Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy

Weingarten, the president of the AFT, America’s largest educators’ union, debuts with a rousing inquiry into “what teachers do” and “why those who are afraid of freedom... try to stop” them. The book focuses on the onslaught faced by public school teachers during the two Trump administrations—in 2023 alone, she notes, 110 bills were presented in state legislatures attempting to curtail what teachers can and cannot do. In New Hampshire, the state education commissioner even set up a website encouraging the public to report educators who were illegally teaching about racism. The book contains a wealth of such examples from around the country, which Weingarten presents as an effort not only to smash the foundations of the American public school system but to pave the way for fascism, which she defines as the abandonment of logic and empirical evidence in favor of fanciful truths that the “leader” invents and espouses to his acolytes, who parrot them back as a show of loyalty. Public school teachers, she astutely observes, do four things that make them the number one enemies of fascism and its aims: impart critical thinking skills, create welcoming communities, foster lower-class students’ ability to achieve economic success, and serves as anchors of the labor movement. It adds up to a galvanizing portrait of teachers as society’s best bulwarks against anti-intellectualism and retrograde thinking. (Sept.)