Laura Ingraham is the latest on the far right to attack a bedrock institution of American society: public schools. The Fox News propagandist on Thursday called to “defund government education” and wrongly implied the National Education Association, a labor union, was responsible for establishing education standards and curricula, which is the responsibility of government agencies.
Ingraham hosted Terry Stoops of the right-wing think tank The John Locke Foundation, which Accountable.US has said “repeatedly alleged Democrats conspired to allow widespread voter fraud.”
Stoops complained that Twitter took action against him after he posted what allegedly were proposed agenda items from the National Education Association’s annual meeting. Ingraham showed excerpts saying the NEA will support the right to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and other mainstream positions, which Ingraham attacked as “whackpot declarations.”
Reading some of the proposed items, Ingraham mocked them, saying, “Reading, writing, and abortion.”
Stoops berated the NEA’s discussion of critical issues facing America, suggesting the group, America’s largest labor union and not a think tank or government education agency, was advancing an “insane agenda.”
Ingraham jumped in, calling for an end to public schools, and saying taxpayer funds should be diverted to private education.
As Media Matters reports, Ingraham said the NEA’s annual meeting “is more like a political rally for the far left.”
“I mean, it’s kind of a combination of Human Rights Campaign, BLM, you know, Earth Justice League, whatever it is,” Ingraham continued, conflating a union agenda with a government agency’s work.
“But what it’s not about is education and this is why I think, Terry, a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents so they can say, ‘No, we’re not doing this anymore.’ And I think that just has to happen. We have to stop funding this madness.”
Since colonial times in America public schools, supported by taxes, have existed. In the mid-1800s states began to make public education mandatory. But as the religious right has grown in power, conservatives have tried to steer tax dollars away from public schools and into private and religious schools.
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