In case anyone hasn’t noticed, our republic is on fire. And that’s not being hyperbolic.

Incendiary language is now the norm in Congress and across the nation, further fanning the flames of overheated rhetoric in an election year. Indictments pile up against a former president, along with criminal trials looming in multiple jurisdictions. Perhaps even more ominous, jurors, judges, and election workers are being threatened with harm by extremists across our land.

But that’s only the short version of a narrative about a country at the brink, where democracy is threatened by the specter of authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, the legislature has examined the state of the state and determined that in today’s volatile world, there is a pressing need to modify public school curriculum by teaching … capitalism.

That’s right. Ohio Republicans have decided that teaching about capitalism is more important in troubled times than strengthening student learning opportunities about democracy. Yes, learning about capitalism is more important for Ohio students than the critical need for media literacy and increased research and critical thinking skills in an age of artificial intelligence and fake news.

Add to that the importance of teaching about character and caring about others, a key cornerstone of character education. 

To Republicans, whose former House Speaker and former state party chair are now serving prison sentences, along with their twice-impeached presidential front runner facing 91 felony criminal counts, there appears to be no pressing need for young people to learn more about personal ethics, citizenship, and the importance of character. 

But we probably should know that when it comes to Republicans, caring about the needs of others might be tantamount to socialism.

After the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 17 by a margin of 64-26 on Feb. 7, a measure which calls for the addition of teaching about capitalism in high school financial literacy standards, one Democratic legislator told the Cincinnati Enquirer/USA Today Network that adding capitalism to carefully crafted financial literacy classes only dilutes the amount of content students can learn in this important course of study designed to prepare students for assuming adult roles and functions. 

‘This bill is one part partisan message, one part ideological warfare and one part a poor fix’ to Ohio’s financial literacy class requirement, said Rep. Joe Miller, D-Lorain, a former social studies teacher who instructed students on the principles of capitalism.

The educator and legislator, now serving his third term in the Ohio House, is quite savvy in knowing the usual lockstep behavior of Republicans, none of whom voted against the bill. An additional observation by Miller might have also been influenced by knowing the tired rhetoric of one of the bill’s co-sponsors in the Ohio Senate, Andrew Brenner, who famously said in 2014 that public education was “socialism” and should be privatized. 

The Enquirer piece continued, saying Miller worried opponents of the bill would be labeled socialists in future campaigns.

With Brenner and Senate President Matt (“we can kind of do what we want”) Huffman, it’s only a matter of time before they use the words socialism and socialist, along with other Republicans, as tired descriptors for the noun Democrat. 

Come to think of it, if the titular head of the Republican Party is constantly complaining about witch hunts, what if we soon find out that the latest supply chain issue generated by the GOP might result in a shortage of witches?  If they do run out of witches, look for socialist hunts in this election year.

But I digress. Yet in dealing with aggressive Republican behavior, maybe not. 

Incendiary language is also part of the fuel driving instability in our body politic, and the concern about the hackneyed use of the word socialism is part of the erosion of national cohesion, seen most clearly in the unceasing attacks on public education by Republicans and their corresponding support for private and religious schools with public funds in the form of vouchers.

Like so many other pieces of legislation rammed through the Ohio legislature by a hyper-partisan, gerrymandered body of ideologues intent on making education policy without regard to the informed views of classroom educators as well as others expert in curriculum design and key content, Republican thinking in Senate Bill 17 was shown to be bankrupt, particularly when the subject is financial literacy and how to debase its established design by injecting other content.

In a statement about Senate Bill 17 received by the Ohio Capital Journal, Miller, who has demonstrated expertise as a former high school teacher familiar with content and curriculum design, had this to say about the process and product that went into the legislation:

“When sponsors of bills are unwilling to hear how to make it better, we don’t end up with the best legislation we can produce out of this body. This is especially frustrating when you have two teachers of social studies and financial literacy in committee giving their suggestions, only to be ignored.”

Miller’s comments about educators with expertise being ignored by policymakers illustrates once again that these Republican politicians aren’t interested in assisting public schools with the daunting task of producing literate, highly skilled, caring, and ethical citizens who can absorb a torrent of information, navigate through it, and discern what is essential and accurate in acquiring knowledge and making decisions. Indeed, the process of making good decisions is part of the adolescent’s emergence to adulthood, of becoming a citizen ready and able to participate in democratic government.

In his book “The Death of Expertise,” Tom Nichols might have described Republican behavior in ramming through changes in a high school financial literacy program and ignoring readily available expert advice in the process:

“To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything.” 

No one likes to be ignored, or to be dismissed. Ohio needs knowledgeable and thoughtful legislators who have expertise in developing sound public policy, particularly in the area of education. 

That might be a prescription for having more educators having a seat in the legislature.

Hmm. That’s not a bad idea.