It’s time to take back our public education system

I am the son of Iowa educators and the product of 23 years of public instruction and training. It is with shame and embarrassment that I have witnessed the systematic dumbing down and dismantling of public education by our legislature and governor.

Under their stewardship, we have seen consistent underfunding of education relative to inflation and the diversion of hundreds of millions of tax dollars to private, largely religious, schools which are not equally accessible to all students. A once proud educational system has now been relegated to second tier status in national rankings.

With the conquest and destruction of primary education well underway, Des Moines has now set its sights on our universities. We have been told (without any evidence) of the indoctrination of young minds by sneaky college professors. I spent 10 years in Iowa City during a period of significant political discord and somehow never caught on to their devious methods.

Using the services of a paid consultant from Manhattan who based her recommendations on an absurdly small sample size, legislators were told of the need to remove some areas of study from the curriculum of higher educational institutions. Our paternalistic leaders in state government have decided they must remove majors that might not offer a positive financial bottom line. We must not let college students choose what they want to study when legislators with zero educational expertise can do it for them. Really?

Now a School of Intellectual Freedom is poised to be created by legislative mandate. Students would study how free societies are formed, "especially that of the United States," the principles of the U.S. government, and the "basics of leadership and informed citizenship." Additionally, students will learn skills to "seek the truth" and make "informed conclusions" about social and political issues. The ”historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped American constitutional order” would be emphasized.

I think it’s “Project 2025.” Safe to say that uncomfortable truths such as the violent subjugation of Native Americans, Tulsa’s Black Wall Street massacre, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, lynchings and the fact that they were not federally outlawed until 2022, racism, and that our Declaration of Independence speaks of “merciless Indian savages” will not be subjects of study. Don’t let impressionable college students learn that our country made terrible mistakes in the past. Don’t allow these young minds to make informed decisions and have the opportunity to learn from those errors and avoid repeating them.

Can you imagine how employers would clamor for graduates with a degree in Intellectual Freedom? Talk about payback! It is useful to recall that our legislators who claim a mandate have ignored the fact that a significant majority of Iowans oppose using public funds for private education. The individuals who have proposed these legislative acts (not written them-that is done by out of state actors) are some of the same people who have proposed castration as punishment. They are the group of repressive bullies who made Iowa the first state in the nation to remove equal rights protection from a group of Iowans.

Does anyone else see any irony in the fact that a group of people who say they fervently support personal liberty and free speech are the very same people who seek to control what words we can say, what we can learn, what books we can read, what we think, and who our acquaintances are? It’s time to take back control of our state’s education from regressive amateurs in the legislature and governor’s office. Experts guided us and created a highly respected system of which we were proud. Let them do their job again and resuscitate public education at all levels.

Scott Nau is a semiretired pediatrician from Cedar Rapids.