Betsy DeVos, in first public appearance after bike accident, criticizes helicopter parents who obsess on 'safety and security’
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday made her first public appearance since being sidelined in a cycling crash, turning up at an event about youth entrepreneurship in a wheelchair and criticizing parents of the millennial generation who have obsessed on “safety and security” rather than allowing children to take “calculated” and “interesting” risks.
She also said school experiences for children have not changed much from decades ago. “It’s only more protected and more safe,” she said.
DeVos underwent surgery earlier this month for what the Education Department said at the time was a broken bone. On Thursday, DeVos said at the event that she had broken her pelvis and hip socket and that it was “very painful,” Politico reported. She also said: "But it will heal. I just have to stay off of it for quite a few weeks, so I’m getting around with other means.”
DeVos appeared onstage for a question-and-answer session at the headquarters of Gallup, the management consulting firm, at the second annual briefing on “Business Startup Challenges and Youth Entrepreneurship,” which was co-hosted by Gallup and the Lemonade Day national youth entrepreneurship nonprofit organization. The education secretary sat in a wheelchair, and at the end of DeVos’s appearance, a woman walked up to help maneuver the chair off the stage, a video of the event shows.
DeVos has frequently criticized public schools for failing to change over time, and she is a champion of alternatives to traditional public schools.
Taking questions from Joe Daly, a partner at Gallup and a member of Lemonade Day’s board of directors, DeVos offered her opinion about why entrepreneurship among young people has declined. Daly reported polling data that said young people have become less entrepreneurial since 1977 but mostly in the last decade. And the millennial generation is “on track to be even less entrepreneurial” than Generation X and baby boomers.
“Well,” she said, "you certainly are the ones with data, but I have some sort of instinctual ideas about it. I CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos, in first public appearance after bike accident, criticizes helicopter parents who obsess on 'safety and security’ - The Washington Post
