What is the History of Education in America?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:01

Breakfast Club. Saved by the bell, 13 reasons why. School of Rock. We've all seen American schools on our screens, but what is it really like?

Well, this week, class is in session as we take a closer look at the education system. Specifically, how does it work? Does it even really work at all? And what makes American education so unique? Welcome to America, a history Podcast.

I'm Niamh Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places, and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined by one of the foremost education historians working today.

He's currently a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania and has a particular interest in how political and social movements shape education. He's also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and others.

So it's a huge honor to welcome to the podcast John Zimmerman.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:01:18

Thank you, Liam. It's good to be here.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:20

Yeah, really, really good to have you on the podcast discussing this.

So, yeah, I'm going to dive straight into this with probably a huge question, but could you give us a bit of a whistle stop tour of the history of the education system in America?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:01:35

Well, here's the very, very thumbnail sketch. We've had schools in British North America since white people came here.

They were endowed by local communities, sometimes run by widows, so called dame schools, sometimes run by charity organizations.

call it in the states, in the: 1830

Today we call the public school system that was state regulated, although still primarily financed by local taxes and governed by local school boards. But they would have shared curricula, shared teacher standards, shared calendars for the year, and so on.

ssive Era, starting about the: 1890

Highly successful in the sense that these bureaucracies developed teeth and power.

have, except Starting in the: 1960

Now, it's important to note since Jimmy Carter just died, that the United States didn't even have a federal department of Education until Carter was the president. And to this point, only about 10% of money for American education comes from the federal government, but 10% is 10%. It's not nothing.

And so the story since the: 1960

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:28

I mean, we've talked a lot on this podcast previously about this, this tug of war between state and federal law.

As a British guy who's very used to everything being quite centrally sort of run by the government, it feels like a no brainer that something as important as the education system should have some sort of national standardization to it. I guess my question is why did it take so long for the Department of Education to be formed? And how much input do they, do they have today?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:03:58

Well, I mean, you're right about the contrast.

I mean, when I taught in France, which I did several years ago, I discovered that in theory, every kid in France is supposed to be reading the same thing on the same day. It doesn't work out that way, but that's the plan.

And, and at the time for fourth graders or whatever they call that in France, there was a jour du fromage or day of cheeses, where all the French youngsters were to, to, you know, discover and elaborate on the wonders of French cheese. No, we never do it that way. I think that's because of the history of localism in this country. So the way it worked was it really did work this way.

If you move to a new community, you sadly either displace or kill some of the human beings that are living there and then you elect a school board. That's really what happened. And so, so much of our identity as communities are tied up in our schools.

And so I know it makes no sense to people in France or perhaps in the uk, but I think to Americans it makes total sense because of the role of the school in defining community. You have to realize that during the era I'm talking about, the school was often the only public building in the community.

It's where elections happen. Still, still is by the way, voting. But also, you know, holiday celebrations, weddings, funerals.

And by the way, I've never found an account of a Christmas celebration in an American 19th century school without Santa clau cause his beard catching on fire. This seems to be an absolute requisite for the story because it's like a, like a big fat white guy with all sorts of cotton on his face.

And there's obviously the era of candlelight, right, and, and gaslight. And so is, you know, and then Santa's beard Caught on fire. But see, that's the thing.

All these things really matter because so much of our history and so much of our identity as communities is tied up with our schools.

If you start to say, like, somebody's school isn't very good or we should close their school or somebody else should control their school or their school sucks, you're saying they suck. That's what you're saying. That's. I'm not saying that's what you're saying. I'm saying that's how they hear it. That's the point.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:03

It's interesting and. And I love just how. How schools clearly act as this sort of hub for. For. For the local community to sort of come together. But do you think on the.

