The position of Secretary of Education is normally filled with the secular equivalent of scamming televangelists. Such individuals lack the training, experience, common sense and moral virtue to do the job. The majority, however, do possess two crucial skills. They are tub thumping bullshit artists and masters of fakery. So who better to be Trump's second term Secretary of Education than the queen of pro-wrestling promotion, Linda McMahon!
This sort of devious appointment has an honored tradition. The Reagan administration provides a particularly good example. Like Trump, Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. But in office he quietly dropped that when education unexpectedly gained national attention. Although he still cut federal education spending by half.
Despite this major cut, Reagan wanted to look like he supported public education. So he appointed William F. Bennett, a huckster blowhard of considerable experience, as Secretary of Education. Bennett was a carnival barker in both style and effectiveness. His unrestrained exaggerations and gross over-simplifications repeatedly made the news. And as they did, gullible Americans came to believe that much was wrong with America's schools. Moreover, that the Reagan administration was working hard to fix them.
This is not the place to detail Bennett's demagoguery. Let's just recount an incident that captures the noxious essence of his humbug. This Secretary of Education wrote an article that appeared in the November 1988 Readers Digest. In it he praised a school principal's extraordinary method of "reforming a troubled inner-city Washington, D. C. school." "On the very first day," wrote Bennett, "this remarkable educational leader," this "no-nonsense principal, assembled the student body and ... with practiced eye, chose 20 chronic troublemakers to enforce order and put an end to chaos." And, according to Bennett, putting the school's miscreants in charge worked like magic! Order was restored and education proceeded!
Can you imagine? The school is chaotic and the principal's solution is to put the trouble-makers in charge! Even a Secretary of Education should recognize that such a policy is just plain nuts. But Bennett was not interested in the multifaceted and highly complex nature of actual reform. He was shoveling bullshit for political purposes. Simple solutions for the simple minded.
This is a sample of how he politicized his position with carnival-barker effectiveness. He repeatedly beat up on the National Education Association — still a relatively innocuous organization back then. Charging that it was a major cause of what he alleged to be national school decline. He repeatedly pointed to it as the chief villain. But why did Bennett attack the NEA when school problems were so clearly linked to far more complex problems? He trashed it because the union favored the Democrats and, ineffectually, opposed the Reagan administration's education policies. Bennett's job was to confirm the biases of Reagan voters and he did that well. What he failed to do was offer genuine leadership.
Enough about Bennett. Let's turn to Arnie Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education. Unlike Reagan, Obama increased Federal education funding by an extra $100 billion. But his selection of Mr. Duncan was similar to Reagan's choice of Bennett in that Arnie's chief skill was bullshitting. He lacked any knowledge of education policy, curriculum design, research on learning, human growth and development etc.. He had never even taught. Yet despite his utter lack of qualifications, he had previously been appointed CEO of the Chicago public school system from 2001 - 2008. How did he get such a job job with zero qualifications? Can you spell P O L I T I C S?
Yes, like Bennett, Arnie was utterly unqualified. But he did have that one skill that serves any Secretary of Education. He really could dish out the shit. He was skilled at looking like he knew what he was talking about. (He also provided the President with an excellent basketball buddy. An ex-professional hoopster, Arnie played a mean game of one on one.)
During the Bush administration "No Child Left Behind" had been signed into law. It stipulated that in the future only "highly qualified" teachers would be permitted to teach." In fact it specifically ordained that "to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading or languages, candidates must have obtained a long-term teaching certificate, and demonstrate subject matter knowledge by either obtaining a college major in the subject, by passing a test in the subject taught."
That's got teeth, right? Ah, but wait! The lawmakers also inserted the following at the very end: "...or by some other means established by the state." This was nothing less than a last second castration! It allowed states to dodge all of the supposed rigor. They could substitute whatever feeble humbug that suited them. And, of course, that's exactly what they did.
Were federal legislators surprised? Hardly! They wanted to look tough, while simultaneously allowing the same laxity that has characterized teacher education since its inception. Tougher standards means you have to pay more to entering teachers. Otherwise fewer aspirants will invest in meeting more stringent standards. You have to pay more to get more. And raising taxes to increase teacher pay is politically unpalatable
California initially failed to take advantage of the No Child Left Behind escape clause. Consequently, the state faced an immediate shortage of highly qualified teachers. But President Obama came to the rescue. He waived his executive order magic wand and declared that wanna-be teachers still in training were, in fact, "highly qualified?" At that time many such people were filling in as full-time teachers in California. Now, thanks to Obama, rank amateurs were instantly transformed into masters of the art. California's shortage of "highly qualified" teachers was over.
