There's one simple reason wannabe dictators attack education

Miami Herald

13 hours ago

Creating a dictatorship can be a messy endeavor: Wrongful imprisonments, torture, extrajudicial executions and a corrupt cabal of sycophants feigning to act under the guise of law, while in actuality subserviently showing fealty to their master, can reflect poorly on wannabe dictators seeking to conceal their true intentions. Thus, one of the first targets of these wannabe dictators is education. Denying honest and quality education to their intended subjects can often build the same social control mechanisms all dictatorships thrive upon, but with fewer overt injustices and less bloodshed. An excellent example of both the power of the lack of an education, and the power of achieving one, can be found in the book 'The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.' In it, Douglass discusses how education initially became his greatest curse, but eventually became his greatest blessing. As any American historian will tell you, it was unlawful to teach a slave how to read. As Douglass explained, keeping him ignorant of his status kept him accepting of it — but after secretly learning to read, he became aware of the reality of his situation, which led him to become one of America's most famous abolitionists. Douglass' journey from illiteracy to education is why propagating ignorance is one of the most powerful weapons would-be dictators can wield. Ignorance is where people have the capacity to learn but fail to do so. Sometimes this is self-inflicted, based upon the myth that 'ignorance is bliss.' But oftentimes, it is intentionally created by those in power withholding crucial information and resources, to keep people unaware that they are living in a burgeoning dictatorship until it is too late for them to do anything about it. Despite all the pretensions about making America great again, the real reason behind government officials' current attacks on American education is simple: Ignorance is frequently synonymous with obsequious acceptance, while education gives one the knowledge — and thus the capacity, to question, to investigate and to challenge what one is told.
It is also logical that weakening the ability to obtain an honest and quality education negatively impacts the nation through brain drain that can deleteriously affect technological, medical and scientific advancements by creating a milieu where misinformation and gullibility replace creative and critical thinking skills, imagination and a knowledge of history essential to recognizing when dangerous societal trends start repeating. For example, the Achilles heel of the Big Lie — a tactic historically employed by both the extreme left and the extreme right — is the ability of educated people to recognize such lies and denounce them. Since many wannabe dictators want to minimize much of the ugliness often required to achieve their goals, they are not going to openly state that their lust for absolute power is the true incentive behind their quest to destroy education. Instead, they invent villains — like critical race theory or diversity, equity and inclusion. They arbitrarily withhold funding from educational institutions that do not do their bidding. And they destroy agencies that support honest and quality education. Perhaps the truth about the real motivation behind the denial of honest and quality education can be discerned in the words of another man who, like Douglass, became aware, through education, of his status in the nation he lived in, and ultimately lost his life fighting to change it. These are the words of the martyred anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko, who was killed in police custody in South Africa in 1977: 'The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.'
David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional law attorney. He lives in South Bend, Indiana.