‘THE more they know, the less they obey’, this terrible dialogue of the Diamond King is currently the declared official policy of president Donald Trump. Recently, the Department of Education of America has become history with a stroke of his pen. In the presence of a group of students and teachers in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025, president Donald Trump has signed an executive order to abolish the federal Department of Education. Along with Trump, the students also signed symbolic orders designed to leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of state and local boards. Education secretary, Linda McMahon was also present at the ceremony. Trump wants her to resign willingly. This initiative has raised concerns among liberal education activists.
But this is nothing sudden. Before assuming office as president, he expressed his desire to abolish the Department of Education in an interview with close aide and billionaire Elon Musk. He said, ‘I want to abolish the Department of Education. I want to return education to the states. American students are falling behind their peers around the world.’ Trump claimed that eliminating the federal Department of Education would bring many benefits, including cutting 50 per cent of education expenses. Trump and his allies accused the education department of pushing students towards racism, sexism and political issues.
Established in 1979, the US Department of Education looks after the funding of nearly 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States. More than 85 per cent of public school funding comes from state and local governments. Yet, the Department of Education looks after student loan activities, provides federal grants to struggling schools to pay teachers and works to replace old infrastructures. It also undertakes different programmes to assist disabled and poor students and enforces civil rights laws designed to prevent racial and gender discrimination in schools funded by the federal government.
Budget allocation for this department was $23,800 crore in fiscal year 2024, less than 2 per cent of the federal budget. The number of employees is about 4,400.ÌýThe Education Data Initiative, a research organisation, reported in 2024 that the United States spent nearly 857 billion dollars on primary and secondary education, i.e., 17,280 dollars per student. This department has already announced plans to cut 50 per cent of its workforce. Although Republicans have control over both the House of Representatives, 60 votes would be required to pass such a bill in the Senate. For this, Democrats’ support would be required. Yet, Trump is determined to execute it.
Conservatives want local control over educational policy and school choice, which would help private and religious schools. Left-leaning voters largely support better funding for public schools and diverse programmes. Trump is trying to reshape the US higher education system by slashing funding. He is pressuring colleges and universities to drop diversity, equity and inclusive policies. For instance, Columbia University has been asked to tighten restrictions on campus protests as a precondition for starting talks to restore $400 million in frozen federal funding. The White House now believes that the Education Department is a waste of money.
What are the probable consequences of this decision? The federal government will no longer allocate any money for education. Thousands of persons, including teachers and non-teaching employees, will turn jobless overnight from New York to California, from Boston to Houston. No government grants or scholarships will be allowed any more. The dream of foreign students studying at a college or university in America will end.
Moreover, America’s famous National Institutes of Health is being closed. The highest-quality scientific health research will be stopped. Health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr has said that there is no longer any need for vaccines. He has claimed that it is not true that vaccines work as a preventive. That is, he is against giving vaccines in America for deadly diseases like polio, meningitis, rabies, mumps, smallpox, plague, shingles, and Covid. All ongoing research to discover the causes and vaccines for these and countless other potential diseases that may evolve in the future will be closed.
The National Endowment for the Arts will be shut down. Just like the Diamond King, radical White Christian nationalists, a supporter group of Trump, do not believe in science or art. Artists, writers and intellectuals always remain at the top of the hit list to be killed by dictatorial kings. From the time of Hitler and Mussolini, radical fascists and Nazis have first killed intellectuals, artists, writers, poets and filmmakers. It happened in Bangladesh in 1971. Singers and poets were killed by Pinochet’s assassins in Chile. That same thing happened in Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, South Africa and the Philippines.
The National Science Foundation, the greatest research foundation of the United States in post-World War II, is about to be closed. All the famous government museums — the Smithsonian Institution, the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of African American History, the National Museum of Native Americans, which were built to serve the needs of people — will be closed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History in New York City are also on the closure list. History is perhaps the biggest enemy of dictators. Elon Musk has said, in a way, that the history of the Holocaust is fabricated and exaggerated. The days of reason, education, debate and questioning will be over. Unquestioned obedience will prevail all over America.
Happenings in America today are new editions of Hitler and Mussolini’s rule. Like Hitler, opponents will not be shot at head on streets, nor will there be mass killing in gas chambers. But millions of people will die from economic oppression, persecution of immigrants, artificial environmental and climate disasters and terrible famine. At present, 1/4th (in comparison to the population) of total prisoners in the world are in American prisons. Knowledge is no more necessary. A new dark age awaits.
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Chinmay Prasun Biswas is a former commissioner of taxes.
