The position of Secretary of Education is regularly filled with the secular equivalent of scammer televangelists. Such individuals lack the training, experience, common sense and moral virtue to do the job. They do, however, possess one crucial skill. They are tub thumping bullshit artists of the first magnitude.
The Reagan administration provides a sterling example. Ronald Reagan promised he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. He quietly dropped that when education unexpectedly gained national attention. He still slashed education spending in half. But Reagan staffers knew his administration had to look like they supported public education.
They were in luck. Reagan had already appointed a know-nothing blowhard as Secretary of Education. William F. Bennett was a carnival barker in both style and substance. 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 and 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 extraordinarily simple 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 miraculously been appointed CEO of the Chicago public school system. He "served" from 2001 - 2008. How come he got this job when he had 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 served 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 real 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 fiddle-fattle suited their situation. And, of course, that's exactly what happened in state after state.
Were federal legislators surprised that this happened? Hardly! They wanted to look tough, while simultaneously allowing the same laxity that has characterized teacher education since its inception. Tougher entry standards means you have to pay more to entering teachers. Otherwise no one will invest in meeting more stringent standards. You have to pay more to get more. And raising taxes to increase the pay of teachers 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 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, these 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! 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 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 Donald Trump's first term. How much training in education did she have? Zero. How much teaching experience? Zero. How much personal education in public school where 90% of Americans send their children? Zero. How much has 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? To be fair, that's not clear. Perhaps she was just a true believer indoctrinated in the religious fundamentalism that renders every one of it's acolytes incapable of critical reasoning. Plus she is a free market fanatic who falsely links unrestrained materialism with the dramatically anti-materialist teachings of Christ Jesus, Ms. DeVoss was clearly in over her head 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. She did somewhat redeem herself by summarily quitting the Trump circus after the riot at the Capital.
That gets us to Trump's current appointee as education bullshitter in chief. It is non other than pro wrestling promotor Linda McMahon. But what qualifies her? Pretty much the same qualification as Betsy De Voss. Contributing more than $10 million to help elect Mr. Trump in 2024.
How did Ms. McMahon become so very rich? By joining Vince, her husband, in adding still another level of grotesque carnival crudity to the crass, vulgar freak-show that is professional wrestling. Actually, promoting this kind of bullshit fits with becoming the Secretary of Education. Although Trump may also have been excited by her stark lack of pedagogical qualifications.
Trump clearly recognizes pedagogical incompetence when he sees it. After all, he founded and presided over that bogus institution known as Trump University. Its forced closure was accompanied by a $25 million settlement to reimburse over 6,000 former students who paid up to $35,000 for instruction that was found to have failed to deliver. (Trump also paid a $1 million settlement to New York State for operating an unlicensed educational institution.)
Yes, the Donald knows a pedagogical bullshitter when he sees one. And, should he need a refresher, he can just look in the mirror.
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