The importance of down-ballot voting on US education issues – literally the nation's future
by Dan Solon
A standard feature of high school graduation speeches by class valedictorians and guest speakers is often lampooned as "Graduates! The future lies ahead, and it is in your hands." Easily spoofed, it is nevertheless an undeniable reality.
For that reason, and to help prevent the possible development of a United States that, in say 2040, is even more harshly divided than it is today, overseas voters should pay more than customary attention to down-ballot issues and races this year. It is increasingly obvious that the Republican party apparatus is in thrall to the former president and his extremist supporters. Not satisfied with trying to relitigate the 2020 election results as raw meat for the party's "base" – whatever and whoever that may be – a number of the more pragmatic activists are trying to eat into the fabric of the US education system.
Across the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the American primary and secondary education system includes nearly 100,000 Kindergarten through 12th grade schools. Local, county and state-level structures vary widely. What is broadly similar, however, is that schools, their teachers and their curriculum are controlled at all three levels. In many states, the legislatures are effectively gerrymandered, and influence lies disproportionately with rural areas, much like the Electoral College and the Senate.
Efforts are underway to control and reshape what may or must be taught, or what is forbidden, in American schools. This is coming both from the top down — in state legislatures — and from the bottom up — in local school board elections. To cite only a couple of examples, Virginia's new governor, Glenn Youngkin, has proposed a "tip line" for parents concerned about individual teachers to report them to state authorities. The former East German Stasi surveillance system comes to mind - an unhappy reminder of the power of the snitch.
In Texas, where the battle for governance in a potential swing state rages unabated, a state legislator has proposed that school reading lists should provide balanced coverage of "both sides" of issues, including the World War II Nazi Holocaust. It is unclear what could be the "other side" of that story, given the ample photographic and written historical evidence.
The bottom line for US voters abroad is that, wherever elective positions or policy proposals are on absentee ballots, voters should make the effort to discover underlying facts and the positions taken by candidates. They can then make informed choices about the educational standards in their home constituencies. The future of our country does indeed "lie ahead," and what that future will look like will depend heavily on what today's students are taught and, hence, how they vote in future elections.