Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) recently reintroduced HR899, a bill that stated, in its entirety: This bill terminates the Department of Education on December 31, 2020.
He’s updated the year to 2022, but otherwise left it as-is.
Of course, the Internet had its opinions (much like noses, everybody’s got one, and they all smell). One genius proffered: Why you people so extreme and ignorant, we won’t have schools like we’re Somalia or something. At first, I figured it was sarcasm, but subsequent comments (“im one of the few actually thinking anything other than republican bs”) affirmed that this fellow was serious in his criticism.
Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent.
Internet idiocy aside, there are two realities.
1 – The Department of Education was created in 1979. Signed into law by Jimmy Carter, it had 33 Democratic and 14 Republican sponsors in the Senate. So it has existed for 42 years. Public education itself, on the other hand, has existed in America since the mid 1600s.
2 – Per-student spending has tripled in the last half century, but there has been no measurable improvement in student performance.
Across its four decades, the Department of Education has consumed $3.6 trillion in taxpayer dollars.
What has it accomplished, apart from contributing to the national debt and making useless impositions on states and localities (where education decisions should be made)?
Let me reiterate that. Public education should be managed by states and localities, without the Federal government imposing its will, its bureaucracy, and its one-size-fits-all ideas. That’s how it has been for 90% of public education’s history, and the stagnation of educational progress that has coincided with the Federal government’s involvement is not a coincidence.
Massie and his 12 cosponsors are right. There’s no reason for the Department of Education to exist.
Sadly, the hardest creature to kill in all of creation is an ongoing government program. A Cabinet-level bureaucracy is even more immune to elimination (or even downsizing), so this bill is going nowhere. Moreso, the dominant voice in our culture today, the progressive Left, would rather chew hot asphalt than allow those benighted red states and cities to decide how and what to teach children.
Still, we can dream…
Loading ...
Active Comment Threads
Most Commented Posts
Universal Background Checks – A Back Door to Universal Registration
COVID Mask Follies
When Everything Is Illegal…
An Anti-Vax Inflection Point?
“Not In My Name”
The Great Social Media Crackup
War Comes Through The Overton Window
The First Rule of Italian Driving
Most Active Commenters