Tag: education

Word Scrubbing: An Exercise in Making People Invisible

Pat Liberty

Word scrubbing is the practice of erasing language that points to particular people or things. Word scrubbing makes a whole list of vulnerable people invisible. According to Elizabeth Power, M.Ed., Adjunct Instructor, Georgetown University Medical Center and founder of The Trauma Informed Academy, the following are words that can trigger additional scrutiny in a grant application or request for program funding from the Federal Government:

  • Activist, activism, advocate, advocacy, background, barrier, barriers, biased, bias, BIPOC, Black and Latinx
  • Community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive
  • Disabilities, discrimination, discriminatory, diversified, diversity
  • Enhancing, equality, equal opportunity, equitable, ethnicity, excluded
  • Female, fostering, gender, groups, hate speech, Hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias
  • Inclusion, inclusive, increase, indigenous community, inequalities, inequity, institutional
  • Justice, LGBTQ, marginalize, minorities, multicultural, polarization, political, privilege, prejudice, promoting
  • Race, racial, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, status, stereotype
  • Trauma, underappreciated, underrepresented, underserved, victims, women

This list includes most of the people Jesus spent his life reaching out to, loving and ministering to.

Jesus fed the hungry, made the blind see, cared for the poor and included everyone in the circle of God’s concern and love.

By removing these words from the lexicon of public programming and grant funding, the populations represented behind these words are essentially removed from public view. They are “disappeared” like political dissidents in authoritarian regimes. It also ensures that these populations will continue to be underserved and underrepresented in the public arena.

By erasing these words, the US is rewinding the clock at least 50 years to a time when the differently abled, wounded, gender divergent, and abused, to name just a few, were routinely excluded from resources, programs and funding that helped heal and empower them. Removing funding for these groups also isolates them from the mainstream of human life by taking away resources they need to function in society.

Many of Jesus’ miracles were as much about restoring people to their community as they were about healing physical maladies. For instance, in biblical times, women who were menstruating were considered ritually unclean and had to absent themselves from their community. In the story from Luke 8, a woman with an issue of blood was perpetually isolated from her community. When she was healed, not only was her physical health restored, she also was able to rejoin her community.

This word scrubbing policy directive in our time is a move toward a historically unkind and limiting time in the lives of many people. It is despicable that this is now public policy for funding initiatives. It begs the question, what kind of programs will be funded? Summer camp for blond hair, blued eyed rich kids from the suburbs? Private limo transportation for Buffy and Muffy to their piano lessons?

It is yet another of the occupant and his cronies’ fly by night slash and burn public policy initiatives that stay under the radar.  If the day’s news hasn’t given you reason to contact your legislators, this is it. If we stay silent, the populations that are being “disappeared” don’t have a chance.

The Changing Face of Education

Pat Liberty

Last week the occupant signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. Ultimately the Department can only be abolished by Congress, but with a Republican majority in the House and Senate this should not be a problem.

What is a problem, however, is the implications of this action. The occupant is moving to privatize education through block grants given directly to states. States already control a majority of the money that funds education, so his stated reason for dismantling the department is disingenuous at best.

Federal dollars are approved by Congress and given to the Department of Education to allocate to states. Giving the money to states as block grants means that parents could use vouchers to send their children to private schools. As Project 2025 states, parents should have the authority to determine how their children are educated. Translation: parents can use public monies to send their children to private school.

In the current system, federal funds are primarily used to support underperforming schools and offer additional resources for poor children. Children with disabilities, 95% of whom are educated in public schools, will have less access to adequate education that accommodates their disabilities. Block grants that allow parents to purchase vouchers means that public schools, especially those in low-income communities will have fewer resources.

The Department of Education champions enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in education and assuring that every student has access to an education that will help them reach their potential. Dismantling the department means defunding programs that feed, educate, and protect vulnerable and underserved students.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), eliminating programs like Title 1 will divert money from schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty. Support such as reading specialists and smaller class sizes would be eliminated. Reading scores nationally are falling. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), national reading scores declined for both fourth and eighth grade students. Reading scores fell to a record low in 2019 and 2022. A record number of students performed below basic reading competency.  Eliminating reading specialists seems ill advised at best. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, 180,000 teaching positions could be lost, affecting 2.8 million students in low-income communities.

It is likely that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be moved to the Department of Justice. This would practically eliminate the Office’s capacity to protect students against discrimination based on gender, race and disability. The absence of strong federal oversight would leave millions of students vulnerable to discrimination.

Under this cockamamie plan the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would be transferred to another agency, as yet undefined. Over 7.5 million students, or 15% of the student population, receive special education services. Administering funds as block grants to states is unlikely to result in funding special education programs. The public schools that will get the left-overs after parents purchase their private school vouchers will have inadequate resources to fulfill the Individual Education Plans (IEP’s) that many students have to accommodate their learning disabilities.  

The overall goal is to privatize education which will leave the poorest and most vulnerable students, especially those with special needs, in underperforming public schools. The whole of Project 2025 is geared toward victimizing our most vulnerable populations. The Department of Education is just the latest casualty assuring that those in greatest need will get the fewest resources.

The Department of Education is four percent of the entire national budget. Surely eliminating four percent of the budget does nothing to address the national deficit, but it consigns thousands of children to inadequate education that will allow them to function in the future.

Assuring that every child gets an education is a foundation of a stable society. Students that are unable to read or function in the work-a-day world will be trapped in low-wage jobs that will continue the cycle of poverty. How this claims to have Christian values is mind-boggling. Jesus railed against unjust social and political systems that trapped people in poverty. Dismantling the Department of Education is just the latest casualty in Trump’s misguided plan to victimize the poor and under-resource those in most need.