• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Democracy Chronicles

Towards better democracy everywhere.

  • AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
  • WORLD DEMOCRACY
  • POLITICAL ART
  • more
    • election technology
    • money politics
    • political dissidents
    • THIRD PARTY
      • third party central
      • green party
      • justice party
      • libertarian party
    • voting methods
  • DC INFO
    • author central
    • about
    • advertise with DC
    • contact
    • privacy policy
You are here: Home / DC Authors / Democracy, Education and the Trump Voter

Democracy, Education and the Trump Voter

September 1, 2023 by Paul Lachelier Leave a Comment

FacebookLinkedInPinTweet

BY PAUL LACHELIER AND MA’SHAYLA HEARNS
At this historic moment in American politics, a lot of attention is focused on whether or not Donald Trump will go to jail, or win the U.S. presidency again.  But beyond that headline news lies a deep challenge that will outlast Donald Trump, even if he wins the presidency: the Trump voter.  For those concerned and willing to move beyond expressions of frustration and contempt for his voters, part of the long-term solution may be something you have not considered: how schooling may be fueling the Trump phenomenon, and how wider learning communities may help reduce polarization in America.     

Donald Trump may be facing multiple indictments, but he still dominates Republican polls, and is in a dead heat with Biden in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters nationwide.  That is a source of consternation to some Americans, and satisfaction to others, aggravating a widespread sense of polarization. 

Polarization has a number of roots, and it is worth briefly mentioning three of the most commonly cited ones.  First, in many states, Democrats or Republicans dominate the state legislature, and when it comes time to draw U.S. House districts, they draw in their party’s favor. This makes it easier for their candidates to win, which makes the party primaries, not the general election, where the competition happens. That in turn pushes candidates to be more partisan to win party primary voters.  Second, there’s the now commonly cited fact that conflict and outrage draw ears and eyeballs, so it is profitable for media companies to promote conflict and extremes.  Third, Americans are moving to communities where they feel more comfortable, and since lifestyle preferences increasingly align with political inclinations, Americans are polarizing themselves, sometimes unintentionally, when they move.   

There is no single solution to these polarization problems, but for all the talk about the need for civil discourse and perennial calls for “a national conversation” about this or that, it is striking how little talk, let alone action, there is to institutionalize democratic conversation nationwide in ways that could foster greater Comprehension, Civility and Collaboration.  As two Americans, born thirty years apart, one a black woman, the other a white male, we nonetheless find common ground in sociology, and common interest in the potential of wider learning communities to cultivate those three Cs.       

Learning communities (LCs), most simply defined, are associations focused on learning together.  LCs can be in-person or online, and their learning focus varies, from math to gardening to diplomacy, but at their best, LCs (a) are open to interested persons of all income levels, (b) connect diverse people, (c) deepen participants’ understanding not only of their chosen topic, but how to think about the topic, and (d) foster civility in part through collaboration. 

Learning communities are not new.  The earliest learning communities can be traced to the earliest civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia India and China, where the inception of writing helped spur the development of schools to train scribes, teachers, priests, monks, government officials and other elites, and advanced science, medicine, mathematics, history, philosophy, and other bodies of knowledge.  But the earliest schools tended toward the strict transmission of intellectual traditions through memorization and repetition, rather than open learning through dialogue, testing and observation. The collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe led to a fragmentation of power among many competing principalities, which fostered not only military but intellectual and technological competition.  This competition, along with the rise of modern states, over time encouraged the development of primary and secondary schools as well as universities that together are now, in our knowledge-dependent modern societies, an important part of the social and economic lives of individuals, families, towns and countries.      

Schools, including universities, are a kind of learning community – understood most simply as places where relationships are focused on learning.  But for all the learning they nurture, schools also increase our world’s inequalities as much if not more than they decrease them.  Schools, of course, offer their students the opportunity to develop themselves, and compulsory schooling extends that development to more people, thus increasing equality.  However, vast differences exist in school quality and status in the same localities and across the world.  Some elites may prefer it that way since their children tend to be better prepared and favored to get into better schools. Plus, the better teachers, technologies, programs and alumni connections those better schools provide help sustain and strengthen elite power.  In short, widespread educational segregation benefits elites.  

