WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND
By Scott Hennen
Host of “What’s On Your Mind?” Radio Show
heard on the Flag Family Network including KTGO 1090AM in Watford City, Williston and Tioga, North Dakota
What is the purpose of education? Learning is the obvious answer. Yet the debate over ending the failed experiment known as the federal Department of Education has deteriorated into a sea of stupidity. Some high profile “educators” have embarrassed themselves in their defense of the education bureaucracy rather than better education outcomes.
The nation’s top-teacher, National Education Association union President Randi Weingarten said “Think about a country who’s President basically says ‘I’m getting rid of education’.” Really? 4,400 bureaucrats sitting in cubicles in Washington, D.C., now define education? Most of them don’t even show up at the office anymore either. She added “I’m really angry about this … I’m really angry.” Funny, she was never angry about the infinite amount of data showing decades of learning loss. I guess the school system is a jobs program for adults instead of a tool to educate our children. That’s a special kind of stupid.
Not to be outdone, failed Vice Presidential candidate and former Teacher Tim Walz, said “This isn’t about fixing bureaucracy in Washington. This is about defunding your local public school.” Come on Tampon Timmy, you need to follow along. Federal education spending will be sent to the states leaving decisions on education priorities to be decided at the local level. Nobody is for defunding local public schools and no one has ever accused Walz of being smart. The self described knucklehead strikes again.
Given the fiscal mess he has created as Governor of Minnesota, he must have failed at math too.
One of our state’s worst school administrators, the chief wokester Rupak Gandhi, superintendent of Fargo Public Schools said “education is a fundamental civil right that needs to remain a public good.”
So will education cease to remain a public good if governance shifts closer to the people it serves? You can’t convince me that local school boards and state legislators wouldn’t be superior to any federal regime. “Any elimination of federal support or acknowledgment or accountability of public education, I think, is going to hurt our communities and our society” Gandhi told The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. Got that? He believes that no feds in education equals a hurt to society! He clearly thinks we need groupthink from Washington, D.C., to govern local schools. We pay this man $231,422 per year for this kind of nonsense (and to defy state law)! Thankfully he has resigned.
Our Founding Fathers had more wisdom in their fingernails than all of these pearl clutching teachers combined. A federal role in education was never part of their plan. Taxpayers have spent over $1 trillion since the department was created in 1979. And exactly nothing has improved in education outcomes ever since. An effort to abolish it started in the Reagan administration. President Donald Trump is actually doing it, as he promised before being elected by a majority of Americans.
Now it’s up to us at the local level to return the role of education to helping kids learn. This failed federal experiment can’t end soon enough.
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