CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: Boldly Trampling Public Education

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: Boldly Trampling Public Education:

DeVos: Boldly Trampling Public Education

Today Secretary of Privatization Education Betsy DeVos delivered some remarks at the annual Arizona State University + Global Silicon Valley Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's a fun gathering of technocrats with all sorts of profitable forward-thinking solutions to education's challenges (as they put it, a can't miss ,if you're an educator, innovator or an investor.) Whatever else we can say about DeVos, despite the occasional moments when she pretends to sort of support public education, she stays pretty consistently on message. Let's take a look at how she slammed public schools what she had to say today.

She opened with a clear statement of her idea of government's role by pointing out that really, she should be listening to the captains of technocracy gathered there, and she wants them to know her door is always open to them (any similar invitations ever offered to public school teachers?). But since she's at the mike, she has a few thoughts.

Washington has been in the drivers' seat for over fifty years with very little to show for its efforts.

And then she lays out three parts of the problem that we must acknowledge.

1) The system is based on the Prussian model implemented in the early 1800s.

I'm not one to rush to unqualified defense of the system, but I can't help noticing that computers are based on a numbering system in around the 6th or 7th century. For that matter, we have a government based on a model implemented in the late 1700s. Granted, DeVos's boss thinks that model is terrible, but "based on an old model" is only a useful criticism if you are heavily invested in selling a new system.

2. The system assigns your child to a school based solely upon the street on which CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: Boldly Trampling Public Education: