We casually hand out subsidies to taxpayer-dependent rich guys to build thieving data centers while we nickel-and-dime the collapsing network of data centers we began building nearly four centuries ago.

The first public school in America, the Boston Latin School, was established in 1635. Founded by Puritan settlers to teach humanities, Latin, and Greek to boys, it’s the oldest existing school in the United States.

The beginning system was far from perfect, as evidenced by the fact girls weren’t allowed to attend the Boston Latin School. But for 346 years progress was slowly made. Public education would eventually be considered a societal bedrock.

That ended in 1981, when a B-list actor moved into the White House. Ronald Reagan spent his two terms jackhammering the foundation. Elected conservatives want to keep their subjects uninformed, so they can more easily steal their money, future, and health. Elected liberals talk about the importance of public education, but then mostly watch as the system is dismantled.

Tax breaks for luxury hotel developers and corporate business offices built in the woods. Taxpayer millions for a video game company failure. Relentless subsides for fossil fuels. This incessant misuse of taxpayer money, here and across the country, leaves underpaid and underappreciated public school teachers buying classroom supplies. It robs children of an education. It diminishes humanity’s future.

Public education is where students learn about the civic values that keep this democratic experiment alive. Public school classrooms are the antidote to poverty and racism. They are safe spaces for children from low-wealth and working-class families to also experience the joys of learning, to learn critical thinking skills, and to cultivate ethical awareness. Lessons learned in these public spaces allow kids from all walks of life to chase their American Dream.

MAGAs, though, have turned education into a money-making scheme for the already wealthy. Reagan would be proud. Their most recent trick is using taxpayer-funded vouchers to funnel students into private and parochial schools, where they are spoon-fed propaganda and indoctrinated by MAGA enablers. Low-income parents, whether these families receive or want a voucher or not for a school they can’t afford without assistance, end up helping to fund the education of kids from wealthy families while their children are stuck in deliberately broken public schools. It’s a vicious cycle.

In the nation’s crumbling public school system, books are banned, the Ten Commandments posted, history rewritten, and wokeness — i.e., being aware of and attentive to systemic injustices, particularly regarding racism, social inequality, and discrimination — prohibited.

Here in Rhode Island, city officials and state bureaucrats fight about how to best not educate Providence’s public school students.

Taxpayer money should be used to educate children, not to help fund data warehouses controlled by filthy rich racists and narcissists.

Humankind’s future depends on well-educated people, not artificial intelligence supported by energy-sucking data centers. AI should be a tool we use, not an extension of power for our oligarchy overlords.

To survive the future we are carelessly creating, we are obligated to teach our children about the climate crisis, since they and their children, if the latter survive our negligence, will be the ones left to clean up this fiery mess.

They need to be learning, for instance, that the burning of fossil fuels is disrupting the Atlantic current system, which now appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought. New research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists say this finding is “very concerning” as collapse would be catastrophic for the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

They need to be told extreme heat has already created “nonsurvivable” conditions for humans. Heat waves have killed thousands and likely many more, according to new research that warns people are more susceptible to rising temperatures than first thought.

It’s our duty to teach the students of today about a situation they will be inheriting. They need to be prepared.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.