Did Secretary Duncan complain when Obama transformed apprentices to master craftsmen with the stroke of a pen! Nope, not a whimper came from Arnie. Apparently he had changed his mind about inadequate teacher preparation. Now they could be as unqualified as he was.
Eventually a federal judge ruled that Obama's evasion violated the No Child Left Behind "highly qualified" requirement, Congress quickly corrected that. With a straight face they piously legislated that the classification "highly qualified" included those who weren't. Arnie went along with that too. By then his expressed concern about inadequate teacher preparation had totally evaporated.
Then there is Betsy DeVoss, Secretary of Education during Trump's first term. How much training in education did she have? Zero. How much teaching experience? Zero. How much education in public school where 90% of Americans send their children? Zero. How much had she and the rest of her family donated to Republican causes? Forbes reports about $200 million dollars in 2017. That's 200 million reasons why, having always attended private conservative Christian schools, having long demanded deep cuts in federal education spending, having enthusiastically championed privatizing public schools through vouchers, and after boldly boosting the for-profit college industry despite their student loan default rate being 6 times higher, she still ended up U.S. Secretary of Education.
Was Ms. DeVoss a bullshitter similar to the two cited above? Possibly not. She may just have been manifesting true belief in the religious fundamentalism that renders its acolytes incapable of critical thinking. Perhaps that is how she could be a passionate free market advocate of unrestrained materialism, while simultaneously worshipping the anti-materialist Christ Jesus, Ms. DeVoss was clearly out of her league as Secretary of Education. In fact, for her to even get the job Vice President Pence had to cast the deciding vote, given the 50-50 tie in the Senate. However, she did somewhat redeem herself by summarily quitting the Trump circus after the riot at the Capital.
That gets us to Linda McMahon, President Trump's present Secretary of Education. Yes, this is non-other than the pro-wrestling promotor who, with her husband Vince, made multiple millions making a vulgar farce more so. What are her educational qualifications? Pretty much the same as Betsy De Voss. Contributing a big gob of money, in this case more than $10 million, to elect Mr. Trump. To be fair, though, selling crude, make-believe violence is well within the range of skills commonly required of a Secretary of Education.
Trump may even have been attracted by Ms. McMahon's lack of pedagogical knowledge. He apparently values pedagogical ignorance. After all, he founded and presided over his very own phony institution of higher education. He modestly called this film-flam: "Trump University."
It had a short life. And its governmentally forced closure was punctuated by a court-ordered $25 million settlement reimbursing over 6,000 former students who paid up to $35,000 for instruction Trump's "university" failed to deliver. Trump also paid a $1 million settlement to New York State for operating an unlicensed educational institution. Clearly, Trump knows a talented pedagogical bullshitter when he sees one. And if he needs a reminder, he can just look in the mirror.
Why this series of pedagogical incompetents? Why does this sort of thing keep happening? Well, for one thing the Federal Education Department is unnecessary. Most of what really matters can be handled by the states. In fact, the feds generally impede instruction via reams of paperwork. In fact this department's chief accomplishment is getting in the way. So incompetent bullshitters filling the top position really fits the character of the organization.
Besides, most "education" problems originate far outside of schools. Take, for instance, the large number of parents who are grotesquely unqualified for the job. That's as plain as it could possibly be. Yet no politician in their right mind will acknowledge it. They pretend parents know best. Some, of course, do. But others are too busy, selfish or distracted to really give a hoot. Still others are neglectful or abusive. But recognizing this reality takes our politicians where they do not want to go. Even the very best teachers cannot cancel out the personal misery and deep social problems spawned by parental incompetence and neglect.
But from a politician's point of view, it's far better to pretend this political third rail doesn't exist. That's why they approve a series of no-nothing bullshitters as Secretary of Education, hoping he or she will set smoke screens of simple-minded panaceas and misplaced blame. If a pedagogical ignoramus is chosen instead of a guileful bullshitter, so much the better. So long he or she naively but sincerely embraces panaceas and misplaced blame. Sincerity makes these "leaders" all the more convincing.
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