Fighting Words: On The Autocratic Capture of Education

I have a BS in English Education, an MS in Curriculum & Instruction, and a PhD in Language and Literacy Education—degrees that taught me to decode complex texts, meet students where they are, and train future teachers to think critically. Apparently, those skills make me both useless and dangerous.

At least, that's what I'm hearing from politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who recently announced a new accreditation system to break what he called the "activist-controlled accreditation monopoly." As someone who spent years studying how language shapes learning, I recognize his tactic. It's one of autocracy's most powerful weapons: the strategic manipulation of language to make the dismantling of democratic institutions sound like liberation.

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While concerns about practical education and parental involvement in schools are legitimate, something more insidious is happening. Autocratic regimes don't just change policies—they manipulate the very words we use to discuss those policies, making radical changes seem reasonable and necessary.

Here's what's happening: every term we use to describe good education is being flipped on its head. Academic freedom? That's now ideological capture. A well-rounded, evidence-based curriculum? Indoctrination. Professional standards developed by experts over decades? Activist monopolies. The expertise I spent years developing? Elitist bias. It's a strategic marketing scheme that rebrands critical thought and analysis as detrimental to the nation.

When Indiana eliminates over 100 university programs, including art history, religious studies, and classical civilization, state leaders don't say they're gutting the liberal arts. The systematic dismantling of liberal arts education, which traditionally fosters critical thinking and cultural literacy, is repackaged as economic pragmatism that promotes "practical degrees that lead students into jobs." The genius lies in the apparent reasonableness. Of course, we want students to find jobs. But what we're actually losing are the very disciplines that teach students to analyze power, question authority, and think independently across cultures and time periods. We're eliminating the subjects that create informed citizens capable of recognizing when they're being manipulated.

When the Supreme Court mandates opt-out provisions for LGBTQ+ content or when state legislatures prompt schools to remove books featuring racially diverse characters, it's framed as protecting religious freedom and parental rights. In a nation supposedly built on the freedoms of life and liberty and the upholding of familial beliefs, opposition seems irrational. But what we're actually dismantling are the shared educational experiences that help young people see themselves and others. What we're saying is that some people don't deserve to be seen, to be valued, to experience the same freedoms.

As a literacy educator, I’ve witnessed how linguistic manipulation follows a predictable pattern that operates in three devastating ways.

First, it inverts meaning. Democratic institutions become threats to democracy. Academic freedom becomes censorship of conservative voices. Evidence-supported teaching becomes ideological bias. This makes resistance look absurd. After all, who wants to defend "indoctrination"?

Second, it creates false choices. You either support "practical" education or "useless" liberal arts. You either respect parental rights or impose educational overreach. Complex educational concepts get reduced to simple either/or propositions, eliminating any nuanced discussion about education's multiple purposes.

Third, it justifies intervention. Once democratic institutions are linguistically transformed into threats, their reform becomes not just justified but necessary. Breaking up monopolies, stopping indoctrination, protecting rights—these concepts sound like democratic actions, even when they systematically undermine democratic education.

While we're constantly debating reading levels and test scores, we're missing a more fundamental literacy crisis: our collective inability to recognize when language is being used to destroy the institutions that sustain a democratic society.

We are upholding—and, perhaps, enforcing—a sophisticated form of illiteracy, where people can read words but they are ill-equipped to read power structures and critique the capture of democratic institutions.

My students learning thoughtful literacy practices would immediately recognize this pattern. They would see that when leaders consistently describe expertise as bias, evidence as ideology, and professional standards as activism, something bigger than educational reform is happening.

When politicians promise to "restore" academic freedom by restricting what can be taught, we should ask: restored from what, and to whose benefit? When they claim to protect students by eliminating programs that encourage critical thinking, we should examine what and who they're actually protecting—and what and who they're destroying. When they argue that people can opt out of certain books, we should consider whose existences are eligible for erasure.

More importantly, we must fight for precise language about what's happening to education. The autocratic capture of education succeeds partly because it's conducted in the language of democratic values. Freedom, rights, choice—these words get weaponized against the very institutions they once protected. When we use language with precision, we can see how governmental leaders are capturing curriculum and destroying independent professional standards that ensure quality education.

When we let autocrats control the vocabulary of education, we've already lost half the battle. It's time to fight for our words, and through them, our democratic future. Because here's what I learned from all those "useless" degrees: the ability to read between the lines, to question authority, and to think critically across disciplines is essential to democracy. And maybe that's exactly why they want to eliminate it.

Stephanie R. Toliver is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

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