The left’s next step on education

Sarah Durand writing at Pajamas Media describes the deeply alarming projects of Obama’s Education Department. Under a program called “Race to the Top,” billions of federal dollars are awarded to school districts based on their adoption of federal curriculum and other guidelines. Repeat: the more of the leftist curricula designed in Washington each school district adopts, the more money it gets.

Does Sarah Palin have a problem with this? As she made clear in the vice presidential debate in fall 2008, she (like George W. Bush, and unlike almost all conservatives) believes in the expansion of federal expenditures on education. At the same time, she presents herself as the people’s tribune against an out-of-touch, oppressive, left-wing federal government. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to Palin that to increase federal spending on education inevitably increases the power of the out-of-touch, oppressive, left-wing federal government over education.

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Paul K. writes:

I was bowled over by the not-too-subliminal name “Race to the Top” for Obama’s new education boondoggle. Race is always the top concern of this president.

LA replies:

The meaning that occurred to me was, the school districts have to “race” to get the top federal dollars, and the way they run this race is by adopting as much of the federal multicultural anti-American curriculur guidelines as they can.

Rick U. writes:

Any conservative who isn’t calling for the elimination of the Dept. of Education is “out of touch” with the Constitution. We missed in 1995, but it should remain a primary goal of all conservative movements.

LA replies:

We’ve been down this road before. Buchanan as presidential candidate called for the elimination of the Dept. of Education. But, as people pointed out at the time, this was meaningless, because the Dept. of Education is merely an organizational umbrella under which a congeries of programs are administered. Eliminate the DoE, and those programs, which are mandated by law and various federal regulations issued in pursuance of those laws, will simply be moved elsewhere.

So the problem is more difficult than eliminating the DoE. The programs that comprise the DoE must be eliminated, either by defunding them or by repealing the laws and regulations that mandate them.

Any politician who calls for eliminating the DoE, without naming the specific programs that he would eliminate, is indulging in meaningless slogans designed to win over conservatives.

February 9

Jim C. writes:

Perfect analysis.

The DOE is a euphemism for the DBHF (the Department of Black and Hispanic Failure). The DOE is just another outlet for the hate-whitey brigade to get in its licks—

Daniela writes:

This is one of the issues that render everything else academic. Education acting as a public indoctrination system is one of the most dangerous things and what is happening in the United States right now is the epitome of it, considering that liberals don’t reproduce so liberalism relies, like all parasites, to convert the children of conservatives. The huge damage done by liberalism comes exactly from this and after a few generations, the whole society is converted to the new way of thought as the contact with the people that were before the new ideology die and don’t have contact with other people. This is one of the things that made one of the greatest political thinkers in my country (and political dissident during the Communists) say that the four and a half decades of Communism hurt my country more than two centuries of war.

Also, I thought that when people say that the U.S. should get rid of the DOE, I thought that they mean that they want to do away with all its programs too—which is the way to go and in time, get rid of public education completely. I’d do something like this: take the 1948 tax deduction per child and adjust it by inflation which would bring it to $10,000 tax deductible per child and then make the average education cost in the public sector tax deductible in the case the parents don’t want their children in it and they could pay for a private school with it or home school and keep the money.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 08, 2010 03:36 PM | Send