GOP WETDREAM

Could Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?

Getting rid of the agency would cause a lot of harm and wouldn’t really change school curriculum.

by Ellen Ioanes

 Nov 20, 2024,

President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the Department of Education will likely become clearer during Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearings. 

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While campaigning, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to dismantle the US Department of Education (DOE), on the basis that the federal education apparatus is “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material.”

“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states,” Trump said in a 2023 video outlining his education policy goals. “We want them to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”

Trump on Tuesday nominated his former Small Business Administration head (and former wrestling executive) Linda McMahon to be the education secretary. Closing the DOE wouldn’t be easy, but it isn’t impossible — and even if the department remains open, there are certainly ways Trump and McMahon could radically change education in the United States. Here’s what’s possible.

Can Trump actually close the DOE?

Technically, yes.

However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.”

That’s not such an easy prospect, even though the Republicans look set to take narrow control of the Senate and the House. That’s because abolishing the department “would require 60 votes unless the Republicans abolish the filibuster,” Jal Mehta, professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Vo

Without the filibuster rule, legislation would need a simple majority to pass, but senators have been hesitant to get rid of it in recent years. With the filibuster in place, Republicans would need some Democratic senators to join their efforts to kill the department. The likelihood of Democratic senators supporting such a move is almost nonexistent.

That means the push to unwind the department is probably largely symbolic. And that is the best-case scenario, Jon Valant, director of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, told Vox. According to Valant, dismantling it would simultaneously damage the US education system while also failing to accomplish Trump’s stated goals.

Closing the department “would wreak havoc across the country,” Valant said. “It would cause terrible pain. It would cause terrible pain in parts of the country represented by congressional Republicans too.”

Much of that pain would likely fall on the country’s most vulnerable students: poor students, students in rural areas, and students with disabilities. That’s because the department’s civil rights powers help it to support state education systems in providing specialized resources to those students.

Furthermore, much of what Trump and MAGA activists claim the agency is responsible for — like teaching critical race theory and LGBTQ “ideology” — isn’t actually the purview of the DOE; things like curriculum and teacher choice are already the domain of state departments of education. And only about 10 percent of federal public education funding flows to state boards of education, according to Valant. The rest comes primarily from tax sources, so states and local school districts are already controlling much of the funding structure of their specific public education systems.

“I find it a little bewildering that the US Department of Education has become such a lightning rod here, in part because I don’t know how many people have any idea what the department actually does,” Valant said.

Even without literally shutting the doors to the federal agency, there could be ways a Trump administration could hollow the DOE and do significant damage, Valant and Kettl said.

The administration could require the agency to cut the roles of agency employees, particularly those who ideologically disagree with the administration. It could also appoint officials with limited (or no) education expertise, hampering the department’s day-to-day work.

Trump officials could also attempt changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too “woke.”

Finally, Trump could use the department’s leadership role to affect policy indirectly: “There’s power that comes from just communicating to states what you would like to see” being taught in schools, Valant said. “And there are a lot of state leaders around the country who seem ready to follow that lead.”

Trump’s plans for the department will likely become clearer during McMahon’s confirmation hearings. She has been an advocate for the school choice movement, and posted praise for the hands-on education gained through apprenticeships shortly before her nomination was made public.

Update, November 20, 11:45 am ET: This story was originally published on November 13 and has been updated to reflect Linda McMahon’s nomination for education secretary.

Ellen Ioanes covers breaking and general assignment news as the weekend reporter at Vox. She previously worked at Business Insider covering the military and global conflicts.

Amid Legacies of Colonial and Anti-Trans Harm, Two-Spirits Struggle for Safety

This Trans Day of Remembrance, we are holding Nex Benedict and all Two-Spirit people in our hearts.

By Desiree Kane & Jen Byers , 

Truthout

November 20, 2024

People gather outside the Stonewall Inn for a memorial and vigil for Oklahoma teenager, Nex Benedict, who died after being bullied in a high school bathroom, on February 26, 2024, in New York City.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Nex Benedict was a Tulsa-area teen of Choctaw descent. His friends described him as an “adventurous little thing” who had a flair for creating art with a sense of ease. They called him “Roachie,” and he was loved.

After Nex’s death in February 2024, his portrait splayed across international news, vigils and social media posts. The picture shows Nex with deep brown eyes, short, loose brown curls grown out a little bit and a gentle smile. Nex has a crisp white shirt and black vest on. He looks like he’s dressed up for a dance or recital, at that cusp age of 16, when pre-teen clothes are out and quality vintage clothes become of interest.

