There’s a lot to worry about in the coming presidency of Donald Trump, but a few bright spots appear for those of us who want to run our own lives with minimal government interference. In particular, the naming of Betsy DeVos as the president-elect’s pick for Secretary of Education holds a lot of promise for parents who want to move past decades of crappy politician-directed schooling to gain more say in how their children learn.
To go by her enemies, DeVos offers promise, indeed.
DeVos is “best known for her anti-public education campaigns” the National Education Association fulminates in its official response to her nomination. The NEA goes on to take her to task for supporting “vouchers—which take away funding and local control from our public schools—to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense.”
Oh, horrors.
“It is clear that DeVos, like the President-elect who has chosen her, is comfortable applying the logic of the marketplace to schoolyard precincts,” complains Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker. Encapsulating the nominee’s sinister vision for America, Mead draws a quote from an interview DeVos gave to Philanthropy in 2013 summing up her educational dream: “That all parents, regardless of their zip code, have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children. And that all students have had the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential.”
Can’t you just taste the evil?
Well, if supporting vouchers and other means to choose the best educational settings for children constitutes the oncoming headlights of America’s educational doom, I say we throw ourselves right into ’em.
Actually, when it comes to real doom, public schools are already doing a hell of a good job.
Sadly, that’s true.