Why Do You Fear Education?: Why We Must Imagine a New World

“Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes this sentence amidst thinking about a school district in South Carolina debating whether or not to ban his book Between the World and Me and to fire the teacher, Mary, who assigned it in her Advanced Placement English course. As I reread The Message alongside Kristen Ghodsee’s Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary Women and Jason Stanley’s Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, I keep thinking, again and again, about the role of education and, more importantly, the liberal arts, in the formation and maintaining of democracy. I think about Henry Grioux who points out, as does Audre Lorde, Stanley, and countless others, that education is political, no matter what one does; however, he adds that while “we cannot eliminate politics, . . . we can work against a politics of certainty, a pedagogy of censorship, and institutional forms that close down rather than open up democratic relations.”

Individuals become afraid, as we have seen, of these “democratic relations,” the expanding of ideas that challenge their very positions and the very ways that they view themselves when they gaze upon their own reflection. If we proclaim and seek democracy, we must be open to conversations, collaboration, and a…