from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, September 23rd.

Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. From now until election day, most of our

hundred year histories will be on topics relevant to the election. So today, for thing number 23,

it's 100 years of culture wars in America's schools. It's very relevant to today, because among

other things, Project 2025, written to influence a second Donald Trump presidency,

has many proposals relating to education.

According to a summary of these by the Brookings Institution, Project 2025's proposal for, quote,

safeguarding civil rights says only enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of

those laws rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory, unquote. Brookings also lists

these Project 2025 Education Agenda items rescind Federal Civil Rights protections forQ plus students, rescind them,

eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty,

discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to school serving low-income children,

reduce federal funding for students with disabilities, and remove guardrails

designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools, dismantle the U.S. Department

of Education, and promote universal private school choice. So that's some of what might happen

in 2025, if Project 202525 writers get their way.

A hundred years ago, 1925, was the year of the iconic Scopes Monkey Trial, in which a science

teacher named John Scopes had been arrested and charged with the crime of teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school.

A Tennessee state law passed that year, I believe, made it illegal to, quote,

teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible,

and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals, unquote from

that Tennessee law. According to the History Channel's website, History.com, the constitutional

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