Populism, Parental Rights, and the Crisis of Honesty in Schools

In this essay, I review Sarah M. Stitzlein’s Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens, which addresses the decline of honesty in education and politics in the context of rising populism. Stitzlein advocates for a pragmatist inquiry approach to teaching, arguing that students should engage in complex democratic dialogue, where students focus on nuance when problem solving, guided by teachers who facilitate important learning habits. I extend her analysis by introducing the idea of knowledge demobilization, and exploring how populist movements, such as the parental rights movement, manipulate knowledge to limit critical inquiry and undermine democratic values in education.