The other side of that coin, that there is a risk that when education is so localized, that there can be these huge discrepancies between, like, the quality of education around the country?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:06:28

Yes, the quality, and I'd even say the justice.

in Little rock, Arkansas, in: 1957

I mean, what are the people, what are the mob and the rioters in Little Rock saying when the 101st Airborne comes in to try to protect the right of nine black kids to go to school? They're saying, no, we should control this. We, in that case, being the majority white population. Right. You're not the boss of us.

We get to decide who goes to which school and why. And it was a local control argument, so. Absolutely. There's a yin and yang to everything.

Local control is both the genius and also the Achilles heel of American education. It's both of those things.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:26

Yeah. And let's. I mean, let's. Let's talk about that Achilles heel for just a second, because, you know, in researching this episode, I came across some.

Some stats, and feel free to debunk this, but it told me that the US actually ranks 31st in the world for its education system. You know, and this is below Canada, the uk, France, Germany, even China and Russia are higher on that list than the U.S.

so, you know, for all of the wonderful things that, you know, the education system can do, clearly there's still a lot of work to be done, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:08:00

There hugely are. And again, we can contest some of those numbers. A lot of them come out of the PISA studies, which are highly contested. Contested doesn't mean wrong.

But you know, there's some statisticians who say that the comparison is invalid because we educate a larger fraction of our people than some of the other countries are being compared to. But I don't want to go into the weeds on that. We're not nearly good enough.

And I think anyone who denies that is sort of like people that say there's a Santa Claus.

I mean, we should be way better if you compare us to a country like South Korea on basic mathematical operations for fourth graders, they eat our lunch. But this is kind of amusing and I think speaks to another problem.

If you then ask, I saw a study a number of years ago, American kids and South Korean kids. Are you good at math or maths, as you would say in the uk, we're like number one, you know, we're the best.

Like, I am somebody, you know, somebody that can't do long division, right? But I am somebody. And the South Koreans, like, no, I am not good.

I must try harder, you know, and you know, I mean, that speaks to a number of things, including the role of kind of psychology and models of self esteem and the way that we think about kids in this country. But I also think it speaks to a kind of boosterism that attaches to our school.

You know, you've probably heard, Liam, since you studied the usa, the old adage, you know, Americans hate Congress, but they like their congressman or congresswoman, which is true. That's why they keep returning those people to Congress, right? So everyone hates Congress, right?

But most people actually like their congressional representative. I think there's an analogy there to school.

So when you interview people, even who patronize very low performing schools, as best we're able to measure that, often they'll say, well, look, you know, the school down the road, now that's no good, right? But my school, you know, it's all right, you know, like, and my, my, my aunt works in the cafeteria. You know, my uncle went there.

You know, it's not fancy, but it's ours. It's us. And you know, you say we're 31st.

I mean, one of the things we've never been able to do going back to Horace Mann, is actually convince Americans to want to be better. Because that was the dynamic.

You know, Horace Mann, he went trotting around, you know, the east and the Northwest, which is now the Midwest, basically, trying to make the argument you just made. Just saying, look, I know you have this little school and it's all right, but actually it kind of does suck. It should Be better.

And a lot of people are like, dude, who made you the boss of me? You know, like, this school seems to work fine. Yeah, it's not as pretty as you'd like it. Right.

But again, I went there, you know, my grandfather went there, and it's all right. So how do you persuade people otherwise?

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:38

And do you. Do you think, you know, to that point that.

That there is this almost pushing back against, you know, anything that might be seen as federally kind of ordained onto, like, curriculums in local schools?

When we thinking about, you know, these big issues like, you know, sex education and these, these more, I guess, progressive sort of subjects that are being taught that particularly in more conservative areas, face this enormous hostility. Is there this sense that, you know, schools are local and they should be determined and run by the local community?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:11:16

Absolutely. And again, for good and ill. And I would argue that it is both. And I'm pretty skeptical of anybody that denies one side of the equation or not.

You know, we love. We're very binary people in America, if you haven't noticed. So you're supposed to be pro local control or anti local control.

