Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Betsy DeVos wants to shut down the Department of Education
Betsy DeVos wants to shut down the Department of Education
Apr 4, 2025 7:21 AM

She’s not the first Republican to want to do away with the DoE, and with good reason. But as with all deeply entrenched bureaucracies, it may no longer be possible.

Read More…

Betsy DeVos thinks the Department of Education “should not exist.” She’s not the first secretary of education we’ve had who understood her central purpose to be the dissolution of the agency of which she was in charge (until she resigned on January 7, 2021). Ronald Reagan famously pledged the elimination of the office when he ran for president in 1980, promising to undo Carter’s “boondoggle.” Terrel Bell, Reagan’s first secretary of education, insisted that the department should be turned into a foundation, and thus placed under the control of the private sector. Once Bell got wobbly on mitment to eliminate the agency, Reagan turned control over to William Bennett, who actively called for the department’s elimination.

Reagan’s appointment of Bennett to run the agency pointed to a central paradox of modern government: Bureaucratic gains are irreversible, and as a result electoral politics e an petition for control of the bureaucratic apparatus. Conservatives could not eliminate the department they loathed, but they could support a secretary who at least seemed sympathetic to their interests.

It’s in the nature of the idea of “public education” that it will conflict with private ends. Parents are the first and thus primary educators of their children. The only way to bypass this would be to separate infants from their parents at birth, the path suggested by Socrates when he reflected on the proper formation of the guardian class. In Socrates’ ideal city, well-bred children would be placed in the care of nurses whose mitment is to the good of the city.

While it is true that American constitutionalism asked for a well-educated citizenry, the request could never be entertained apart from the demands of liberty and the interests of both households munities to maintain their independence. Education in America stressed both petency and mastery of arts and letters, and this emphasis was always connected to principles of freedom.

As America transformed itself from a Republic of republics to a nation of consequence, the demand for more state control of education increased as well, bringing with it a seismic shift in our understanding of what the schools are, what role they ought to play, and on what principles education ought to be conducted.

Consider, for example, the educational reforms of Horace Mann, who argued vigorously for mon schools that would bring all children into the nation. Mann stressed three previously contestable aspects of public education: It had to pulsory, it had to be universal, and it had to be managed by a centralized bureaucracy. Mann cloaked his understanding of public education in religious language, frequently referring to schools as sacred temples or places where, Christ-like, little children were being called to participate in the kingdom of heaven. Clearly schooled in the Bible and Calvinist theology, Mann sought to connect these to life in a democratic society, whose futurity required prehensive organization and … united effort, acting for mon end and under the focal light of mon intelligence.” Mann viewed local governments as essential “bunglers” who couldn’t move education toward its goal of ensuring national progress. Parents, likewise, were benighted educators who had only a minimal claim to their child’s development. Parents had their children for only a short period of time, after which they would be bequeathed to society as adults. If parents do a bad job with the children, society pays the price. Better, Mann averred, that society intervene early in the process, protect the child from bad parenting, and ensure, via standardized school systems, the production of moral and intelligent adults. One can’t bend an oak, he said, but one can move a seed.

We see a similar emphasis in the development of the National Education Association, the main client connected to DoE policy and largesse. By 1918, the NEA insisted that schools be able to reach their authority back into the home and reform it, since the home was often a bastion of backwardness, ethnic division, and benightedness. The student could then be charged with carrying the ethos of the state back into the household for the purpose of standardizing households.

Such standardization is the key to educational reform in the 20th century. The increase in centralized state authority found its handmaiden in the emergent social sciences, with their emphases on methods, aggregation of populations, and categorization, the last of which tended to see things only as species. These emphases can clearly be found in contemporary education, with the foci on standardized tests, measurable es, and universal curricular guidelines.

This nationalization and standardization received more formal status with the creation of the Department of Education in 1980, whose task it was to nationalize education through data collection and research. The department has not only grown in size since its inception but also has grown to dominate the nation’s educational landscape by using funds to entice schools to pursue both “benchmarks” and, more damningly, social reform. The emphasis on STEM to the exclusion of humane learning serves America’s position as petitor in the local marketplace, and social reform and identity politics provide moral cover. Bureaucrats driven by the current social science research substitute their judgment for that of teachers and parents.

Clearly DoE has taken center stage in the culture wars (consider the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter as an example) and been a central actor in using the coercive power of federal funding to pliance around a set of cultural markers and expectations. It has certainly not been immune from using its influence to advance a progressive agenda and identity politics. One would expect parents to push back against this.

Secretary DeVos’ tenure was not without controversy, but also not without significant successes, even if eliminating the department wasn’t one of them. Rolling back the open attacks on due process on our college campuses was a significant albeit short-lived achievement. And I’d be remiss not to mention my favorite moment of her administration: threatening to withhold federal funds from Princeton University after the school issued an opportunistic and disingenuous admission of systemic racism. Just slowing down the progressive agenda was no mean feat.

