous pressure to teach the state-mandated curriculum. It gets to the point where many teachers become robotic in what they present to students. Spontaneity, which is another way of saying “being tuned into the moment,” becomes more and more rare. If teachers are not questioning what they are “supposed” to do, how can students learn to peacefully question teachers, and others who are in positions of authority?

This fits right in with the right-wing agenda. Follow-orders; rarely question; and always remember that you are competing against others, particularly those from “elsewhere.”

So, how can we change schools so that students develop much more in the way of critical thinking skills and empathy? Ultimately, we need teachers who are more human, or who already are human and are not afraid to show their humanity. We need teachers who are willing to be like quarterbacks, or coaches. They need to call the right plays, and often that means calling an audible (making a last-second change). What makes teaching much more difficult than running an offense or a defense in football is that what might be a good play for one student may not be a good one for another student. Teachers need to do the best that they can at making sure that they are providing the best information and techniques for each student in their classes.

So how do we do this? Here are several suggestions:

1. Reallocate resources so that technology can do more, freeing teachers to have more time. Anyone who has taught knows that teaching is far more than a full-time job. Most teachers have several hours of work to do each evening. We need to cut back on the “make-work” that consumes many teachers, and also give teachers shorter working hours. The stress that teachers experience “trickles down” to students, sometimes like a shower. We need to reduce the amount of stress and tension in our schools.
2. If we want students to become better critical thinkers and to develop more empathy, these are two of the most important qualities that we need in our teachers. But this begs several important questions:
   1. What percentage of today’s teachers are good critical thinkers?
   2. What percentage of today’s teachers feel and express empathy to their students?
   3. If these percentages are lower than what we would want, then does it have anything to do with the ways in which we teach teachers?

So much of what teachers learn in education school is so prescribed and top-down. Over time, this squeezes some of the humanity out of students who will become teachers.

Additionally, it takes a certain type of person to decide to major in education and take classes with rigid curricula. This person is often someone who is comfortable with top-down decisions and may not value autonomy and creativity as much as others.

When they finally become teachers, combine the rigidity of their training with the pressure that parents, administrators, teachers and students all feel to achieve to the max, and you have a very oppressive environment.

We need to find ways for the nation’s best and brightest, and also most empathetic to become teachers. This means looking for individuals who will bring a maximum amount of empathy and critical thinking to the classroom, regardless of what training they have had.

This is not easy. But now is an excellent time to ramp up this movement. We have a tremendous shortage of teachers and districts are now loosening their certification requirements. If you are a person who thinks that you can humanize learning for students, and make them less likely to wind up as Tea Party or MAGA members, then it is a good time to step forward. We need teachers who are civil and civic-minded to help avoid civil war.

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Those who favor gun rights and oppose gun control like to divide people into two categories, the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Looking at people in such a simplistic way is reflective of the lack of critical thinking that seems to occur more among conservatives rather than progressives. But then again, what I just said might also be simplistic. There is some empirical evidence to support it, but we must be careful with where we go when painting with broad strokes.

There are two basic problems with using terms like “good” and “bad.” First, by only talking in polarities, we tend to eliminate consideration of shades of grey. Second, it’s hard to not use terms like these. They are low-hanging fruit; they are handles that are easy to grab.

We spend much of our political dialogue, or debate, in trying to fashion workable policies. But so long as human beings are needed to administer policy, and to make “on-the-fly” judgments and decisions, our best laid plans are susceptible to less than optimal outcomes due to that little problem called human error.

In the world of simplified thinking, there is less likelihood of human error when the people who are carrying out their jobs are “good” at them rather than “bad.”

This concept really struck a nerve with me last night when I watched a repeat PBS Frontline, “Business of Disaster,” about disaster relief to victims of major storms such as Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy.

We are talking about two storms in which damages were close to $100 billion, with a ‘B.’ That’s huge. And the program illustrated a few points very clearly:

1. While parts of the governmental responses were effective, others were not. A lot of the problems emanated from Congress under-funding FEMA, particularly in administering aid to home and business owners.
2. Insurance companies were caught in the middle of the aid process, and surprise surprise, they seemed to be more interested in their bottom lines than in adequately and properly paying claims. In fact, as reported by NPR’s Laura Sullivan, they made more money in the wake of these storms than they did in “normal” times. That seems to be a rather strange insight as to how insurance works.
3. There were some very well-intentioned and skilled officials working at all levels of response – federal government, state governments, local governments, non-profits, private companies (including insurance companies).
4. It seemed that most of the home-owners and business that had suffered damage because of the storms were honest in their claims. They were not trying to recover damages for something that happened unrelated to the storms.