None of the above is new, at least to those who study education, but this has implications for politics and polarization.  Intentionally or not, schools have long been instruments of exclusion.  They sort people into social hierarchies based on whether and where students go to school and their performance therein.  Schools also position and equip elites to rule, and others to fulfill needed roles, from farmers and cooks, to teachers, accountants, and engineers.  Clearly, the process is not rigid; not everyone who graduates from an elite school ends up in a leadership position in government, business or nonprofits, and some farmers, teachers, and engineers become those leaders.  Yet the facts that (a) a disproportionate share of business, government and nonprofit elites come from Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other top schools, and (b) elites’ wealth and income have been rising since the 1970s in the United States and abroad, as, generally, have those of their alma maters, underscore the pattern of exclusion. 

At the same time, exclusion is one of the roots of the rise of Trump, and the Trump voter.  Many accounts of their rise point to economic stagnation and decline among Americans with a high school degree. The association between educational and economic outcomes has only strengthened in the last several decades, and reinforces the links between Education, Economics and Exclusion.  In some sense, Trump voters have every right to be angry if they have been at the losing end of this three-E’s process of exclusion, made worse by the contempt of educated elites.  

But what if education were more an instrument of inclusion than exclusion, of the three C’s rather than the three E’s?  What if learning was not bound to a period of one’s youth inside school walls, but rather a wider part of one’s life and region?  What if education was also fun and social, forging engaging relationships across America’s deep political, economic, racial and generational divides? 

We turn to these questions and more in the second part of this article on democracy, education and the Trump Voter.


Paul Lachelier, Ph.D., is a sociologist and founder of Learning Life, a Washington DC-based nonprofit developing innovative learning communities in order to widen and deepen participation in democracy and diplomacy.  Ma’Shayla Hearns is a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in sociology and criminology, and an intern at Learning Life.            

FacebookLinkedInPinTweet

Filed Under: DC Authors Tagged With: Education, Journalism and Free Speech, Republicans

Some highlighted Democracy Chronicles topics

Africa American Corruption American Local Elections American State Elections Asia Capitalism and Big Business Celebrity Politics China Democracy Charity Democracy Protests Democrats Dictatorships Education Election History Election Methods Election Security Election Transparency Europe Internet and Democracy Journalism and Free Speech Middle East Minority Voting Rights Money Politics New York City and State Elections Political Artwork Political Dissidents Political Lobbying Redistricting Republicans Russia Socialism and Labor Social Media and Democracy South America Spying and Privacy Supreme Court Third Party Voter Access Voter ID Voter Registration Voter Suppression Voter Turnout Voting Technology Women Voting Rights Worldwide Worldwide Corruption

About Paul Lachelier

Paul Lachelier is the founder and director of Learning Life, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit developing innovative learning communities in order to widen and deepen participation in democracy and diplomacy.  Through Learning Life, Paul leads the development of a Democracy & Diplomacy Community, including the international Family Diplomacy Initiative, Citizen Diplomacy International, and a Democracy Learning Community in the US capital region.  Before founding Learning Life in 2012, Paul taught at Stetson, Harvard, Tufts and the University of Wisconsin.  He holds a B.A. in sociology from Georgetown University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His writing, research and programmatic work focus on democracy, diplomacy, citizen engagement, and education.  His writings have appeared in academic journals as well as popular media including the Boston Globe, Orlando Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Albuquerque Journal, and truthout.org.  More at paullachelier.info.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

democracy chronicles newsletter

democracy around the web

  • “Trump lawyers ask appeals court to move his...
    Source: Election Law Blog Published on: 48 minutes ago
  • “Trump’s DOJ makes its most sweeping demand f...
    Source: Election Law Blog Published on: 17 hours ago
  • “The Standard of Proof in Racial-Gerrymanderi...
    Source: Election Law Blog Published on: 17 hours ago
  • Togo detains TV5 Monde journalist, forces del...
    Source: Committee to Protect Journalists Published on: 20 hours ago
  • “D.C.’s Stalwart in Congress Clings to Her Se...
    Source: Election Law Blog Published on: 21 hours ago