And I just think that's absurd. Right. I think there's a yin and a yang here that's very real on the inside.

On the positive side, one of the things we found going back to the era of Horace Mann is the best predictor of whether you're going to vote for a tax increase or a bond issue or whatever for your school is how directly you feel you can affect the policy of the school. Right. Which makes sense. Right.

You know, you're going to be more invested in every way, literally and metaphorically, if you feel that your vote and your participation has a direct influence on what the school does. So this is a very good thing. Right. We want to support Pupka. And by the way, Americans do. Right.

Schools are not as good as they should be, but schools draw a lot of resources in this country.

A lot of the transatlantic comparisons around welfare that people on the American left like to make, oh, in Sweden, they spend so much more, it's so much better in healthcare, and everyone drives a Volvo or whatever it is a lot of those, I think comparisons are a little specious because they often leave out schools. And let's remember, we found this out during COVID Schools aren't just the place where kids go to learn math.

It's also where they get breakfast, it's sometimes where they get health care. So schools are social welfare institutions as well. And we do support them. We support them very Richly.

Now, we don't support them equitably, which is a different question. Right. But you know, when you feel like you were close to the decision makers of a school, you're more likely to support it.

And if you believe in education, you've got to applaud that.

Now, if you also think the school should teach that, like, you know, God created the world in six days and then chilled, well, that might be a problem. Right. And so that's. There's your yin and yang.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:22

Yeah.

I mean, from my own experience, albeit limited of, of being in the us, one thing that really stuck out to me when I spoke to anyone about the school system was how much of a focus there was on vocational things, you know, after school activities, sports and, and all of those things a little bit alien to, to me, being in the uk, where it feels very much like, you know, it's bolted on at the end of the day, if you have time to do it in America, it feels like there is this real emphasis on, on the less academic side of school.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:13:59

Absolutely. And again, yin and yang. Right. Both of those things. I mean, I think historically. Right. I think it does come down to this idea of school as community.

If the school is actually the center of the community, well, it, it makes total sense that it would also be sports teams and drama and debate and, and all those social welfare services I mentioned as well. Right. It's a full service station. Right. It is us. And what, what it's done over the years is it's subsumed more and more of that unto itself.

Sports is a good example. Right. I mean, look, you're in a sports crazy country, and France is a sports crazy country too.

It just doesn't channel sports through its school system. It's not that the French don't love sports, they love it as much as we do.

It's just they have different ways of institutionalizing it and we do it through our schools now. It's interesting, though, I don't think the line between curricular and extracurricular is necessarily as bright as we often make it.

And we should think of them, I think, as a continuum. So Ja Mei and Sarah Fine wrote this book a few years ago about American schools called Deeper Learning.

Where what they did was they just spent about five years going to American high schools and trying to find out where deeper learning was happening.

And by deeper learning, they meant not just something that engaged the students or interested the students, but something where the students had really invested themselves in the questions of the discipline. Right. Where it was really becoming a part of their lives. Where did deeper learning happen? Drama club, Debate club?

It happened actually outside of the regular curriculum. They found it happened very rarely in English or math class.

So I do think we need to think about the extracurricular activities as educational activities, because surely they are, and I think sometimes on pedagogical grounds, they're superior to what we do in class.

Liam Heffernan: 00:16:00

Yeah. And do you think maybe that's why the U.S.

you know, maybe ranks lower than perhaps it would like to in terms of just, you know, purely the, the efficiency of their education system? Because actually it's the application of those skills into these other kind of extracurricular sort of environments.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:16:19

I think that's possible.

And it may well be that those other extracurricular deeper learning activities, as meta and fine call them, don't necessarily translate into a higher PISA score. I mean, I guess it depends.

You know, one could imagine Debate Club really helping you improve your reading and writing skills, but maybe that's not picked up by the test. Who knows?

