What happens if Republicans really do kill the Education Department?

[haele]

17. Residents in rural areas devolve into peasants, their kids trapped

Into an educational system that can't prepare them for anything other than the local manual labor jobs. Which they're going to start doing at younger ages - 15, 16, 17...
Libraries won't be a priority because who needs them for kids who aren't going to need to learn enough to go to college, anyway? They're going to need to learn how to work.

Private schools will be sponsored by Religious or Financial organizations. So anything kids learn in private schools will be focused on the sponsor's agenda, not on promoting learning a wide range of subjects that "speak" to the student and direct their future.

The kids that are motivated to leave will join the military or look to sports scholarships to get them out of the community.

Project 2025 appears to be looking at a return to a "Gilded Age" - similar to the late 19th Century.

But looking at the religious based social restrictions it also supports imposing, this country appears to heading closer to a rural Russian model, with a very few wealthy people sending their nepo-babies that actually want to learn science or humanities out of the Country for a good education, the parents with money for private school making due with corporate one-size fits all higher level education, and a basic read'n, writ'n, and 'rithmatic education for everyone else so they could at least function doing manual labor and maintaining a household breeding a future workforce.
Moneyed families don't care if the lower classes aren't educated. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they preferred it that way, so there's no pushback against their demands and actions.

Just my observation.