Betsy DeVos: I'd be 'fine' if we could ditch the Education Department

The part about "returning power to the states" is a worthy goal, as is streamlining the department. But I don't share the hatred other posters have for the very idea of an Education Department. What's wrong with having a federal agency that helps states with children growing up in states with fewer resources - like Alaska or Wyoming or the Dakotas? Why not have a department that researches better teaching techniques and makes information available? What's wrong with having a not-for-profit agency that measures students' education levels on a national scale so parents can see where their kids might get a better education?

My only concern with DeVos is that her (in)experience as a big-money donor will not be useful in achieving any changes at all. She can't just shut down segments of her department that she doesn't like - most of them are responsible for implementing current law. She can tell her agency not to implement the law anymore, but people got royally pissed when Obama pulled that stunt, so she'd probably be taken to court. She can continue lobbying Congress to change the law, but I bet there are a lot of red-state constituents who don't want to see their federal education dollars taken away. She's probably going to come out of all of this looking like a poor manager who can't get anything done.

 

I am going to try and raise this point again. Public schools work pretty well in areas of affluence and good tax income. They don't work at all in inner cities. This has to be addressed. Granted, family involvement is very important and makes a huge difference as well, but what is happening now is not working in inner cities. Being forced to go to a (*)(*)(*)(*)hole school is not going to help these kids get out of poverty.

 

The education system needs to be streamlined and to be made efficient,
and the education department is the only government body that could realize that,
she needs to think how to do it than outright eradicate the system.

 

Because inevitably the Feds get it wrong when they start trying to manage on a smaller level. They tend to go for a "One Size Fits All" *cough*NoChildLeftBehind*cough* strategy instead of realizing that due to differing populations, economies, and cultures, what works best in one state won't work at all in another. Heck, I sometimes see these kinds of differences going from one neighboring district to the next.

Individual districts and schools already do that during staff development days. What you've suggested would simply be a redundancy wasting tax dollars.

Not very cost effective as rarely do parents decide to move to a different state because they like the schools there better. On a local or state level though, happens quite a bit.

I can't say I hate the Department of Education, but I will say that at best it's useless and unnecessary, and at worst it's a colossal waste of time and resources. It could be shut down and not one school would be adversely affected.

 

Almost 90 million registered voters didn't vote this election.

Maybe you should work on that instead.

 

Said nobody ever.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/public-education-funding-oecd-opinions-contributors-mark-rice.html

 

The only positive I could see to getting rid of the department of Ed is that the current nitwit running the department would be out of a job. The right wing disdain for education continues. Hey Russia and China are churning out legions of kids who can do science and math while right wingers would rather have home schooled idiots that can recite bible verses. What could possibly go wrong?

 

The people complaining about universities probably haven't even attended one. Trump's base consists of undereducated, religiously indoctrinated, proudly stupid people who think the earth is 6,000 years old and want their children to be taught this in school.

 

It was founded by Jimmuh Catah as a payoff to the teacher's unions.

 

OH hell yes. Would be much better for all the kids. Would be much better than being indoctrinated in racial identity politics, acceptance of sexual deviance like the mythical "transgender" issue, and particularly in the "global warming" religion. We are talking about indoctrination in competing religions here, not the lack of indoctrination. I prefer Christianity to the "global warming" religion.

 

What makes these schools ----holes?

 

Yeah, you do that. March, and march. Don your (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)hat and slogans, and your lead pipes for smashing windows and your molotov cocktails to burn police cars and storefronts. And those sticks the Berkely rioters used to beat Trump supporters.

March and riot your ass off. THAT will get ordinary people who elected Trump over to your side.

 

Well, while Russian and China are churning out legions of kids who can do science and math we are graduating legions of kids in "ethnic studies" and "History of Far Eastern Religions", teaching courses in pornography, and indoctrinating kids who can shout verses of the "climate change" religion's various bibles or who can discuss "white privilege" but not calculus or who know a lot about racial grievance issues but nothing of organic chemistry.

We certainly couldn't be worse off without DofE than with it.

The left wing disdain for actual education focusing on kids knowing something useful in the modern world continues.

- - - Updated - - -

Ohhh, Ohhh! Teacher! I know!!!!

 

#andthatswhyyougottrump

I am part of Trump's base, and I am pretty confident I have more education than you.

 

Then you tell me - has any university you've attended engaged in, err, "leftist indoctrination"? If so, what was it, exactly?

I've attended a few, never encountered such a thing.

 

I don't approve of federal dept of education forcing decisions on the state level with money, but my kids are not home schooled, and I am not religious. As opposed to your quote, I am thinking that my group would be larger than "right wingers" preferring home schooled idiots that can recite bible verses.

I guess a good question is why do you manufacture an opponent that is inconsequential? Do you want someone to defend this almost non-existent group?

 

Betsy Devos lacks a clue.

But unlike most of Trump's administration, at least she is willing to admit her complete cluelessness.