On February 8, 2024, Nex collapsed and died at his home. The day before, he sustained a head injury during severe bullying at his school, Owasso High. The medical examiner ruled Nex’s passing a suicide after finding an antidepressant and an allergy medication in his system. This finding has been questioned repeatedly by local community members and national organizers.

“Regardless if it was caused by the fight or suicide, Nex died from bullying. Period,” said Olivia Carter, administrative coordinator for Oklahomans for Equality.

Nex’s death did not happen in a vacuum.

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Op-Ed |
LGBTQ Rights
Our Mourning for Nex Benedict Calls Us to Action Against Transphobia and Fascism
Nex Benedict, a gender-expansive teen in Oklahoma, died the day after enduring a beating in their high school bathroom.
By Kelly Hayes , TruthoutFebruary 23, 2024

In the immediate wake of his passing, a discourse erupted about anti-trans legislation, social neglect and health care inequity. But, in order to fully understand Nex’s death by bulling, this present history needs to be analyzed alongside histories ofthe boarding school system and the Indian Removal Act — policies that resulted in land theft, warfare, cultural genocide and widespread propaganda campaigns that stoked fear, dehumanization and colonial violence against Indigenous and Two-Spirit peoples.

Both the anti-trans campaigns and the boarding school system share a key component: the attempt of the far right United States political body to enforce a heteronormative, Christian identity on the public. And both the boarding school system and the anti-trans campaigns have yielded lethal results.

Since the introduction of anti-trans bathroom bills in 2015, anti-trans rhetoric and policy have been on the rise throughout the U.S. The increased vitriol against trans people has resulted in over 650 anti-2SLGBTQ+ (Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and additional sexual orientations and gender identities) policies being introduced in 2024 alone. As a high political watermark, the Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist Project 2025 paints a picture of the U.S. where transgender ideas are codified as “pornographic” and are thus minimized, if not eradicated, from public life.

Despite the majority of the U.S. population believing that trans people should be protected from discrimination, trans identities, culture and medical care have been used by the far right as an effective wedge issue in U.S. politics. This tactic of engaging a “hot-button” or controversial topic to drum up political fervor often includes pushing bigotry against a perceived mortal threat of “the other.”

This bigotry, often stoked by moral panic and misinformation, has been used to create support for policies that marginalize members of the public and restrict basic bodily autonomy. When enacted, othering policies limit, or even remove, the demonized community’s ability to get their basic needs (like gender-affirming care or a safe abortion) met above ground. Thus, these life-supporting services become less and less publicly available — especially to poor, Black, Indigenous, undocumented and/or rural communities.

This pattern (of social and political othering that results in the denial of material resources)is a key tactic of the violence that underpins settler colonialism in the U.S., and public institutions (like schools) are key enforcers of settler values. Thus, the history and impact of the settler-led school system on LGBTQ and Indigenous communities must be understood in order to fully unpack the broader circumstances surrounding Nex Benedict’s death.

Just Because It’s Legal Doesn’t Make It Right

Starting in 1819, the U.S. government instituted a sprawling schooling system consisting of 408 federal Indian boarding schools meant to “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Made possible by legislation such as the Indian Removal Act, these schools aimed to assimilate Native children into settler society by forcibly removing them from their families and raising them in group homes.

These schools were often run by abusive, state-funded Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox Christian religious groups, and they operated for over 150 years. Shortly after this, many of the religious schools became state-run. Structurally, these schools enforced cultural genocide via the tactic of assimilation, which continues to severely and negatively affect young people — especially (but not exclusively) Native children.

“This suppression … is linked to the claiming and the colonization of space. I see a direct link,” said Taté Walker, a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, a Two-Spirit storyteller and co-founder of the Phoenix Two Spirit Community group. Walker is a well-respected Two-Spirit teacher and parent who educates on tribal issues, including how the modern U.S. school system is built on tactics from the boarding school era.

“Everyone who attends these schools is not receiving community wellness teachings, elder care, lessons about protecting the air and water,” Walker told Truthout. “We are not receiving information about how our past continually cycles itself. We’re not given information on how to prevent violent events from recurring — such as a kid [whose death] is deemed a suicide. It’s left at that ridiculously simplistic reasoning, when in fact it’s hundreds and hundreds of years of stochastic terrorism, transphobia, homophobia — all set up to make a violent environment for someone like Nex Benedict.”