And while I can’t speak for Secretary DeVos, my guess is that she rightly divines that such successes will last only as long as conservatives hold some kind of power; and that, furthermore, the internal logic of centralized bureaucratic enterprises will always be progressive, in no small part because the roughly 4,400 employees of that department are overwhelmingly progressive in their views. But even if they weren’t, the animating principle of the enterprise is to replace parents with teachers, experience with expertise, and local control with national objectives. These national objectives, in turn, are often contrary to the interests and well-being of munities, particularly when those objectives have an economic or military hue. It may be in the interest of the state to sacrifice citizens in war, but it’s never in the interest of the parent, and that’s true whether it’s a war of a military or a cultural variety.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Wichita Business Journal: The Call of the Entrepreneur
Pat Sangimino wrote an article for the Wichita Business Journal titled, “Documentary seeks to dispel negative images of entrepreneurs ” (subscription required). A premiere of The Call of the Entrepreneur took place in Wichita, Kan., on November 14th. Sangimino noted in his piece: Some consider Wichita to be the Midwest’s cradle of entrepreneurship. Evidence of that is the original Pizza Hut building, which was moved to the Wichita State University campus in 1984 to serve as a reminder of what...
George Hearst of Deadwood: ‘The-boy-the-earth-talks-to’
In a bit of an addendum to my review of the HBO series Deadwood in the current issue of Religion & Liberty, “A Law Beyond Law: Life Together in Deadwood,” I couldn’t help thinking of this bit from Clement of Alexandria when describing George Hearst, the über-robber baron of the Old West. In that piece I write, “Hearst fancies that he is doing his fellow man a service in his devotion to mining gold, to acquiring ‘the color.'” There’s a...
Rock N Roll ‘Jesus’
Last night the American Music Awards were televised on ABC. Among the big winners were alumni of the hit TV show, “American Idol,” whose stars won 3 AMAs. Kid Rock, the Rock N Roll “Jesus.” But there was another kind of “idol” on display at the AMAs, as Detroit’s own Kid Rock was a presenter and did a spoof of his fight with rocker Tommy Lee in edy bit with host Jimmy Kimmel. Kid Rock released a new album last...
God Hears the Compassionate
“If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.” Proverbs 21:13 I remember being very young and hearing a minister dramatically describe the flames and fires of hell in a sermon. I know I was somewhere between the age of six and seven. At this time, I also had little knowledge of salvation in Christ, so I worried about my eternal destination. Couple this thought with a...
Reports on Globalization and National Capital
Last month the World Bank published a report titled, “Where is the Wealth of Nations?” (HT: From the Heartland). The report describes estimates of wealth and ponents for nearly 120 countries. The book has four sections. The first part introduces the wealth estimates and highlights the level position of wealth across countries. The second part analyzes changes in wealth and their implications for economic policy. The third part deepens the analysis by considering the importance of human and institutional capital,...
Prosperity, Sexual Sin, and Forgiveness
A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that “religion is less likely to be central to the lives of individuals in richer nations than poorer ones” (HT). Given the Bible’s many warnings about the danger presented by wealth, specifically the temptation to no longer rely on God and his providential care, that probably isn’t surprising. But what might be more surprising is that “the United States, the wealthiest nation, was ‘most notably’ an exception, scoring higher in...
Giuliani and the Godbloggers
After the jump is the (hyperlinked) text of a column I filed last week from GodblogCon. Here are some related items worth exploring: “Evangelicals and Evil Empires: Religious voters have long had an interest in foreign policy,” OpinionJournal (HT: CT Liveblog).“Rudy’s Gamble: Giuliani’s audacious strategy for the nomination,” OpinionJournal.“Evangelical flocks on their own at the polls,” LA Times (HT: J-Walking).“On second thought, conservatives give Huckabee an amen,” LA Times.“Clarifying Media Distortions,” Focus on the Family.“Robertson for Rudy,” God’s Politics.“The Robertson...
A Child’s Faith
“People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little e to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took the children in his arms, put...
Black America Is Just As Class Divided As The Rest Of America
The Pew Research Center released a new report stating: “African Americans see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within munity, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race.” Here are the key findings: • Asked whether blacks can still be thought of as a single race, given the increasing diversity within the munity, 53% of blacks say they can, but 37% of...
Alarmism and Corruption
Regis Nicoll over at The Point notes a WaPo story that is getting a lot of play on the blogosphere about the UN’s downgrade of the estimate of the extent of the AIDS epidemic, “U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic: Population With Virus Overstated by Millions.” Nicoll writes that while of course it is good news that fewer people are infected than were previously thought, “The bad news is that previous estimates were inflated because of politics, bad science,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved