Harold, your lead point that “Education won’t counter populism — changing education might” is excellent. I’d like to add a twist.

All proposals I’ve seen would renew efforts to improve media literacy, as you note, along with civics education and STEM education. That makes sense, but it overlooks something that may be crucial: the importance of people becoming steeped in knowing about culture and civilization.

I know a half-dozen people (friends and acquaintances) who are very pro-Trump. The major commonality among them is that they all strongly prefer low-culture over high-culture stuff, and readily disparage high-culture stuff — e.g., burgers, not sushi; box wine or beer, not fine wine; rock music, not classical music; action movies, not art movies; TV sit-coms, not PBS’s Masterpiece Theater; AM talk radio, not FM’s NPR; and so forth. They want to be around “real people” and “regular folk.” And they often view high-culture types as snobs putting on airs, acting high and mighty, looking down on regular people. They can be quite vocal about this.

All great civilizations, America for one, benefit from having excellent high cultures and lively low cultures, plus fruitful connections and interactions between them. I personally appreciate lots of low- as well as high-culture stuff. So do most people. But the pro-Trumpers I know are decidedly, even exclusively low-culture in their preferred tastes and activities, no matter their education or wealth levels.

Since my personal sample is small, I’ve kept looking and listening elsewhere these past four-five years. So far, my observation appears to hold up, far and wide. Moreover, Trump himself clearly lacks interest in and knowledge about cultural and civilizational matters. Where he does have tastes, they are remarkably low (if that’s the right word). Even his car collection, though expensive, lacks taste. My sense is that is a key to why his supporters find him so appealing. Also, from what I have seen, people who are big on low-culture stuff, yet do not deride high-culture stuff and have at least some interest in and knowledge about it, are unlikely be Trumpian populists or tribalists.

Thus my sense that our schools need to get back to educating students far better about arts, music, culture, civilization, etc. Classes in such matters were among the first to be reduced if not cut in recent decades. I’m all for reviving media literacy, civics education, STEM education, etc. But even so, improving people’s cultural and civilizational sensibilities need renewed attention too, if America is to succeed in recovering and getting back on track.

Well, that turned out to be more commentary than I intended. Onward.