The Nazification of American Education

Abstract

This article argues that education is under siege in the United States by a right-wing Republican Party that wants to turn it into a propaganda tool for promoting its white supremacist ideology and updated version of fascist politics. Its aim is to use public and higher education in order to prevent young people from thinking critically, learning how to hold authority and power accountable, and to imagine a future different from a present that is sliding into tyranny. History serves as a warning sign which clearly shows that this current attack on education by the far-right in the United states has similarities to this pedagogical practices and educational policies used in Nazi Germany. The article calls for educators across the globe to analyze the current attacks on education through a historical lens that offers the tools to both understand its threat to democracy and in the midst of this urgency to find ways to fight it.

Keywords

• fascism
• patriotic education
• critical pedagogy
• resistance
• propaganda