Rooted in a long view of American educational history and its conflicted trajectories, this essay opens an inquiry into what happens to philosophies of democratic education in the emerging “after the school” configuration. The essay draws from work on the “cinema of attractions” and semiotic ideas of “spectacle” to shed light on this new, dystopian educational configuration. The author contends that we must focus on questions that have classical roots but radically disruptive contemporary twists.