Michael Hiltzik: How DeSantis' attack on education draws from Ronald Reagan's war on UC Berkeley
The candidate strides to the podium and launches into his attack on his state's educational system. Students are being "indoctrinated" with leftist propaganda by radical professors, he declares.
In office, he establishes a system of surveillance over what students are learning and doing. He advocates firing faculty members who stray from the official line, calls for narrowing the topics covered in textbooks (especially those dealing with minorities), and takes steps to replace administrators with people closer to his own politics. It's all about "saving" the system, he insists, not tearing it down.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, marching toward the Republican Party nomination for president? Nope. It's Ronald Reagan, stirring up public discontent with the University of California and riding it toward the California governorship and, eventually, the White House.
The stark similarities between DeSantis' attacks on educational practices in Florida and Reagan's attacks on UC remind us that culture wars directed at public education are perennial features of right-wing electoral campaigns.
The similarities between the two cases are striking: an anti-intellectual undercurrent depicting teachers as carriers of