Liam Heffernan: 00:16:40

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, one thing I did want to sort of touch on is this idea that maybe the curriculum in America is a bit too American when you consider the kind of, you know, globalization and, you know, just how, how connected everyone is nowadays. That sort of very inward looking national curriculum kind of maybe worked in the past, but it feels like maybe not so much nowadays.

And I just wonder if you feel like. I guess my question is twofold. Firstly, what is that skew in American schools between, you know, national and international subjects?

And have you got it right or not?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:17:21

Oh, no, we don't have it right at all. I mean, you know, there's so many paradoxes when you think about the history of the United States and especially American education.

You know, think about something like what we call foreign languages, right.

The United States is arguably the, the densest and most diverse meeting place of different linguistic groups in, in the history of the world, arguably depending on how we're defining these things. And yet it's also the most monolingual. This strikes me as a paradox. And, you know, there are different ways of explaining it, right?

And some people say it's precisely the diversity, the linguistic diversity of the component parts that required us to put such an accent on English. But, you know, this, you go to Europe and they're like, well, you know, if you, if you speak, you know, three languages, you're trilingual.

If you speak two languages, you're bilingual, you speak one language, you're American. You know, and I'm a good example of this, I mean, I have working facility in one language.

I also speak Nepali because I was a Peace Corps volunteer there 40 years ago and I can still speak it, but I don't really think that counts.

You know, I think in most parts of Europe, most parts of the world, I just, I couldn't be a full professor at a major university with facility in one language. I just don't think. I've actually been told by some French friends that actually in France you still can do that.

But I think in most, I mean, you know, in, in Germany or Holland or. It would be impossible. Right?

You, you know, so, so you know, it, it's, we're this incredibly diverse country, but we're also radically parochial at the same time. And to your point about global Zaken, look, you know, the screens are going to do what the screens are going to do.

I mean we, we haven't talked about that yet, but let's face it, right? This kids in our country, and I believe in yours and most other developed, developed countries are in front of screens more than they're in school.

That's education too. And that's going to be highly globalized. It already is. I mean that's what this whole tick tock thing is about.

In some ways it's about globalization and that education may be good or bad or lots of things in between and I'm sure it is. But one of the, I think things I often tell my students and you know, Liam, teachers are like parents.

They basically say the same thing over and over again. And I have like 10 things I say over and over again. And one of the things I say is, you know, friends, there is education outside of school.

I mean everything educates. The problem with people that study education is we're biased towards school, right? That's the hardest problem because we do school, right?

We did it successfully, right? And then we became like leaders, you know, workers in school. So we think school is the cat's meow.

And it's not that it's unimportant, I think it is important. But there are lots and lots of other things that educate and I think arguably they're way, way, way more influential than what we do.

And I think it starts with the screens.

Liam Heffernan: 00:20:11

I mean, you mentioned TikTok.

And I do wonder the, the impact, both positive and negative, that technology and particularly, you know, social media has sort of played in being able to educate people appropriately. You know, do people just go to social media now for their information?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:20:29

Right? And look, there's good and bad again, you Know, I mean, you mentioned sex education earlier. Liam and I wrote a book about that at one point.

And one of the things I ended up concluding was that actually both the worst and the best sex education happens on screens. The real takeaway of the book is that, is that state sponsored schools are not a good place for sex education.

School and sex don't play well together. And the reason is we're too divided about what we think about sex.

So state sponsored schools are never going to be an effective way, an effective place to teach sex education. But again, there are lots of other things that educate. The screens are at the top of the list.

And I would say there's a lot of really bad and a lot of good sex education on screens. The bad sex education is pornography. Pornography absolutely educates.

I think it's hugely influential, especially in the lives of young men in this world. And I think a lot of that, not all of it, but a lot of that is deeply poisonous to anything that I would call a decent idea of sex and sexuality.

But then, at least in the United States, there are these text messaging services that are often run by state health organizations or sometimes by NGOs.

