Access to Education and Knowledge: Crucial Shared Spaces for Creating Understanding and Building Democracy
I argue that recent attacks on institutions of higher education, elementary and secondary education, public libraries, and local media outlets in the United States are attacks on and attempts to limit access to knowledge and information that represent increasing challenges to democracy.
Contested definitions of truth, including the belief in the validity of science as witnessed in the ongoing denial of climate change and the display of COVID-19 pandemic denial exhibit a true test to democracy with the attempted coup on the US capitol on January 6, 2021, just one display of the conflict of power in contemporary democracy in the United States.
As access to higher education in the US increased, politicians started to challenge the value of a college education. In this paper I explore the following: barriers to access to knowledge in primary and secondary schools, public libraries, colleges and universities, and local newspapers and, what I argue is the consequent decline in college going behavior.
While young people who do not go to college are not formally denied access to education, the delegitimization of education and the process of socializing future generations to discredit education and to distrust science is more insidious. Does this crisis of the legitimacy of education represent a necessary element of post-democracy?
Social institutions such as schools, libraries, universities, and local media are key to creating a shared understanding which create norms that structure daily interactions and create the possibility for shared narratives and understanding. When local newspapers close down, public libraries are shuttered, curriculum is curtailed, and young people stop going to school, we eliminate traditional spaces for creating shared understandings.