I am happy to announce our long national nightmare is over. As of Monday, March 3rd, we…finally have a new Secretary of Education! Although I doubt we’re going to see steel cage matches at Cabinet meetings (then again, this is the Don’t Give A Fuck Trump we’re dealing with here, so I can’t write it off completely), Secretary Linda McMahon might do something even more awesome: getting rid of the Department of Education.
While Leftists worry about how their scam…I mean money laundering…I mean direction for public education will impact the country, some of us (like your humble correspondent) are just saving up our money to spend at the DOE fire sale that will come about if Secretary McMahon can make good on her promise.
With public education coming under more scrutiny in the past few years, a little more scrutiny of the federal government’s role in it is warranted. And since we don’t have any experts on the payroll, you’re stuck with me.
I’m sorry. Or you’re welcome. You know, whichever.
Department of Education
What the Left thinks it means – a vital part of the government charged with ensuring the quality of American education
What it really means – a dumpster fire fueled by waste, corruption, and Leftist incompetence
Although the shitshow that is the Department of Education is relatively recently, its history goes back a while. Thanks to Andrew Jackson, the department came into being in 1867, so we have another thing he could have been impeached for. But it wasn’t until 1979 that the Department of Education became a Cabinet post. This meant two things: 1) DOE staffers could finally access the White House salad bar more than once, and 2) it became a far heavier hitter than it was before.
And that made it a target for lobbyists, especially teachers unions.
Since then, we’ve seen a strange inverse relationship. We keep spending more on education, but getting worse results. In spite of this, Leftists keep insisting more money needs to get spent because…well, they haven’t figured that part out yet, but I’m sure they’ll get to it. And I’m sure the Department of Education will get right on that.
Wait. You mean they’re too busy taking policy cues from teachers unions to do anything about it? Oh, silly me!
And therein lies a problem. When you have the ear of a powerful entity who will do what you want, you’re going to keep pushing the envelope more than a postal employee working straight commission. That leads to the organization moving away from the main reason it was established and moving towards whatever the unions want regardless of whether it helps the people they claim to be representing.
And if the Department of Education were in a BDSM relationship with teachers unions, it would definitely be the bottom. (Author’s Note: if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re better off not knowing.)
But where do politics enter into the picture? Many educators lean so far Left they could stand on the ground and be parallel to it at the same time. So, if they want the Leftist point of view to dominate the classroom, they have a vested interest in keeping the Department of Education in line with their vision. And how do you keep that happening? Why, voting for fellow Leftists! Oh, and attacking anyone who wants to throw a spanner in the works.
That explains the anti-DOGE sentiment with the Left, come to think of it. But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
One thing the Left had going for it was parental ignorance. For a looooooooong time, parents really didn’t pay attention to what their children were learning. Sure, you’d see a conservative mother complaining once in a while over a math question that involved unnecessary race elements, but these were the exception not the rule.
Then COVID happened. With public schools being shuttered tighter than a wet prostitute’s dress, parents had to take a more hands-on approach and got a chance to see what passed for education these days. To put it lightly, they weren’t happy. Out of this came groups like Moms for Liberty who (despite being labeled extremist by the dipshits at the Southern Poverty Law Center) had a core belief that parents have a say in public education. How radical!
And I mean that in the 80s sense, kids.
Although Ronald Reagan and other Republican Presidents have called for the abolition of the Department of Education, it’s always been a pipe dream, thanks in large part to the media repeating Leftist squawking points (because, well, the media are Leftists, too). Plus, the Department of Education has been such a part of our societal conscience that it’s hard to imagine what it would be like not to have it around.
That’s where I come in.
I am one of those folks who was educated while the modern Department of Education was a gleam in a bureaucrat’s eye. Granted, it was around the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but I kept my cave drawings to refer to here. Up through the 4th grade, school was the way it was presented to me, but by the 5th grade, I noticed a subtle change.
And it involved the Pledge of Allegiance.
In the 4th grade, my class would recite the Pledge every day without fail. It became a part of the school day, one that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time because I was a dumb kid. Then in 5th grade…we just didn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t the lack of the Pledge that caused the slide in educational quality, mind you, but it was the touchpoint where I noticed things were changing. Being the youngest of three boys also gave me an insight into what my older brothers learned, and even then I noticed the stuff I was learning wasn’t as extensive as it was with them.
And judging from the advent of Common Core math, standards have gone down further than a toboggan run down the Grand Canyon.
With results like what we’ve seen since the Department of Education became a Cabinet post, why should we keep it around? No matter what excuse Leftists come up with to keep it on the payroll, the results we’re getting aren’t worth the money we’re spending to get them. Something has to change.
Many parents have looked to homeschooling and private schools as potential fixes, and they’re not wrong. Call me crazy (and you wouldn’t be wrong to do so), but it seems the further away from Washington the control of education gets, the better it gets. And, really, you’re not going to find a federal bureaucrat who will give as much of a shit about the students at your local school than you do. Even if you don’t have a kid in school, you kinda feel like you owe it to them to support the school in some fashion because a) you want the best for the kids, b) you want to set a good example, and c) you’re not a complete shithead.
And this is the best reason to give the Department of Education the rhetorical Tombstone Piledriver. The closer the parents are to the people making the decisions, the more of a reason the decision-makers have to listen. And if someone has a torch and pitchfork concession on the way, you can shop locally, so win-win! You may run into the same hassles you do now with teachers unions and their political lackeys, but the bureaucracy will be far easier to navigate, and you won’t have to fight DC traffic unless you live there.
So, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m all behind Secretary McMahon’s goal to lead the Department into oblivion. And that’s the bottom line ’cause Stone Cold said so!
And by Stone Cold, I mean me.