You know, somebody in kids says somebody in school tells you that you can't get pregnant the first time or you can't get pregnant when you're on your period, and instead of believing it, you text somebody that actually knows about the subject and they text you back. Is that sex ed? Sure, of course it's sex ed. And I would argue it's radically more effective than many of the other kinds.

But the point is it comes in on the screen and it's also individuated. That is there, you know, there's, there's no collective lesson. Right. It's personalized for you.

And, and, and so, you know, I think in, in some places, in some ways, the screens are actually much more effective educators than we are.

Liam Heffernan: 00:22:17

Yeah, no, that, that's an interesting point.

And, and, and actually, I'm just wondering, for any international listeners to this podcast, I wonder if you could provide a bit of context into, into how the, the school system is sort of separated between, you know, kindergarten, you know, junior school, middle school, high school. What ages do people enter each stage of that?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:22:39

Yes, well, in, in the United States, it starts with nursery school at what we call pre K.

And this has been actually a hugely contested matter in the United States because there are many communities where actually the public purse doesn't sponsor that. It's private. So there are lots of poor people in the United States that can't get access to what we call pre K and then kindergarten.

Generally what we call grades, you would call forms one through five are the primary or elementary schools. Then middle school is typically grades 6 through 8, and then secondary school is grades 9 through 12 up to about age 18.

Now I should also mention that we're now at a point in our history where about 2/3 of us go on to some sort of post secondary education. We don't all complete it, which is a whole other issue.

But you know, given that, you know, I really do think, speaking of false binaries, we have to stop talking about, you know, our K through 12 system and our higher education system and we need to think about the fact that we have actually a K through 16 system because the people who complete go for four more years. I think that that distinction made a lot more sense, say when I was a kid and about 25% of people went to university. Right.

But now it's become a majority institution. It's becoming more like high school in that sense. Kind of an expectation that, that you'll experience at some point.

Liam Heffernan: 00:24:11

Yeah, on that.

One of the, one of the big differences between the US and certainly here in the UK is that college is four years in the US and in the UK it's three years.

But also over here in the uk, you, you, you pick a course, you go to college, you, you do that specific subject for three years and you come out with a degree in that subject. It doesn't quite work that way in America, does it?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:24:35

No, no, not. And again, you know this, there are historical reasons for this too.

where I teach, with dates the: 1700

And today we would say, find themselves places where you could be at a remove, you could be at a physical distance from everything else and have a short period of contemplation, of self reflection and you would come out a quote, better man. And you know, to this day, I think that's at the corner of the liberal heart's ideal.

We don't have the religious, the explicit religious dimension to it because of course back then, you know, one of the things you were trying to do was kind of purify your soul and kind of wait for the grace of God.

And we don't phrase it that way anymore, but I think we have a secularized version of that where instead of, you know, choosing a couple subjects, you're going to study and then you go and get some job that's attached to their subject. What we imagine. And note I said imagine because it doesn't always work that way. Right.

We imagine that this will be a time of self exploration where you will actually discover the kind of human being you want to be.

Liam Heffernan: 00:26:11

So I'm just thinking about some of these big sweeping policies over the years that have been brought into a federal level to drive the, the sort of methodology, I guess, as to how people are taught and what they're taught. Things like, you know, no Child Left Behind.

What sort of impacts do these sort of big national policies have at a sort of school and college level in terms of how people are taught?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:26:38

Yes.

Jr. And I think that this is: 2001

And by radical I just mean. I mean like rad, dude. I just mean in a dictionary sense. Right.

An enormous departure from the past because again, even though we did have a federal Department of education, starting with Jimmy Carter, it was only during Jimmy Carter.

And also what no Child bond did, just for the listeners, very simply is required that the federal government requires schools to test kids, mostly in reading and math at different intervals. But then it also required the schools to tie sanctions, positive and negative, to the outcome of those tests.

out now, it also said that by: 2014

But here, the real irony of no Child Left behind is that it did all those things I described and it said, you've got to test the kids and you have to attach all these positive and negative sanctions to the outcomes, but it let you make your own tests.

