The Dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education: A Calculated Assault on the Nation’s Future

The destruction of the U.S. Department of Education is not merely a bureaucratic restructuring or an attempt at governmental efficiency. It is, rather, a brutal, ideologically driven attack on public and higher education itself—an assault decades in the making. The immediate consequences, such as the callous firing of over 1,300 employees and the gutting of its Office for Civil Rights, are alarming, but they are only symptoms of a broader effort to delegitimize and dismantle the tradition of public education in America. This is no accident; it is a deliberate and malicious campaign waged by reactionary forces who have long sought to annihilate the very concept of education as a public good.

Before addressing the broader catastrophe, it is essential to recognize the dedicated public servants whose careers have been abruptly and callously ended. These were not faceless bureaucrats but individuals who dedicated their lives to ensuring access to quality education, protecting civil rights, and supporting students, parents, and teachers. They are the ones who worked tirelessly to administer federal student aid, enforce anti-discrimination laws, and uphold policies meant to ensure that education remained a pathway to opportunity rather than a privilege of the few. To see them falsely maligned and slandered while being discarded so cruelly is an injustice, not only to them but to the nation they so nobly served.

To understand the scope of this travesty, one must acknowledge that public education in the United States has been under sustained assault—not from bureaucrats, not from educators, and certainly not from the imagined “woke” enemies that conservative demagogues irrationally scream about—but from the anti-public education, anti-higher education agenda of the right-wing forces that have festered in the American political landscape since Brown v. Board of Education so deeply outraged the bigoted sensibilities of many Americans. This movement, which cloaks itself in deceptive terms like “school choice” and “parental rights,” is nothing more than a long-running campaign to dismantle public education in favor of a reactionary, privatized system that siphons resources from the many to enrich the few.

Milton Friedman, the sinister patron saint of the libertarian free-market fantasy, provided the economic blueprint for this war on public education. His advocacy for school vouchers was never about “improving education” or “empowering parents”—it was about facilitating the exodus of white children from integrated schools while redirecting public funds into private, often exclusionary institutions. The modern conservative attack on public education is a direct continuation of this shameful tradition, now infused with fresh venom as it seeks to erase any federal coordination, civil rights protections, and guarantee of equal access to education.

And now, with breathtaking ruthlessness, this agenda is reaching its culmination at the hands of pusillanimous politicians hiding behind false narratives. The elimination of nearly half the workforce of the Department of Education within the first two months of the second reign of incompetence is an unmistakable step toward the total obliteration of the department. The Office for Civil Rights, already struggling to process the nearly 25,000 complaints of discrimination it receives from the public yearly and one of the last remaining institutional bulwarks against discrimination in schools—has been slashed to the bone, ensuring that students with disabilities and others who are discriminated against, whether on sex or race or national origin, will have nowhere to turn for timely relief when their rights are trampled. This is not accidental; this is the plan.

The current Education Secretary, in the grand Orwellian tradition of this administration, has assured the public that these cuts will somehow improve “efficiency” and “accountability.” Such statements are not merely disingenuous—they are outright lies, designed to mask the true intent behind this evisceration: to dismantle any federal structure that protects education as a right rather than a privilege reserved for the wealthy and well-connected.

Adding further insult to this grievous injury, the most aggrieved one has handed the reins of this demolition project to none other than our billionaire tech overlord. This grotesque display of plutocratic interference sees our billionaire tech overlord—who has no experience in education policy but plenty of experience in exploiting workers—granted unfettered access to sensitive government data and decision-making power over federal agencies. Under the laughable guise of “efficiency,” his Technokratische Jugend has set about dismantling the very institutions that serve as the backbone of public education, further centralizing power in the hands of the ultra-rich while leaving working Americans to suffer the consequences.

But let us be clear: this is not just an attack on those in public service. It is an attack on the very principle that education should be accessible to all, that an informed citizenry is essential to democracy, that knowledge should not be hoarded by the privileged few. It is an attack on the American future, a calculated and malevolent act of national sabotage designed to entrench ignorance and subjugation. Presently, the enlightened pro-choice anti-education agenda of our political elite has delivered unto us a nation where 54 percent of adults read only at the 6th grade level—imagine a decade hence where we will be!

Public education is not a luxury; it is the foundation of an equitable society. The destruction of the U.S. Department of Education is not about “efficiency” or “streamlining” government—it is about ensuring that the levers of power remain in the hands of a select few while the masses are kept ignorant, powerless, and too overwhelmed to fight back. This is a crisis of democracy, and it will have consequences that reverberate for generations.

The wreckage of this assault will be vast and far-reaching. Higher education costs will continue to increase as many institutions shutter their doors, vocational training programs will wither, and civil rights enforcement in schools will become an afterthought, if it exists at all. Meanwhile, a handful of oligarchs and right-wing ideologues will gloat over their victory, having successfully reduced one of the last bastions promoting American progress into a smoldering ruin. And continue to pay attention to the war on institutions of higher education, our overlords are not done reducing our heirs into ignorance.