Arne Is Aiming for Damage Control But Just Can’t Seem to Get It Right
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s tasteless remarks on Friday about the seeming inability of “White suburban mothers” to come to terms with their children’s limited intellectual ability as such is highlighted by the Duncan-beloved Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has the former Australian basketball player-gone-US-Sec-of Ed attempting to “close the gap” and re-score some of the numerous lost points with the American public– and especially with American mothers of all raceswhom he inadvertently insulted.
The only problem is that Duncan is taking his CCSS shovel and digging deeper. Here is his attempt to “make nice,” as recorded in the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Duncan moved away from those comments in a statement issued Monday: “We have a tendency in our fast-moving world to focus on controversial-sounding sound bites, instead of the complex policy debates that underlie them. Unfortunately, I recently played into that dynamic,” Duncan said. [Emphasis added.]
Translation: “The public should ignore my comments about White suburban mothers and their less-than-brilliant children.”
And what of “focusing on complex policy debates”? The “debate” about CCSS never happened, and now a non-invested (and arguably wounded) public is