Indigenous residential schools, whether run by the state or religious groups, were quite literally designed to strip away the languages, cultures and community structures of non-Christian peoples in order to make them more like European settlers. Children were forced to speak English, follow the Bible and live in church-sanctioned, cis-hetero, nuclear families. This forced assimilation is a key component of cultural genocide, and it is a clear violation of international law.

“It benefits the folks in power to keep down people with their own sense of power and medicine. They see beyond the status quo. They’re fighting for a society that recognizes justice and fights injustice, that all classes are able to exist,” Walker explained.

According to Native scholars, an estimated 40,000 Native children died in the boarding schools. In these schools, the administrators subjected children to consistent abuse, malnutrition, sexual assault, manual labor, beatings and neglect. Many children’s bodies were never returned to their families and were instead buried in unmarked, sometimes mass, graves. Hundreds, potentially thousands, of deaths were never reported at all, and innumerable family records were lost or destroyed. These graveyards can be visited all over the continent openly today.

In a 2022 report, the Bureau of Indian Affairs acknowledged that there is “inconsistent Federal reporting of child deaths, including the number and cause or circumstances of death, and burial sites.” Burial grounds at the boarding schools epitomize this deadly system. The bureau describes “The intentional targeting […] of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children to achieve the goal of forced assimilation of Indian people” as “both traumatic and violent.”

A recent 2024 Department of the Interior report confirmed that at least 973 Indigenous children died at the boarding schools in the United States and were buried in one of at least 74 mass graves. The schools cost the public the equivalent of $23 billion in today’s dollars.

This report, and a similar investigation in Canada, highlight the scale at which settler governments and religious groups used these institutions as tools of cultural genocide and violent relocation efforts. Through assimilation-centered education and punishment, paid for by public funding and encouraged by federal policy, school officials enforced settler culture. All of this happened at the expense of Indigenous children’s lives and safety.

President Joe Biden acknowledged the scale of these harms in October 2024 when he issued a formal apology on behalf of the U.S. government for the violence of the schools.

Many survivors of these schools argue that, historically, there has truly never been a culture of care and commitment to the survival of Indigenous, especially Two-Spirit, youth in settler-led schools. Many believe the violence of the boarding school era still resonates today.

A Living History of Violence

Nex Benedict was an Indigenous trans youth, and the settler system appears to have not changed much since 1819. Oklahoma, where Nex Benedict lived, had 95 Indigenous boarding schools — the most known of any state in the U.S. There were at least five in the Tulsa area near where he lived.

So, when the public asks, “How did this happen?” The answer is that lawlessness, forced assimilation and Indigenous death have always been critical facets of the settler school system.

In Nex’s case, this history manifested in 2024 through neglect and legislation-backed prejudice. Administrators failed to step in during the year of bullying Nex suffered. Anti-trans politics created a moral panic around bathroom use. The demonization of LGBTQ-inclusive educational materials stoked ignorance and a devaluation of lives like Nex’s. Collectively, the far right policies in the Oklahoma education system and all the adults who uphold them are responsible for the hostile environment that killed Nex.

Shortly before Nex’s death, a 12-year-old named Eli, a gay child from Oklahoma, also died by suicide following extensive bullying that his school repeatedly failed to address.

“We are told, ‘If you are bullied so badly, why don’t you fight back?’ and in the next breath, ‘If you wouldn’t have fought back, this never would have happened.’ We are forced to play a rigged game,” said an Owassa High alum at a school board meeting in mid-March. “Let me be very clear, we will not allow this to continue.”

In Oklahoma, advocacy groups like Freedom Oklahoma and the ACLU continue to offer educational, social and legal opposition to anti-trans policies and social bigotry. They offer community support groups, volunteer training and gatherings in order to build collective power and solidarity among LGBTQ folks and their allies. But they have their work cut out for them.

In the week immediately following Nex’s death, the national youth crisis line Rainbow Youth Project reported receiving a surge of at least 1,000 calls — with a 200 percent increase specifically from Oklahoma. Many callers reported that they, too, were being bullied.
Going Forward

“The history of how Oklahoma was founded in lawlessness is important. The violence in how the state itself was created is critical in understanding why and how the current climate is adversarial when it comes to the State of Oklahoma and the Tribes, Tribal people,” explained Rebecca Nagle, Two-Spirit Cherokee author of By the Fire We Carry. “The Tribal schools the Indigenous kids were taken out of taught literature, art and global languages. The government put [Indigenous children] into the state-run school system that the kids exist within today. The state was started with ruthless lawlessness, not arts and collaboration, at its beginning.”

