(10 minute read)

Education is about liberation, empowerment, and transcendence. 

What better purpose is there?

A person that can read is literate. One who can internalize and apply that reading is educated. One who is educated is free. One who is free is empowered. One who is empowered is transcended from their circumstances.

As educators we start to fulfill that mandate by providing students a way to confirm or define a new worldview.

But first, we may have to settle and define our purposes as educators first. Only then can we help our students settle on theirs.

The Disturbing Confidence Of Ignorance

What future awaits education in America? What future awaits America as a whole? And if the future allows, is a personal ownership by educators relevant for keeping our institutions alive? Or are we headed for a dystopia that dictates how and what is taught in the classroom?

Each generation has had to deal with the challenges of modernity. A small segment of our society has always had issues with accepting progress.

A minority of Americans answers what future awaits by yearning for a return to a “golden age” that never existed. Tropes from “America First” to “Make America Great Again” and everything in-between is code. Each a rhetorical slogan with different meanings depending on whom you ask. That’s how code works. Make it general enough, provide no context or meaning, and your audience has to fill in the blanks. Present it to literate but uneducated groups of people and the history of the code is lost on them.

The modern code “America First” and “Make America Great Again” are synonymous. Yet few have ever considered the origins and history behind them.

For example, ask supporters what Make America Great Again means. The word “again” implies a time when America was great. But when was America great? Well, it depends on whom you ask. Americans in a recent poll were asked to identify when they thought America was great. It turns out they identified the decades when they were between the ages of 11 and 15.

Between the ages of 11 and 15? That’s hardly the age you’d expect someone to be knowledgeable about national and world events.

A wistful affection for the past is a powerful emotion.

Given recent events it seems that the MAGA crowd wants to return to a time when America wasn’t so great. Certainly not for everyone. Back then, like now, a small segment of society gained political power with one goal in mind. To put a stop to progress.

The year was 1877.

[For white men it] is clear when “America was Great” — 1877. That was the year the Republican Party convinced the “Dixiecrats” to pull the Union Army out of the South. That was the year that Jim Crow, Black Codes, KKK and “legal discrimination” began in earnest. President Abraham Lincoln had moved America from the fear of slavery in 1863, but in 1877 the Republicans decided to bring back fear, hatred and slavery of the mind by working out a deal to win the presidency of the United States.

Something similar is happening today.

William “Bill” Nix, “We finally know what Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan really means” | Opinion, The Palm Beach Post, April 4, 2025

In 1857 the infamous Dred Scott SCOTUS decision was handed down denying citizenship for African Americans. The argument then was that democracy was established at the state level, formed by those who were allowed to vote. This meant white men only.

Consequences of this decision were plentiful. One it proceeded the Civil War. Two, that a few white men in state power had the right to institute slavery. Three, the federal government had no power to intervene.

Until some 11 years later when Congress ratified the Fourteenth Amendment reversing the Dred Scott decision. The Amendment gave powers to the federal government to intervene in discriminatory state laws.

Specifically it gave the federal government the power to protect individuals. One hundred years later SCOTUS’ civil rights decisions of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, were based on that Amendment.

Yes, it took a miserable amount of time.

If you think the quote above from Nix is a bridge too far then consider this.

In 2022, SCOTUS, stacked with conservatives, overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In essence they withdrew federal protection of abortion rights allowing the states to make their own laws. Many states controlled by a few white men did just that. A few placed restrictions on the procedure while a majority of the states banned them altogether.

In that 2022 decision Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence to Justice Alito’s majority opinion. Thomas didn’t think Alito’s opinion went far enough and, in essence, gave the green light for even further restrictions. Federal protections for access to birth control and same-sex marriage should also be reexamined, he wrote.

In 2024, Donald Trump suggested he would be open to those restrictions. However, like so many things he says and does he walked back the comment after a lot of backlash.

This toxic civil discourse (some would say civility is long gone) is really nothing new. There has always been factions preferring a liberal democracy and those preferring authoritarianism. The only difference is the current lack of civility, media attention, and the amount of people reached.  

