>I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture (sic) along with roads and internet.
A lot of people are disinclined towards education and education isn't so important that people should be coerced into submitting to it. In fact, educating people against their will usually impairs the learning experience for motivated people in the classroom. The people who interrupt the teacher and misbehave usually do so because they don't want to be there.
Beyond that, a lot of public schools are failing to do their jobs or prioritizing knowledge poorly. A school district near me has rapidly declining test scores but touts a social justice curriculum. I certainly don't want to forbid anyone from learning critiques of colonialism, but I think that's "dessert" and should really only be taught after students have a strong knowledge base in more practical knowledge.
>I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.
To the degree this is true, I primarily blame those who politicize science and education. Look at the "march for science" - the well meaning folks at my local march were too happy to use climate change predictions to demand others make massive concessions. In this, we see the difficulty in using empiricism as a means to support agendas - the climate change models aren't performing well, and even if the predictions were accurate, there should be some discussion about the cost and benefits. America does better than most nations under climate change predictions and the countries that will be the worst impacted as those who play the biggest roles in it: the oil rich middle eastern and African states sure enjoy selling oil but beg for help to deal with the consequences of their customers using the oil they sell. To some degree, the people who don't care about the consequences of climate change aren't hostile to science and they don't want to debate the issue at the level of science which is probably the right way to handle it because the discussion isn't really about the climate, the core issue is the degree to which we should sacrifice for people we don't care about.
Lastly, it sometimes seems like the more schooling one receives, the more hostile they are to science. High school graduates might not like things like racial differences in IQ, but it's my experience that individuals with graduate-level education are more hostile to the same thing. I would hope that the additional schooling would make these people more open to accepting things based on the strength of evidence but that's not the case. It's not clear how we reverse that hostility but the answer doesn't seem to be "more school".