The modern-day attacks on trans health care have, similarly, influenced public policy, despite ample scientific and social research supporting trans rights. This disparity — between known, proven research and the lawlessness of anti-trans hatred — reflects a deeper political misinformation crisis that seeks to further reduce the autonomy and freedoms of marginalized people. Similar to the forced assimilation of Indigenous children in the boarding schools, the current anti-trans push is an attempt to lethally enforce a culturally-specific political structure onto a group of people that, simply, does not agree with or wish to live within it.

From 2023-2024, the Trans Legislation Tracker shows that, in Oklahoma, anti-trans bills have increased 46.3 percent — from 41 to 60. Oklahoma is a major node of the national anti-trans campaign, with 4.5 times more anti-trans bills than the average state and 8.8 percent of all anti-trans bills introduced this year. These bills restrict health care, access to education, sports, medical care and other aspects of public life — and, in many ways, seem to be a clear attempt to eliminate a people as a people, a core component of the UN definition of genocide.

When asked what Indigenous Two-Spirit youth in Oklahoma should do — be visible or remain in the closet — Nagle reckons with a difficult reply.

“Coming out and being visible is a very personal decision. There’s no telling young people what to do when it’s something so personal,” Nagle explains. “It can be very dangerous. I also know from my own experience that it can also be very dangerous to stay in the closet. It’s a very personal and important decision, and the stakes are just so very high in Oklahoma.”

Desiree Kane
Desiree Kane is a Miwok descendant and multimedia journalist focused on producing stories with a conscience at the intersection of Indigenous peoples and the environment. Follow Desiree on Bluesky.


Jen Byers
Jen Byers (they/she) is a visual and investigative journalist. Their work has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Showtime, CalMatters and elsewhere. Follow Jen on Bluesky.

'I’m not here to fight': First trans member of Congress responds to Johnson’s bathroom ban

WOMENS BATHROOMS HAVE CUBICLES FOR PRIVACY

MENS HAVE URINALS  AND 2 - 3 CUBICLES

Sarah McBride, Delaware state senator and candidate for United States Representative, is interviewed by Reuters in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., October 26, 2024. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski

David Badash

November 20, 2024

U.S. Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) says she will “follow the rules” after Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson issued a ban on transgender women using women’s restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, a direct reaction to McBride becoming the first transgender member of Congress.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” McBride (photo, center), 34, a member of the Delaware state Senate, said in a statement. “Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

“This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as l’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January. Serving in the 119th Congress will be the honor of a lifetime – and I continue to look forward to getting to know my future colleagues on both sides of the aisle.”

“Each of us were sent here because voters saw something in us that they value. I have loved getting to see those qualities in the future colleagues that I’ve met and I look forward to seeing those qualities in every member come January. I hope all of my colleagues will seek to do the same with me.”

McBride’s comments followed a wave of targeted attacks on social media and in the news by U.S. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC). Reports indicate that Mace posted over 260 messages on social media within 36 hours, specifically targeting McBride and transgender women more broadly.

Among them, a video in which Mace declared she will file legislation to make the ban on transgender women using women’s restrooms a national ban for all federal properties.

Speaker Johnson on Tuesday had insisted he was not interested in implementing any new rules, and was “not going to engage in this.”

“We don’t look down upon anyone,” he proudly told reporters, before adding, “a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.”

Twenty-four hours later Johnson issued his ban.

“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings – such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms – are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson’s statement reads. “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol.”

“Women deserve women’s only spaces,” he concluded, not offering the same claim for men.

While Mace led the attacks against McBride and transgender people in general, Huffpostreports, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) even suggested she would physically fight McBride for using the ladies’ room.”

Mace also waged her campaign against McBride in the news media, telling Forbes that the Congresswoman-elect was “absolutely” a “threat” to her personally. She claimed, “any man who wants to force his junk into the bathroom stall next to me or in a dressing room watching me, that is an assault on women.”

Forbes also notes, “McBride has never been accused of sexual misconduct or any kind of threatening behavior.”