 

I have more confidence in your inability to perceive bias as opposed to the probability that bias didn't exist. I graduated from college almost 20 years ago. There was a clear left lean in the econ dept.

 

Or was it that it appeared as a lean from your right-leaning position?

 

Since it was 40 years ago, no. At that time the leftists had not taken over academia.

However, I intermittently teach, on an adjunct basis, a graduate level course in Real Estate Development at a local university. Attitudes in the liberal arts and soft course departments are definitely left or far left. There was even a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) hat demonstration of a few dozen people a few weeks ago.

I have observed that the far left has not quite inserted itself into the hard courses where people learn useful things like STEM and business, but the rest of the university is full of crazies and very PC. I stick strictly to the subject matter so the crazy leftists from the other side of campus won't be marching in the corridors of the building trying to shut up any ideas they don't approve. Teachers in the old days as well as students were much more able to speak their minds, but not with the crazies today. This is Texas, however, so the really crazy people haven't reached here yet.

 

The NEA (no education allowed) has been an abject failure. I can't think of a single
positive things it's done. Education certainly doesn't come to mind. The only bad thing
that would come out of getting rid of it is that some people would be out of work until
the government can relocate them.

However, if we can have vouchers then the government indoctrinating centers would have
to compete with schools that provide a real education, including home schooling. The could
make them get on the right track of educating instead of indoctrinating.

 

I can relate to that sort of stuff, but when people speak of indoctrination, I expect it to infect the classroom, and to such an extent that ideology overrules fact and people come away with false beliefs because of it. The kind of stuff we get from religious institutions, you know? If there's a university out there that shuts out facts in favor of any ideology, especially a "leftist" one, whatever that actually is, then I'd love to know about it.

Students being protesting dicks about the views expressed by a professor, that I don't know about. People at that age do tend to fall for radicalism of one kind or another as they learn about the world and try to make sense of it. College age is the age of being a social justice warrior, the age of activism. It takes a while for people to settle down and become more reasoned and balanced about their views, as that takes time and experience, not to mention brain development We know that the brain is still maturing during the 20s.

 

There is indoctrination in the whole "global warming" hoax. No dissent is allowed. No alternative viewpoints are allowed. Kind of like the religious based education you disparage. There is indoctrination into all of the various social issues. Only one viewpoint is allowed. And the fact that I am fearful of even having a discussion of any of these issues after having seen what happened to a few teachers on the other side of campus (it is divided by a thoroughfare with the soft subjects on one side, the STEM and business facilities on the other) shows how deep the oppressive ideology has been indoctrinated into the students. Some of the STEM professors will dip a toe into the stream by suggesting other possible explanations in the "global warming" debate, and that areas of study may need exploration, but that is an option only to the tenured among them. The atmosphere is too oppressive to make waves for most.

You are naive if you don't recognize that students are being told only one side of many topics and that they are ruthlessly discouraged from even DISCUSSING the other side. Right now I don't need the headaches of getting into contentious discussions and most students at the graduate level in Business are older and more realistic and sober than the "studies" majors on the other side, so we don't get into arguments. However, given how attitudes among some young people seem to be changing a bit and they are open to fighting back against the leftist dogma, I may one day stick my head into the cauldron. Actually, given that I have decades of real world experience, and the facts on my side, I would LOOOVE to get into it with some of the SJW snowflakes. That is, if I don't care if the liberal admin decides to boot me out for exhibiting "microaggressions" and removing "safe spaces".

 

I saw plenty of it in the 80's, where I had more than one professor spending class time lecturing us on the evils of Reagan. Not exactly something I would have expected in an art history class for starters. Heck, it's hardly limited to universities; a couple years ago we had district training where the presenters used anti Chris Christy political cartoons as their visual aids.



Nowadays though, our union president posts on his FB along the lines of how teachers who voted for Trump were the same people lining up people for the gas chambers and suchlike.

 

Erm, well, obviously if people are going to argue against global warming, then they're going to have to provide evidence in the process, or else yes, they will be shut down in a classroom setting. It's like trying to argue against the Holocaust and citing some inaccurate kook claims to back that up, and expecting to be taken seriously.

The issue here is people not understanding science (not being scientifically literate, an area where public education in particular is evidently failing miserably) and not knowing how to discern facts and evidence properly. Then there's the added problem of global warming becoming politicized, with some trying to institute taxes and other policies that people understandably and justifiably do not like. There is bound to be a blowback against that. Here, then, as with the religious crowd attacking evolution, we get people who don't understand the science nevertheless motivated to attack and reject it because they don't like the consequences it entails. I don't think we'd be seeing all of this backlash if it hadn't been for policies impacting wealthy, influential carbon dioxide producers (coal and fossil fuels industries in particular).

Science is not partisan, no matter how much people seek to politicize it. We can't reject science just because we don't like how it's being used by some. It's not indoctrination or oppression for a university to (reasonably) silence uninformed opposition to plain facts. It would be wrong if they were shutting down informed debate and facts that contradict a certain claim or viewpoint.