And this is why my students say from China, they think no Child Left behind is hilarious because, you know, the Zimmermans of the world are saying, wow, what a radical increase in federal power. And again, it was. The idea of the federal government doing any of that was totally radical at the time.

But from the Chinese perspective, perspective, it's like centralization light. It's true. You're requiring certain things of everybody, and that's a form of centralization.

But over in China, I mean, you know, they got that GAO cow thing, right? They got that one test and that's it. Matt. Right. Talking about high stakes. I mean, here's the other thing. The.

The great irony in America is, you know, the critics of these tests, and I've been one of them often they call them high stakes tests. They're only high stakes for the school and the teachers and the principals. They're not high stakes for the kids.

We have other versions of that, like the sat. Right. But that's different. These tests. Right. It's not about sanctioning the kids. It's about sanctioning the school.

And, you know, my own kids are products of the Neurotran Left behind era. And they saw through this. They saw through this right away.

You know, the school does all these sort of propaganda efforts, you know, to get everybody into the test and bring out fuzzy creatures, you know, that. Talking about how well we're gonna do on the test. Test. But the kids saw immediately that there was actually no, there wasn't any.

There weren't any stakes for them personally. The stakes were all for the community.

Liam Heffernan: 00:29:21

It's. It. It feels to me like, though, if there's any flexibility whatsoever in. In.

In what's on the test, then it can be so easily gamed to suit the needs of the people running it, Right?

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:29:31

Oh, completely. And there were so many irrationalities. I mean, so many just perversions. There's no way of describing it.

I mean, at one point, it turned out that there were more proficient kids in Mississippi than in Massachusetts. And this is absurd because we do have some more standardized tests, like something called naep, this national assessment.

And we found out that Mississippi has the worst schools in America. But of course, they just made their cut score higher. Right. Massachusetts was more demanding. Right. So this was insane.

And it did create this really interesting set of reactions when Obama became president. President. Because Obama recognized all of this.

And what they tried to do was they tried to incentivize states to basically sign on to a shared standard that they called Common Core. But for all the reasons we're discussing, Liam, Common Core didn't work.

And the reason is a lot of people just didn't want the federal government telling them what they should do. Do. Yeah.

And Common Core created this bipartisan reaction, and it was like, really Republican people in Utah and then like the American Federation of Teachers. Right. Who normally agree about exactly nothing. They were like this Common Core.

veryone was not proficient in: 2014

We got this other thing, the latest revision called Every Student Succeeds. And God help me, who names this stuff? You know, there's someone, probably a guy in Capitol Hill, he's like, I named no Talent Biden.

I named Every Student Succeed. Just these absurd anodyne names, right? So Every Student Succeeds. I mean, I think a lot of people might not recognize this.

It's a significant walk back of neutral, left behind and it's kind dozens. Right.

I mean basically what it says, this is a little bit of a baltimization, but only a little is you still have to test the kids, but what you do with that is up to you. That's pretty much it. Right. So a significant lessening of the federal footprint.

And it also said that the federal government can't have anything to do with curriculum, can't mandate any curriculum.

And by the way, this is going to come up soon because of course, the Trump administration said things like we're going to prevent the school districts from teaching woke ideology. It's not clear they could do that even if they wanted to.

Now the irony is very thick because let's remember this is the new administration that says we shouldn't have a Department of Education because education should be a state and local matter. So now we're getting into the heart of the contradiction, right?

On the one hand, right, we just, we have to get rid of the Department of Ed because state and locality should govern us.

On the other hand, the federal government is going to for the first time actually determine what people learn and they're going to stop woke ideology.

So I think, you know, the, we're in, we're in a period of enormous flux because the no Tell Left behind era in some ways come to an end is too strong a term, but I think it's been highly attenuated. Every Student Succeeds. Really reduce the power of the federal government. It's still greater than it was in earlier eras.

