Republicans Should Make Education A Really Big Issue

Sept 8, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

A NOTE TO THE PARTY BOSSES:

Tens of millions of parents have been dragged into the Education Wars, the Reading Wars, the Math Wars, etc. They are profoundly sick of it. They are angry. They want change and improvement.

The Republican Party has got to step up and hit this easy pitch. The Tea Party as well.

Almost every American has watched Jay Leno go Jaywalking, and probably exclaimed the same words: “These people are voters but they don’t know anything. This isn’t acceptable.”

The Republican Party should see the huge political leverage in pushing common-sense reform. Give the people what they want: a return to sane schools that emphasize reading, writing, arithmetic and geography, to be followed by history, science, literature and the arts. These are the eight points of light every good school invariably follows.

Conversely, explain that the schemes pushed by the Education Establishment are often counterproductive and lead to dumbing-down. The most charitable thing we can say about our self-proclaimed experts is that they are clumsy bureaucrats. The public no longer likes them or trusts them.

So we have two urgent pieces of business here: saving the country from stupid education policy; and gaining political advantage by doing good.

Everybody knows it’s liberals who are screwing up education. Make them defend their 50 million functional illiterates, and probably an even greater number who can’t do simple arithmetic without a calculator.

I'd say that no specifics are required for the campaign. If the public blames bad schools on the people who created them, that's great. Then they have one more reason to vote against Democrats.

I write about the details all the time, but the details can overwhelm people. I believe that what people want to hear is very simple: that you'll make public schools recapture the safety and efficiency they traditionally had.

[SCollinsMT]

I agree, the liberal socialist have hijacked our education system and are using it to “re-educate” our children. They have rewritten history by leaving out important events. They teach our kids that immorality is ok. Everything they do goes against showing kids that hard work brings you rewards, you are not entitled to them. It is sickening.