The South Carolina Republican’s baseless allegations against McBride come just a few years after Mace began her congressional career by claiming to be pro-LGBTQ.

“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,” Mace said in 2021. “No one should be discriminated against.”

“I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ,” she added. “Understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.”

Mace, as Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman reports, is also fundraising off her attacks.



Watch the video above or at this link.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity ...

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Gay Old Communists

 

'A vision of benevolence': Why Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s legacy endures in France

EXPLAINER

Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Pablo Neruda at the poet’s former home in Santiago during his visit to Chile on Wednesday, highlighting the enduring bond between the Nobel laureate and France. This connection, which began more than 80 years ago, was both literary and political, with France serving as both a refuge and a platform for Neruda’s voice during crucial moments in his life.

Issued on: 20/11/2024 By:Anaelle JONAH

Chilean writer, poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda, then ambassador in France, answers journalists' questions on October 21, 1971 next to his wife at the Chilean embassy in Paris after being awarded the 1971 Nobel Literature Prize. © AFP

President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte paid tribute to Pablo Neruda during a private visit to La Chascona, the poet’s historic home in Santiago, Chile, on Wednesday. This visit, part of Macron’s Latin American tour, highlighted the profound bond between Neruda and France, a nation that continues to honour the poet's influence through schools, libraries, and cultural institutions bearing his name.

Nearly a century ago, Pablo Neruda arrived in Paris, a city that shaped his poetic and political journey. Stéphanie Decante, a professor of Hispanic literature at the University of Nanterre who translated and edited Neruda’s works, said that France had been the ultimate symbol of intellectual freedom for many Latin American writers.

“For Latin America, France was the City of Light, the centre of culture, in contrast to Spain, which was politically and culturally tainted by colonialism,” she said.

Literary awakening

Neruda’s fascination with French literature began early. While studying at the University of Chile, he immersed himself in the works of French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and Victor Hugo, initially intending to become a French teacher.

Early acclaim for his poetry brought him respect among Chilean intellectuals, but Europe’s cultural dominance made Paris the ultimate aspiration. "What are you doing here? You must go to Paris," he recalled strangers asking him in his memoirs.

When Neruda first encountered Paris in the 1920s, he joined a wave of Latin American writers drawn to its avant-garde scene, such as Peruvian poet and writer César Vallejo. In the 1930s, Neruda formed lasting friendships with French poets Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon, whose influence expanded his literary horizons.

Aragon in particular played a pivotal role in introducing Neruda to French audiences, facilitating the publication of "L’Espagne au cœur" (Spain in the Heart) in 1938. This collection, published within Communist circles, positioned Neruda as a politically committed poet. In later decades, his work would be published by the prestigious Gallimard publishing house.

“He moved from a politically charged framework tied to the Communist Party to being represented by a publishing house that transformed him into a more universal poet”, Decante explained.

Read morePrix Goncourt: Kamel Daoud wins France's literary prize for Algerian Civil War novel ‘Houris’

From poet to rescuer

Pablo Neruda was deeply affected by the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939), a brutal conflict between the Republican government and Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces that led to the Franco dictatorship. This pivotal struggle became a central focus of Neruda’s political and literary efforts. 

In Paris, he collaborated with British writer Nancy Cunard to co-found the literary review "Les Poètes du Monde Défendent le Peuple Espagnol" (Poets of the World Defend the Spanish People). Proceeds from the publication funded humanitarian aid for those suffering under Franco's regime, exemplifying Neruda’s conviction that poetry and politics could unite to serve justice and humanity.

In 1939, Neruda’s commitment took a historic turn as nearly 500,000 Spanish Republicans, including soldiers and civilians, crossed the French border following the fall of Catalonia. With France ill-prepared for such a large influx, the refugees found themselves in dire conditions, many being forced into internment camps.

As Chile’s consul for Spanish immigration, Neruda spearheaded a bold rescue mission, arranging the voyage of over 2,000 Spanish Republicans to Chile aboard a ship named "Winnipeg". He later described this effort as both “the noblest mission (he had) ever undertaken” and his “most beautiful poem".

French exit

Neruda’s ties with France deepened during his exile. In 1948, Chile’s right-wing government, led by President Gabriel González Videla, accused him of subversion due to his Communist affiliations. Forced to flee, Neruda embarked on a harrowing but poetic journey through the Andes to Argentina and ultimately to France. 

