Banner has sparked criticism as Kirk was a polarizing figure who made incendiary and often racist and sexist comments

The US Department of Education has hung large banners outside its building in Washington DC, including one featuring an image of the late far-right commentator, Charlie Kirk.

Kirk, who was shot and killed last September while speaking at a campus event a Utah Valley University, co-founded the conservative non-profit organization Turning Point USA, which advocates for and promotes conservative politics among young people, particularly on college campuses.

Photos show that Kirk’s image has been displayed on the Department of Education building alongside banners honoring Catharine Beecher, a prominent 19th-century US educator and advocate for women’s education, and Booker T Washington, an influential educator and writer who championed educational opportunities for Black Americans in post-civil war America and became the first principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School in Alabama, now Tuskegee University.

A banner next to the three figures reads: “Empowering our States to tell the Stories of our Heroes in American Education.”

  • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgEnglish
    28·
    12 days ago

    lollll who tf was Kirk providing education to that didn’t already have access to it? Dude literally targeting college campuses, where students were already receiving quality educations.

    • calliope@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      30·
      12 days ago

      Wait maybe it’s because Kirk himself had an educ—

      Kirk did not receive a college degree during his lifetime, a fact he noted in debates with academics and students

      Oh

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
        91·
        12 days ago

        It’s not as though a degree implies competence and critical-thinking skills. Just that you can do what you’re told for four years.

        • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
          10·
          12 days ago

          True, but in his case he clearly had a complex about not going to college. Not only did he frequently tout that fact on his channel, he targeted college kids in particular to ‘debate’. You have to wonder how much of the anti-college rhetoric from the Right in 2026 at least partially trickles back to his and Ben Shapiro’s “pwning college liberals” videos circa 2014-16.

        • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgEnglish
          4·
          11 days ago

          idk, I think the research we have on voting patterns stratified by level of education clearly shows that college education does correlate with critical thinking skills. Hard to imagine how someone would continually vote against their best interests (ie working class people voting Republican) unless they were lacking in critical thinking skills. Getting a bachelor’s degree is (or at least “was”, before ChatGPT) a sign that a person could withstand 4 years of intellectual challenges and keep putting out at least decent work. Having a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts means that a person spent 4 years grappling with increasingly complex and controversial ideas, and considering how those ideas mesh or don’t mesh with their own ideas. Having a bachelor’s degree usually means a person has received at least a little bit of training on how to read scientific studies, and how to evaluate the quality of those studies.

          The extent of these skills will vary from graduate to graduate, as we all know that some students apply themselves more than others. But my point is that a college education is about far more than just “doing what you’re told”. That’s certainly part of it, but that’s dramatically reductive.

          • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
            2·
            11 days ago

            I’m just going off my own anecdotal experience. At my school paper, the worst journalists were those studying journalism.

            “But they hadn’t graduated yet!” Fair point. And neither had I, yet coming at it from an outside perspective instead of taking any coursework in the field allowed me to assess the newsroom as it was, not what it theoretically should be. When I went professional, that was an asset. In fact, my first editor had a rule that he didn’t hire anyone with a journalism degree for the same reasons.

            • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgEnglish
              2·
              11 days ago

              sure, but that’s judging things based on the skill of “reporting the news”. We’re talking about critical thinking, which is a different skill. Not to say that critical thinking is not useful to journalism, but I also think that journalism is a field where the only way to get good at it is just to do it. Or at least, that is my impression.

              • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
                3·
                11 days ago

                I fully agree … you have to do it to learn it. It’s kinda like sex in that way.

                But the skills taught in classes were functionally useless. Reporters were used to being spoon-fed sources and producing 12" in a week. Somehow, within a year, I was the resident expert on media law despite several other people in the newsroom taking a course on it.

                There’s a value to college. I’d not put a blanket value on degrees.

  • its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org
    8·
    11 days ago

    Yes, the show went off the rails. But the chilling writing surrounding the re-writing of education, history, and knowledge is, sadly, relevant to now:

  • tangentism@beehaw.org
    6·
    11 days ago

    If Charlie Kirk were alive right now, he would be scratching furiously at the inside of his coffin!