I don’t think it needs to have been a deliberate plan. It’s just the natural consequence of the “Fuck you, I got mine” attitude of the wealthy.
Also generations of cutting a few percent from a budget each year leaves a fraction of what our parents had. Compare spending per student now to when America put people on the moon. The right is deliberately choking education which has caused it to be so bad compared to other Western culture countries.
Semi-related: The right-wing economist Roger Freeman, advisor to both Reagan and Nixon was vehemently and openly against education for everyone, declaring that an ‘educated proletariat’ was like ‘dynamite’ and would somehow lead to student riots and the devaluation of higher education, openly pushing for education for elites only.
He was also a major influence on federal student loan program - some credit him as the architect of American student debt.
I do wonder if his attempts to push right wingers against higher education has harmed US education as a whole.
Common enough opinion for arch-neoliberals
US education varies wildly from state to state.
But the ones who degrade it, yeah, are doing it intentionally.
there are places where this is true, but there are also places that value education. my kindergarten class was taught by one of the world authorities in early childhood education (i did not know that, nor did my parents, nor did the community, until we saw Mrs. K lecturing the UN on CNN a couple decades later). As with all things, you get out of it what you put into it. The US is still too diverse to generalize Oklahoma with Oregon.
Bullshit.