But perhaps most importantly,

5. Lots of people at all levels of the response acted poorly. In the right-wing vernacular, they were “bad guys.” There was profiteering by insurance companies, by builders, by suppliers, by bureaucrats, by agencies, by leaders and even by some claimants. There was stinginess by the government, by contractors and others. The response was far short of the need. When you combine inadequate policies with inadequate people implementing them, you have a series of new disasters that follow the initial disaster.

So, while gun advocates might say that the “good guys” with guns need to be further empowered, others might say that we need more “good guys” to be engaged in public and private decision-making and the implementation of mandates. But here we get to a new list of two problems:

1. Who the hell are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys,” not only about carrying guns, but about weaving the overall fabric of our society?
2. If we need more effective people to help us have better responses to disasters and non-disasters alike, how do we identify them? How do we attract the “best and the brightest” amongst us to carry out important societal decisions?

We seem to always come up short. I would submit that the problem is that there just aren’t enough “good guys and women” among us. If our society was a sports team, we would be in desperate need of rebuilding. It wouldn’t be just a rebuilding year, but at least a rebuilding decade.

Our main problem is that critical thinking is at such a low premium. Somehow, some way, we must try to aggregate those among us who can think critically and who also can empathize to find ways to increase their numbers.

I always think that starts in our schools. When our schools place more focus on critical thinking and empathy, we will then be better at responses to disasters, and a lot more.

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It’s understandable that there would be some excitement today in the world of Democrats. They won an inning, the one they play in the odd year following the quadrennial presidential election. But before we get too euphoric, let’s remember that generally the party that lost the presidential race comes back 365 days later and does well, particularly in the two states that have gubernatorial elections, Virginia and New Jersey.

Such has been the case in 2017. The Democratic Party has been starved for victory; for almost any kind of good news. Republicans hold more seats in state legislatures and Congress than any time since the 1920s. The control the U.S. Senate and they only must defend nine of thirty-three of those seats that are up for re-election next year.

If Donald Trump was not enough of a gift to Democrats to win the 2016 presidential election, then his shtick is wearing on enough Americans now that he has become a political liability. Democrats may well be learning two key lessons for the 2016 election: (a) do not ignore the Trump base, and (b) progressive politics appeal to many Americans.

But before we get too excited, it may be helpful to look at recent history which illustrates how Tuesday’s Democratic victories may well be only temporary.

Politics has an ebb and flow to it. If the norm in the United States is for the pendulum to swing between Republicans and Democrats, then the only factor that really matters is what is the medium point between the two major parties. Regrettably, the base line for American politics has been moving more and more to the right. We have to go back fifty years to Lyndon Johnson to have a Democratic president who not only espoused a liberal agenda, but who was also successful in working with Congress to implement it.

The “silent majority” of George Wallace and Richard Nixon in 1968 has grown and now travels under the name of the Tea Party or simply Trump voters.

Democrats have had their share of victories since the era of LBJ, but they have not been able to sustain a true political movement. Many thought that the election of Barack Obama reflected the triumph of identity politics, and because Obama was so likable and free of corruption, the move to the left could be sustained.

But when Mitch McConnell said shortly after Obama’s election that his goal was to keep Obama as a one-term president, the power of what Hillary Clinton aptly called the “vast right-wing conspiracy” has been able to thwart movement to the left that results in the implementation of progressive policies.

Temporary victories are better than temporary losses. But for Democrats (or people of other parties or non-parties) to be successful in moving the body politic in more of a progressive direction, several key things need to happen. None of these have anything to do with temporary victories, but they are key to long-term success:

1. Democrats need to focus on young voters and voters-to-be to help them develop better critical thinking skills. In other words, one of the best places for progressives to be is in our schools and working with students on utilizing empathy through critical thinking.
2. Democrats need to keep in mind that if they are the party of those most in need, then they must diminish their identity with the donor class and instead do the odious task of fund-raising at the grass-roots level. Wealthy people can certainly be part of the base of the Democratic Party, but they should have no more representation than any other group.

Congrats to everyone who won, or who helped Democrats win on Tuesday. But let’s focus now more on the structural issues.

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