In Paris, he re-emerged as a symbol of resistance. Neruda's arrival at the World Congress of Peace Forces caused a stir when he appeared unprompted, book in hand, to read one of his poems.

“Many thought I was dead,” he later wrote in his memoirs. “They couldn’t imagine how I had dodged the relentless persecution of Chilean police.”

The Chilean authorities quickly denied his escape, claiming there was no way that Neruda had left the country. The poet was undeterred.

“Say that I am not Pablo Neruda, but another Chilean who writes poetry, fights for freedom, and is also called Pablo Neruda,” he quipped to the French press.

During his exile, Neruda was embraced by the international community. Figures like Pablo Picasso and Louis Aragon provided him with protection and assistance, helping him navigate the complexities of French bureaucracy.

A lasting legacy

By 1952, political tides in Chile shifted, allowing Neruda to return home. However, his ties to France endured. From 1970 to 1973, he served as Chile’s ambassador to France under President Salvador Allende, further cementing the bond with the country that had offered him refuge during his years of exile.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1971, Neruda seized the opportunity to celebrate French culture once again, quoting Rimbaud: “Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice, and dignity to all mankind.”

Read moreHan Kang wins South Korea's first Nobel Prize in Literature

His legacy remains deeply embedded in French culture. Dozens of schools and public institutions across France bear his name, and his works are integral to the study of Spanish and poetry in classrooms. The Chilean Embassy in Paris features a commemorative plaque honouring Neruda’s time there.

A plaque commemorates Pablo Neruda's time at the Chilean Embassy in Paris. © Wikimedia Commons

“Neruda embodies a vision of benevolence, education, and culture for all," the University of Nanterre's Decante said. "His political influence and democratic engagement resonate through the years and will continue to do so.”

 

Larger pay increases and better benefits could support teacher retention

RAND Corporation

Larger pay increases and better benefits could help keep K-12 teachers in the teacher workforce, finds a new, nationally representative RAND survey.  

 

U.S. teachers reported modest pay increases between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, only $2,000 on average and well below their desired increase of $16,000. Black teachers and teachers in states where collective bargaining is prohibited reported they received the smallest pay increases.  

 

“Teachers who received larger pay increases also said they were less likely to intend to leave the profession,” said Elizabeth D. Steiner, the lead author of the report lead author and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

 

Sixty-five percent of teachers nationally reported taking on extra work, such as coaching athletics or serving as department chair. However, one in four teachers nationally said they were not paid for their extra work. Black teachers were more likely than White teachers to report that they performed extra work for no pay. Teachers who were paid for extra work reported small earnings – about 4% of base pay.

 

Although benefits comprise a larger share of teachers’ total compensation package, on average, than similar working adults, working adults reported better access than teachers to benefits such as paid personal time off, paid parental leave, and tuition reimbursement. The largest difference was for paid parental leave. Only one-third of teachers reported having paid parental leave, compared to nearly half of similar working adults.

 

Additionally, for nearly all the employer-provided benefits researchers asked about, fewer teachers thought their benefits were adequate compared to similar working adults. Among teachers who had paid parental leave, only 46% thought it was adequate in comparison with 78% of similar working adults who had access to paid parental leave. As with pay, teachers who felt their benefits were adequate were less likely to say they intended to leave the teaching profession.

 

“Offering a broader set of benefits and improving the quality of those benefits could improve teachers’ perceptions of their pay and improve retention,” said Steiner. “We found teachers who had better perceptions of their benefits also had better perceptions of their pay.”

 

The RAND State of the American Teacher survey is a nationally representative, annual survey of K-12 public school teachers across the U.S. Teacher data is presented in comparison to a separate 2024 American Life Panel companion survey, a nationally representative survey of working adults.

 

The State of the American Teacher survey was supported by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

 

Other authors of “Larger Pay Increases and Adequate Benefits Could Improve Teacher Retention: Findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher Survey” are Ashley Woo and Sy Doan.

 

RAND Education and Labor provides objective research and analysis that improves social and economic well-being through education and workforce development. The division does research on early childhood through postsecondary education programs, workforce development, programs and policies affecting workers, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy and decision making.

A story of the migrants who built Britain

Artist and author Miriam Gold talks to Judy Cox about her new graphic memoir, Elena–A Hand Made Life, and how such histories can be used to defend refugees and migrants today

Miriam’s great grandparents, Sonia and Moshe Matskevich, who died in Auschwitz

By Judy Cox

Tuesday 19 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

My grandmother was a refugee twice when she was still a teenager. She gave 40 years’ service to the NHS. She said the day the NHS was founded was the best day of her life, even better than giving birth to her own children.

