Betsy DeVos Likely To Spread Quack Science Instead Of Teaching The Real Thing
After a rocky confirmation hearing in Senate committee, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, cleared to the full Senate on a vote that strictly followed party lines. But now, two Republican Senators who voted DeVos out of committee, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, say they can’t back DeVos in a full Senate vote. Education Week reporters say a final vote has been called for next week, so her nomination is still up in the air.
Senators, including the two maverick Republicans, who say they will vote no on DeVos most often say their opposition comes from her lack of qualifications and her poor grasp of policy issues. But there’s lots more to DeVos’s whacky views of education.
Much has been written about DeVos’s deep ties to evangelical Christianity and her commitment to push an education agenda to “advance God’s Kingdom.” But supporters of DeVos insist her religious devotion reflects concerns about children and what’s best for the public and not an intention to “focus on curriculum issues like evolution and creationism,” according to this story in the Washington Post.
But recent revelations in major news outlets should raise alarms about DeVos’s views on science and how they may influence her decision-making on national education policy.
In her charitable giving, her financial investments, and the rhetoric she uses to express her intentions as secretary, DeVos has exhibited a propensity to favor beliefs ground in quack science over the real thing.
Christian-Based ‘Critical Thinking’
One of those concerns is the affinity DeVos has long had for organizations that push “intelligent design,” an idea linked to creationist beliefs that the universe and life must have been created by a superior intelligence.
As Annie Waldman reports for independent news outlet Propublica, DeVos and her family donated more than a $1 million to The Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan-based Christian legal group that represented a school district being sued because its conservative school board insisted ninth-grade students be taught “the theory of evolution was flawed and that intelligent design was an alternative.”
Waldman also notes donations the DeVos family has made to Focus on Betsy DeVos Likely To Spread Quack Science Instead Of Teaching The Real Thing: