In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Department of Education has chosen a questionable way to display its mindset. I suppose it accurately portrays the mindset of the Trump Administration, but one-third of the presentation seems odd, inappropriate, and partisan to me.
I did not find a photograph of the building including the banners I am referring to, so this picture will have to suffice. If you have not seen the banners I’m blogging about today, you can find various pictures by using a search engine.
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash
Keep in mind that Donald Trump promised in his campaign to abolish the Department of Education. As a first step toward doing that, his nominee to head the department was a woman whose administrative work experience was in the wrestling industry. Her job description was essentially: ‘Demolish the department you oversee.”
Since his inauguration in January 2025, Trump and his Department of Education have attacked education on every turn. But one of the three banners now hanging from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education headquarters in Washington, DC surely wins the prize for the most inappropriate way the department could have marked our country’s 250th birthday.
(I take that back. The most inappropriate banner would have been one of King George III of Great Britain.)
Two of the banners make sense. Booker T. Washington and Catharine Beecher had huge influence and impacts on education in the United States. But what did Charlie Kirk do for education?
Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit organization. Through Turning Point, Kirk held political debates on some college campuses. I do not see how that in any way qualified him for the third place in a total of three banners at the Department of Education. Surely there was someone else in American history who contributed more to public education than Charlie Kirk.
Julius Rosenwald readily comes to mind. Rosenwald was the financial and driving force behind the building of approximately 5,000 schools for black students when schools for non-white citizens were not supported by the government. I wrote a series of newspaper articles about Rosenwald Schools. (Those articles are included in my book, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book One, available on Amazon.)
Or perhaps a better choice than Charlie Kirk would have been a banner filled with the multi-racial, multi-ethnic faces representing the millions of teachers who have taught generations of Americans.
The banner displaying the stern and threatening face of Donald Trump hanging off the side of the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters marking our 250th birthday is reminiscent of the images I have seen of dictators adorning buildings in China and North Korea, except the facial features of those dictators are not as menacing as the images of Trump.
It is the image of himself that Trump chose to represent his second term in office. His squinty eyes project a sense of foreboding. I imagine it scares children. There is nothing comforting or reassuring about it.
When I saw pictures of that banner of Trump at the Department of Justice, I do not recall mentioning it on my blog, but what has been done at the Department of Education caused that image to come back to mind.
I do not recall other U.S. Presidents hanging banners of their faces on government buildings. Much of this seems like a frivolous waste of money. Am I wrong about that? It seems un-American and creepy to me for a U.S. President to plaster his name and glaring face on so many things.
The Trump Administration turning our nation’s 250th birthday into a political prop and personal display should come as no surprise. It would have been a perfect opportunity for the administration to put politics aside and celebrate like we did our 200th birthday in 1976, but they just cannot do that.
That is unfortunate, especially for the children and young adults who could have learned so much from a year-long true celebration. An organized year-long celebration could have inspired patriotism. I just don’t see the boxing or wrestling match planned for what’s left of the White House lawn doing that, but I digress.
Meanwhile, every day the Trump Administration gives us a different explanation for why we bombed Iran on Saturday morning. They apparently expect the American people to get as excited as they are about this war without telling us the same story twice about why they started this war. In fact, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told us that we did not start it.
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
Janet's Writing Blog 
Charlie Kirk on the Department of Education?!?! I would remove that creature and replace him with John Dewey and Maria Montessori.
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There are a multitude of better choices. The choice they made is ludicrous.
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Destroying the dept of education is a power play because educated people are harder to manipulate. I remember seeing a Charlie Kirk video where he was against formal education. It all fits.
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Yes, it all fits, Chris. Trump and his ilk have been attacking education since his first political campaign. They made Charlie Kirk — who was a nobody — into a saint. Trump proudly said, “I love the uneducated!” He also said, “If you vote for me this time, you will never have to vote again.” Fifty-one percent of the voters did not understand what he was saying. Many of them still don’t, but a few are catching on. Yes, he loves the uneducated. It concerns me that a whole generation have grown up now to voting age with no memory of the way things were before Trump’s first term. If they believe this is “normal,” we are doomed.
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Very informative piece of work Janet, Thankks.
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Thank you, David. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in politics over the last year, I fear I’ve neglected long-time friends like you. Perhaps I was placed here for such a time as this.
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Given that this is the month of march, I would suggest Dr Anna J cooper.
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Yes! She would have been an outstanding choice, if only the people in charge of planning the banners had known anything about education icons! Dr. Cooper is one of the most amazing figures in American history and has received little national recognition. Thank you for the prompt. I should write a blog post about her. Thank you!
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Might I also suggest including a review of her book ‘A Voice from the South by a woman of the south,’ if you’ve read it, in your blog post about her (which I look forward to reading with great interest, btw…)?
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Thank you, Shira. I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t read it. I think I’ll plan a blog post about her to coincide with her anniversary of her birth on August 10. Thank you again for reminding me of Dr. Cooper! I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina for two years while in graduate school and wish I’d know then that she is buried there.
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No, no need to be embarrassed, please accept my apologies , I had no intention of embarrassing you, and please forgive my assumption that you knew about the book, and thank you for this information, as I did not know that she was buried in Raleigh, NC.
Excellent, also I’ll point to your blog post in august, rather than making my usual annual post on that day for her birthday. Just don’t let me forget please.
Nia
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Oh, and sorry, by the way, now I’m going by Nia or just Ni,, rather than Shira.
Have a good weekend
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No need to apologize, Nia. No need at all.
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Please, Nia, there is certainly no need for you to apologize. I feel like I have interrupted your plans to blog about Dr. Cooper on August 10. Please, go on with your plans. I didn’t realize you always blog about her on that day. I have neglected to keep up with your blog (and the blogs of many, many other blogger friends) especially over the last year or so. I feel I have caused you a problem with your August 10 blog plans. Since I knew I couldn’t pull together a post about Dr. Cooper before the end of Women’s History Month, I made myself a note to do that on her birthday. Please, let me look over her history and I will select another date. Perhaps I should read her book and then combine a post about her book and the post about her. I am completely flexible about that. In fact, chances are that I will not get to read her book before August 10. My reading time has been great curtailed since the beginning of 2025, and I am dealing with an eye problem currently which is causing blurred vision. So, I think it will work out for the best for you to continue with your plans to blog about Dr. Cooper on her birthday and I will plan to blog about her on a random date when I get to read her book. How does that sound? I’m perfectly fine with it. Really.
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Not to worry at all, as I often simply repost an old post about her on Aug. 10th, so it’s not an interruption, but I do not wish to pressure you. By the way, the book is in the public domain, and available in several locations, and I may have listened to it via Librivox dot org, or possibly another audio version, I forget, now, but I am sure that there are several versions of the book in audio format, via any of the various sites that post books in the public domain, like Guttenberg, and the Internet Archive generally lists many of them, as well as an audio version of its own (machine read, possibly).
If that is of any help?
Ni
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It’s also on YouTube vía a librivox volunteer: https://youtu.be/q6qKIb68Ca4?si=LAwQlB4sf019_T3f
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We’ll get this sorted out, Ni. There is much time until August 10. I will keep you posted on my ability to read Dr. Cooper’s book and if I settle on a different day to blog about her. Thank you for the information about her book on audio.
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Thank you for that link, Ni!
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