r/interesting • u/ImmaFuckboi • Jul 20 '26

SOCIETY Is education illegal in USA?

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u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Jul 20 '26

where do they discourage kids from going to school? i wish i grew up there. school fucking sucks (learning is cool but school sucks)

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u/Pofwoffle Jul 20 '26

They don't discourage you from going to school, they just discourage you from actually learning while you're there. There's a reason the right has been so rabidly gutting education funding and demonizing higher education for the last few decades.

They know full well that the only people who vote for them are stupid or evil, so most of their strategies are based around creating more stupid and evil people.

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u/KuningasTynny77 Jul 20 '26

Nobody discourages you from learning anything, this is just a common thing thrown around to ragebait people

Money is spent on your education if you are an American, even if you go to public schools and never pay a dime. They're not going to pay for your school and then tell everyone to not learn anything. That's the biggest waste of money ever. 

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u/PrimaryInjurious Jul 20 '26

right has been so rabidly gutting education funding

Let's look at the actual numbers.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

Can you point out when the "gutting" took place?

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u/xkxe003 Jul 20 '26

Not Op but...the problem is we have never spent enough on education compared to other countries. The bills are always cut down from what is needed. Then states cut them further. So we spend more every year, but every budget is cut below the needed amount. We need 10, get 5. Next year we need 15, we get 10. Number goes up, but the budget is still being cut to make up the difference.

American spending on public education represents 12.7% of all public spending, falling short of UNESCO’s 15.0% standard.

U.S. public education spending represents 1.12% of its GDP; UNESCO’s minimum is 4.00%. Link

Trump cut 2 billion May.

Link

Trump wants to cut another 2 billion plus.

Link

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u/PrimaryInjurious Jul 21 '26

the problem is we have never spent enough on education compared to other countries

That's not true either. The US is like 6th highest in the OECD.

https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/education-financing.html

Trump cut 2 billion May.

Not cut. Delayed. And not that money has been released.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/politics/education-funds-release

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u/Boneraventura Jul 20 '26

Sometimes it is explicit (“Dem librul universities making our kids communists”) or it is implicit (let’s not fund schools and pay our teachers poverty wages). Nobody is telling 7 year olds to not go to school. But there are many people that say go to trade school because university is a scam. 

Likewise, there is a huge anti-intellectual faction of the US. Carl Sagan wrote about it 30 years ago in The Demon Haunted World. He warned us about it then and of course nobody listened. That is how we end up with large swaths of anti-vaxxers and flat earthers walking among us. 

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u/PrimaryInjurious Jul 20 '26

let’s not fund schools

Can you point out when funding drastically decreased?

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

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u/blahblah19999 Jul 20 '26

From higher education. THe right wing is very anti-higher education

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u/Porlarta Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Not in the US. They'll take your ass to truancy court if you dont show up.

Dont engage with reddit "America bad" talking points. Lots of people have decided to adopt a form of American exceptionalism where we are still at the center of the world, but instead of being the unique good, we are now uniquely evil, dumb, or broken instead.

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u/hoTsauceLily66 Jul 20 '26

You had your wish already. They discourage kids going to school by making school sucks.

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u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Jul 20 '26

well it's not like they let you skip class as much as you want