That story has to be part of how we oppose the racist violence that happened over the summer. Refugees have made such a positive difference.

My grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Germany who fled to Britain. During the war he was classed as an “enemy alien” and the British government sent him to an internment camp in Canada then to the Isle of Wight.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for INTERNMENT

Imagine a government thinking it was a priority to send German Jews miles over the sea to Canada—what an incredible misuse of resources. We still dehumanise refugees by putting them on barges or sending them to Rwanda today.

When I started writing seriously, I stopped taking my family stories for granted. Part of growing up is ­starting to interrogate our family histories.

Our family histories are connected to where we find ourselves now, to how we talk about refugees and public services.

Since the book came out, it has been lovely to meet people who don’t have the same experience of seeking refuge still relating my book to their own grannies and their own memories. We know our families through their homes, their furniture, their curtains.

People recognise their ­grandparents’ homes in the book. The visual elements of the book help retrieve those memories. We all live our lives within our domestic concerns and wider social and political concerns.

There is often a ­shocking disconnect between the people I knew and the history they carried. I knew my grandparents as old people. It was difficult to think of some of the horrible things they went through when they were young.

My grandparents got married in 1941. My grandfather had been stripped of his German citizenship because he was Jewish.

But when my grandmother married him she became a German citizen and an “enemy alien”. It was labyrinthine.

My great grandparents could not escape from Germany because they had to settle debts. They fled to France and enjoyed a brief period of peace.

But they were living under the Vichy regime and a neighbour denounced them to the authorities. Early in 1944 they were sent to the Drancy internment camp then deported to the Auschwitz ­concentration camp.

Both sides of my family have ­stories of internment, of dehumanisation. I have always felt aware that my ­existence is down to the wheels of fate.

My father was a Hungarian Jew. He was saved by Raoul Wallenberg, a man from a wealthy Swedish family who saved tens of thousands of Jews from Hungary.

People’s lives hung by the tiniest of threads. An administrative error could save your life.

I have always rejected a narrative that migrants come here and then move to the right, become self-made business owners and oppose other migrants being allowed in. I was brought up in an anti-racist family.

My grandmother lived in a ­working class area in Sheffield and then in Leigh, a coal and cotton town in Lancashire. She hated snobbery. She was a doctor who was absolutely committed to her patients. This was back when the system allowed you to get to know your patients.

Those ­relationships gave her a real sense of belonging. My grandparents lived in Sheffield, but they were not urban sophisticates. They loved walking in the Peak District.

This was the time of mass trespasses like the Kinder Scout Trespass. So you had two stateless, penniless young people, ­building a new life together, ­walking land whose ownership was being contested.

My grandmother’s Jewish identity was important to her, but she wore it lightly in terms of observance. ­Sometimes she went to the synagogue but not always. Towards the end, she was involved in a reform synagogue in Manchester.

Being Jewish was at the core of who she was. The ­importance of community is the thread that runs through the book. The Jewish community in Sheffield. The community of Leigh, which was a mining town and was so brutally attacked during the Miners’ Strike. And the community at her medical centre and, of course, her large family.

Now we have language around things like trauma, PTSD and survivors’ guilt. My grandmother had an abhorrence of sitting still and being quiet.

This helped her keep ­unhelpful reflections at bay. Keeping busy, ­knitting, crocheting, making everything by hand, it was her trauma response.

I have always been drawn to novels and graphic novels. The images do the storytelling. I came of age in a political area—in inner London, a ­multicultural area with Irish and South Asian communities.

It is exciting when people find new ways to tell their stories in music, in literature or film.

I think it so important to tell ­positive stories about refugees. We need a very different conversation about refugees and asylum seekers.

We need people to come and work, we need people. Today, people are recycling old arguments about refugees, which were not fit for purpose in the first place.

I am a teacher. I work in an area with huge levels of transient ­communities, from all over the world.

The language we are using now is like the language we were using about Jews then. Conversations about refugees and migrants are spiralling.

My memories of my grandmother remind of that phrase about the banality of evil.

My family story is a Jewish story, a Holocaust story. But it is also a story of one of the many migrants who built post-war Britain, the Windrush Generation, the people from Uganda, who all came and built our public services.