OPINION: Perspective needed as school begins

Most of Nebraska’s students from preschoolers to Ph.D. candidates are now back in classrooms, running on playgrounds or dabbling in science labs.

The ritual reopening of schools reminds me of two things: the value of a formal education and “The Death of Expertise,” a 2017 book by Tom Nichols, a professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College and a contributing writer at the Atlantic.

The former is critical in giving our children a shot at being productive, integral members of society. The latter is a cautionary tale that we’re playing footsie with a political view designed to undermine the very thing we value … education and expertise.

Nichols argues that we’ve become increasingly hostile to science, irrefutable facts and knowledge accrued through specific schooling, research and experience. We dismiss too many experts as elitist, a consequence he writes of several phenomena, including the (mis)information super highway, the blurring of news and entertainment and the diffusing of what should be college’s focus.

One offshoot of this mishegas is that formal education — the public and private process of schooling, learning, skill and knowledge acquisition, if you will — has been demeaned and diminished in some circles and a few dark corners.

For several years now, public school board meetings have become ground zero in the culture wars, those annoying scrapes we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time prosecuting, which steal attention from real, more serious problems: why Johnny and Janie can’t read, how to design fair and equitable tax policies to fund public education, and the gnawing persistence of teacher shortages.

Instead we demand the banning of certain books from school libraries and clutch our pearls at the possibility the curriculum includes an idea with which we disagree. Case in point, a number of parents and political leaders think we should whitewash the teaching of America’s history with chattel slavery and its consequences because it may make some students uncomfortable. Good. It should make all of us uncomfortable. The government is even cajoling revered institutions such as the Smithsonian to rewrite the American narrative.

Nor were these casual disagreements. For example, after protesters disrupted meetings over the teaching of Critical Race Theory — even though it wasn’t being taught and few in the room could define it — threats, including death, ensued. A Princeton study revealed last year that threats against school board members had tripled in the last three years.

A chill is wafting through the postsecondary world, too. Under the guise of combating antisemitism and this administration’s designated bogeyman, DEI, the feds have sued and shook down some of the nation’s premier colleges and universities. The results were mixed. Some institutions cut checks hoping to curry enough favor to keep the government out of their business. Others told the federales to pound sand, see you in court.

Closer to home, money is a most pressing higher education issue. University of Nebraska regents are asking the Legislature for a $166 million funding bump to tide it over for the next couple years. That will be a tough sell indeed as reported budget deficits have the state bathing in bright red dollars.

The dangerous undertow here is that college as an institution itself is under intense scrutiny. Hang some of that on aforementioned culture wars theater, but a growing school of thought insists that college is a waste of time and money, that on-the-job training is more critical and that money spent on college (read: debt) would be better used on a home or other investment. The “Case Against College” was written in 1975. Many are arguing its merits today.

I get it. College is not for everyone for a myriad of reasons. Nor should any stigma be attached to choosing the work force, the military or some other training right out of high school rather than college.

Nor, however, should any stigma be applied to college graduates. You know the drill — eggheads, privileged rich kids, elites, the horrifyingly “woke” crowd. Vice President J.D. Vance said in 2021 that “professors are the enemy.” Really? The enemy?

The veep and the rest of us should ease up on higher education. Our colleges and universities are on the forefront of replenishing the need for highly skilled and educated workers, providing research that saves lives, fueling the economy, making us competitive in the marketplace and reinforcing the artistic, historic and societal underpinnings of a nation whose political system depends on informed and engaged citizens.

Welcome to a new school year. Go ahead, criticize, question, exercise your right to disagree and petition, but whether students are mastering their first Trapper Keeper as an organizational tool or narrowing the scope of a doctoral dissertation, let’s keep some perspective.