And so now I think we're in this waiting period because we have an administration that's threatening both to reduce it and increase. Increased it at the same time. So we don't know what's going to happen.

Liam Heffernan: 00:32:56

I think the next four years are going to be a crazy time.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:33:02

Yeah, I mean, in the first Trump Administration. Education was not a big concern for the, for the Trumpers. You know, it wasn't really where they put their eggs in the basket.

This was the Betsy DeVos era. And, you know, Betsy DeVos was interesting.

She was the Secretary of Education because she didn't really seem to have any interest in public school schools. She was all about this thing called choice and, you know, charters and vouchers and parochial schools.

And so if Linda McMahon becomes a secretary, which he looks like, let's remember the former wrestling executive, you know, she actually was on the Connecticut State School board. You know, you know, I think tenuous credentials there. Yes. No, seriously.

I mean, it's amazing to say that, like, the former World Wrestling Federation executive is one of the more qualified of the nominees. I think she is. Is arguably, and she was on, like, the. The board of Sacred Heart University. I mean, you know, he's.

He's had something to do with education, and it'll be interesting to see because they may actually, she may be more interested in public schools than Betsy DeVos was. But, you know, if history is any judge, education is not going to be on the front burner. We'll see.

Liam Heffernan: 00:34:12

t in his campaign way back in: 2020

Just it might. It might not have been, you know, Frontline on his. On his campaign. Right, true.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:34:26

But it's still a state and local matter, right? Predominantly, and it will always be.

And, you know, I think the example of Ron DeSantis is really important here because, you know, DeSantis in some ways, I think, premised his own presidential campaign on the idea that, you know, the measures he had taken in Florida, you know, to stop WOKE and take over New College and all this stuff, that he could somehow, like, transmute that onto the federal stage, you know, and that he could be like this. This president who did for America and American education what he did for Florida. And it didn't work.

And I think there are many reasons it didn't work, but I think, you know, a lot of it was, again, that, you know, Americans looked at this and they said, like, do we really want Ron DeSantis or anybody being, like, the chief of all the schools?

And, you know, Trump, interestingly, you may remember, even though now he's talking about we have to get rid of woke ideology when DeSantis was still in the mix, you know, Trump, it's sort of like a broken clock. I mean, you know, twice a day he's Right. At one point he just says, this guy just keeps saying woke, woke, woke. He's like, what does that even mean?

Yeah, I mean, somebody could trot that out again now because. And he was right. Trump was right.

I mean, it was just sort of this free flowing signifier that, that DeSantis was using to say that he was going to allow like purge the whole country of Wokeism.

So, you know, the Ron DeSantis story, I think in some ways it suggests that education, because of its historical connection to local communities, is not going to be a great vehicle for these presidents to exert their power. But again, who knows? So many other things have been broken. None of us know.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:09

Yeah, exactly, exactly. John, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast.

We could talk about a lot more and I hope we can get you back on sometime to do that, that. But do let anyone know listening how they can connect with you directly if they do want to find out any more.

Jonathan Zimmerman: 00:36:25

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, just go to the University of Pennsylvania website and just look up Jonathan Zimmerman and you'll see, you'll see my coordinates there.

And thanks, Liam. This was really fun.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:38

Oh no, it was, it was, it was a great, great chat with you today. And obviously anyone listening to this, we're going to dump a load of links in the show notes as well, anything that John's mentioned throughout.

So you can, you can do your own reading up after this. Uh, also do connect with me on bluesky and on LinkedIn as well and tell us how much you love the podcast. That will make me very happy.

Uh, and also if you enjoy listening, uh, make sure you leave a rating and a review and click follow as well, because then all new episodes will just appear magically in your feed. Uh, and if you are so inclined, you can support the show from as little as one simple dollar.

Um, so if you do have any spare change, that would be awesome. Um, but otherwise, thank you so much for listening. Uh, thank you to John and goodbye.