Using Bad Arguments for a Good Bill
Once again our best and brightest feel required to introduce legislation that is so obviously worthy by calling upon arguments I detest!
I’m referring to the “Foundations for Success Act” introduced in Congress recently by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The bill proposes to provide universal childcare and early childhood education.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s a good bill. My concern is that we got into the habit of viewing education as a tool for defeating Communism, and gradually as a weapon in economic duels with Japan, Germany and now China!
And in such a war we call upon our least accurate and most distasteful data—test scores--as though our rank order in the world of education was based on some larger more grand definition.
We furthermore feel obliged to treat their parents as defective child-rearers.
