As you would expect, deficiencies in American education each school year will impact the future as each K-12 graduating class blends into the population. They take with them a lumpy mix of classroom lessons and life experiences from outside of school.

Some grads will go straight into the work force while others choose college or military service. Some won’t graduate, leaving them to find a living wage without specialist training that might justify higher wages. A few may explore criminality and eventually find 3 hots and a cot inside one of America’s many “Grey Bar Hotels”.

“The argument has been made that the worm of Nixon’s Southern Strategy laid the eggs for Reagan and Falwell’s Moral Majority, the larval form of the Tea Party, and finally bursting from its chrysalis into Trump’s golden MAGA movement.” Source: From the Tea Party to MAGA – How White Christian Nationalism Is Taking Control of the US, João Ferreira Dias, European Center for Populism Studies, https://www.populismstudies.org/from-the-tea-party-to-maga-how-white-christian-nationalism-is-taking-control-of-the-us/

Since the start of Trump’s MAGA movement in 2016, its supporters show a different understanding of civics than what I learned in 9th grade civics, indicating significant discrepancies in our views on the practical functioning of American democracy.

Any fool can describe from their perspective of how American civil society actually functions in its tangle of interconnections and dead ends with what the ideal tangle should look like. MAGA followers believe that they have been systematically kept from the “Good Life” in America by a supposed “Deep State” of elites with their woke-agenda governmental agencies.

In the imagination of MAGA followers the “elites” are a dark coterie of liberals comprising intellectuals, university professors, LGBTQ+, environmental activists and others in the festering carbuncle of liberal wokism. Or so it goes. The accusations of deep state machinations and conniving and woke elites steering an otherwise god-fearing and patriotic nation into disrepute and moral disfigurement was gratefully accepted by disgruntled millions.

As each 12^th grade graduating class shambles into the future, we drag along our predispositions, learnings and fresh skills in our survival tool kits. For some, the tool kits are satisfactory. For others, not so much. Many are unaware of what should be in the kits in the first place. Most of us carry knowledge and skills that are hardly used and initially appeared to be a waste of time.

Everyone carries educational deficiencies of some sort into the future. For some, the gaps in education hardly matter in our lives. Sometimes it does matter.

I’ll get to the point. If you did not take or pay attention in civics class, graduation dumps you off into American life with little understanding of how our government works and how politics is woven into the fabric of our lives.

Many who are deficient in civics have trouble avoiding a cynical and sarcastic outlook over government and politics. Rather than admit to ignorance and resolving to improve, many rest on the assumption that politics = corruption. As with all human endeavors, there is some truth to this.

Public schools in the USA are much maligned and have been under attack by those who seek to embed them in an overall religious education. I refer to conservative protestant evangelical organizations. ALEX, the conservative American Legislative Exchange, is a source of written legislation and municipal codes or other rule making text that is used at the local level of politics including municipalities and school districts. Those wishing to legislate their religious beliefs onto school children find this service very useful. It gives continuity to large scale implementation of protestant evangelical doctrine.

School districts in my state have elected board members who have transplanted religious doctrine from ALEX to school boards in conservative areas. One of the best ways to convince governing groups to adopt new rules is to supply them with text to adopt rather than depending on the members to gin up their own text.

I once gave a presentation to our town board hoping they would adopt a Dark Sky Initiative. At the end of my presentation I handed out copies of ordinances adopted by other communities. My request was ignored but a few years later and with another presentation by someone else an ordinance was eventually adopted. By that time outdoor LED light fixtures with horizontal cutoff were widely available and ordinary. Nobody had to take a chance with a new policy.

Many within and from the public schools bemoan the lack of financial and religious education in the schools. I would argue that this is fundamentally the responsibility of the family. In my area, we have a mixture of Mormons, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Atheists and Lutherans. Which religious sect should design and teach religious curriculum? Should your Mormon child’s religious studies be taught by a Baptist? What if one group viewed it as well balanced but the Mormons say it is deficient in their doctrines. Imagine the cat fight. Leave the religious indoctrination to Sunday school. The public school curriculum should remain secular just like math and physical education.

Today American liberal democracy is collapsing because 1/3 of the voters misunderstand the basics of democracy. America has always had an anti-intellectual bent and today with social media, ignorant citizens reinforce their ignorance through connection with the wider collection of dullards and lazy thinkers online.