In this current war-of-words climate there seems to be two main factions. But really, these same arguments go as far back as the mid 19th century, some say even earlier.

On the one side there is the right: conservatives, right wing, evangelical radicals as they are defined by their opponents. There has always been populist demagoguery in the States and today’s group are prone to the same. That these groups pop up from time to time is nothing new. And their list of enemies never change, liberal elites, immigrants, progressives, and organized labor to name a few. Their belief system is handed down from one generation to the next. Evangelical, protestant, family, and white supremacy are their admitted core values. They prefer authoritarianism over what they consider a weak democratic system.

On the other side there is the left: liberals, secular, humanists, as defined by their opponents. They believe that religion is strictly a private matter. Despite the historical hiccups they advocate for the tenets of the Constitution. Justice and equality, that all men are to be treated equal under the law. They are loathe to trust politicians that threaten to do away with the separation of church and state. They believe that the forces of the religious right are contrary to a good sound democracy. They work hard to remove from government anything that smacks of religious purpose, practice, belief or teaching. They prefer strong democratic institutions over authoritarianism.

Public opinion has polarized. Combatants draw lines in the sand demanding their own ideological purposes be foisted upon others. 150 years after the Civil War and the two major competing ideas of what America should look like still exists. One is based on “tribal loyalties” and the other on “constitutional principles.” Over time the pendulum of history swings back and forth with very little correction.

The Need For A New Way

And so here we are today. The pendulum seems to be swinging out of control. Every day the majority of Americans wake up wondering what mayhem will be wrought upon them this day. History may be repeating itself but this is new to many of us in this lifetime.

As comedian and activist Stephen Fry commented, I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.

Adding to this is the outright assault on institutions of education.

In times like this it is hard to behave as if it is business as usual.

While a minority of Americans want to turn the clock backwards it behooves us to insist on moving forwards. Pushing teaching methods, attitudes, and bigotry used 30-40-50 years ago is pointless. There is no going back to a golden age, especially when that golden age never existed.

Expecting life to work today like it did back then can obviously be disastrous. Yet, dear educator, how many of us still lecture in the manner we have for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. Society and culture is forever changing. The student body changes right along with it. We run the risk on not being relatable if we are unwilling to adapt.

The late author and founder of the Servant Leadership movement Robert Greenleaf advocated for a better way. Bridging the gap of liberal, conservative, and everything in between he advocated for every institutional organization to lead …by serving.

His book, Servant Leadership, seems to be a contradiction in terms. Providing historical examples he argued that great leaders were so because they were recognized as being servants first and foremost. He advocated for leaders in institutions like government, education, business, and churches to adopt a servant-first attitude. Institutions could be fully realized as beneficial if leadership organized their organization to serve the public at all costs.

“Those who choose to follow the servant leadership model will not casually accept the traditional authority and power structures. Rather, they freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted servants.”

– Robert Greenleaf, The Servant Leader

Being a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to reject power and serve others first. A servant-leader is not served by his followers, the servant-leader serves them (oh, that every politician would hear this). Aspiring to serve first is a sharp contrast to the one who wants to lead through power first.

Donald Trump and his MAGA people are the exact opposite of being servant leaders. Now that they have the “power” they are more interested in telling others what to do.

Those of us that recoil at such leadership can take heart. There were groups before the MAGA crowd that wielded power and eventually lost it. MAGA will too.

The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. The servant-first leader desires that other people’s priority and needs are meet. If you are unsure about whether a leader is a servant-leader first, one can look at those being served.

Greenleaf asks:

• Are they growing as individuals?
• Are they becoming healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves?
• What is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or, at the very least, not be further deprived?”

In my experience many organizations that I worked for and with failed miserably with these questions. Had I been aware of Greenleaf’s work I might have been saved from a lot of heartache.

Based on these questions institutions like government, education, business, and churches in America are in trouble.

Read The University In Crises, Pt. 7

Sources:

• Greenleaf, Robert K., Servant Leadership – A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, Paulist Press, 1977
• Palmer, Parker J., The Courage to Teach – Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, Wiley and Sons, 2007