Valerie Strauss was dumbfounded by the irony of Betsy DeVos’s speech on Constitution Day.
First, she criticized colleges “for abandoning truth.”
“What she didn’t say was that the president for whom she works utters, on average, more than eight lies a day, according to The Washington Post. His mistruths and exaggerations have become a central feature of his presidency, reported on virtually every day.
“President Trump isn’t the only member of his administration who has been caught abandoning the truth, of course.
“To name just a few: former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI; former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI; Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations related to hush money paid to women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. Et cetera.”
Then, she complained that the nation’s schools were failing to teach civics.
“DeVos expressed such pronounced concern about a lack of civics education that you might be surprised to learn that her Education Department sought to cut money for it in the 2018 and 2019 budget proposals. Congress refused to go along.”
Of course, she went on about protecting the Constitution but here is what she did not mention.
“There’s something ironic about DeVos talking about a First Amendment right when she and the administration she works for seem not terribly concerned about another First Amendment right, freedom of the press.
“Putting aside Trump’s constant attacks on the news media as being the “enemy of the people,” the Education Department under DeVos often does not respond to journalists who ask basic questions, and the secretary herself rarely talks to reporters.
“The department also has been aggressive in finding internal leakers of unclassified information. Last year, DeVos asked her agency’s Office of Inspector General to investigate whether grounds existed to criminally prosecute employees who had leaked unclassified information and data to journalists. It cited three incidents, between May and October 2017, in which there appeared to be unauthorized release of information, including publication by The Washington Post of material from the department’s budget proposal before it was publicly released.”
Unclassified information!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In addition to astonishment at DeVos, we should be astonished by Stanford honoring Hanushek with the Paul Hanna university chair
Valerie Strauss (April 27, 2017) referenced Hanushek and asked, “Is there really a link between test scores and America’s economic future?” In September, Hanushek spoke at a Gates-sponsored Ohio Education Attainment Summit on the OSU campus, in the company of a Gates’ Impatient Optimist (not identified as such). Hanushek holds a faculty position that honors scholar Paul Hanna, a man whose life’s work was in the furtherance of democracy. What irony. Hanushek was cited 3 times more often then any other reference in the paper, “Do democracies provide better education? Revisiting the democracy-human capital link”. Hanushek and Hanna are two men at different ends of a spectrum (Kappa Delta Pi profile)- Hanna’s call for “students to experience democratic processes in the classrooms” vs. Hanushek’s testing dogma. Is it a Stanford mutation- a U.S. colonialist society limits Hanna’s prescriptions to the elite’s children who attend schools like Lakeside?
There are a couple of good points in Strauss’s blog post but on the whole I find it disappointing. DeVos makes a wholesale attack on US colleges for ‘abandoning truth’ and backs it up with a number of disturbing examples.
Is it true that our colleges are routinely stifling debate with PC cordoned-off ‘free-speech areas’, charging students exorbitant attendance fees [for security] to discourage controversial speakers, et al? Or are these maybe Fox’s cherry-picked anti-‘liberal colleges’ talking points du jour? Controversial speakers/ hecklers/ demonstrators: is this actually commonplace on our campuses? And when it happens, is there something more than what DeVos describes going on? The situations I’ve heard of sound like set-ups — nationally-known, radical, insulting loudmouths looking for a platform, probably funded by politicos using student groups to worm their way on campus.
I’d like to see these charges confronted, perhaps debunked – not read a cheap diversion about Trump, Flynn, Cohen etc. DeVos says a lot of outrageous things here about college students and admin. It sounds exactly like her hate-on-public-school speeches, and is probably being delivered for the same reason — to undermine public trust in our public institutions in order to justify defunding them.
I think you are correct. A lot of conservative Christians and libertarians are somewhat anti-intellectual. They view colleges as bastions of liberalism. They see liberals as being “intolerant and prone to censorship.” It is much the same way that liberals see the right wing, even if the censored topics are different.
“They see liberals as being ‘intolerant and prone to censorship.’ It is much the same way that liberals see the right wing, even if the censored topics are different.”
I think that is just a meme they’ve adopted with glee because it’s been used against them for so long. Silly extreme-PC was their pearl handle — well-meaning inclusive language that ends up, e.g., attempting to deny racial & gender differences by never mentioning race or gender. Taken to ludicrous extremes on some campuses w/ “micro-aggressions” & “safe spaces”, which has in fact restricted freedom of speech. Meanwhile, for a refreshing reality check on what real intolerance & intent to censor looks like: Trump ;-D
From the article quoting DeVos:
“The ability to respectfully deliberate, discuss and disagree — to model the behavior on display in Independence Hall — has been lost in too many places. Some are quick to blame a “tribalization” of America where groupthink reigns. Others point to the rise of social media where, under the cloak of anonymity, sarcasm and disdain dominate.
Certainly, none of that improves our discourse. But I think the issue is more fundamental than that. And it’s one governments cannot solve.
The issue is that we have abandoned truth.”
When DeVos says that “we have abandoned truth” that means her xtian bible “truths” are not being promulgated. It’s a dog whistle statement recognized by fundie christianists as a call to save their supposed biblical truths and to work towards an xtianist fundie overthrow of the US Constitutional form of government.
Oh, yes. Here’s some more:
“Our Constitution became the standard for freedom-loving people throughout the world by design, not by accident.” (Goes along with capitalizing our nation’s “Founding,” as tho it were a Biblical event.)
“Be still, pray…”
“Let’s resolve to get back to believing in and living out our freedoms in ways our Framers – and our Creator – designed.”
“Saint John Paul II said it well…” here she quotes from his speech in Baltimore, but JPII is a key anti-relativism theologian. And there’s lots of anti-relativism in the DeVos speech. Not that I think relativism is wonderful, but I have noticed that scorning relativism is, using your words a ‘dog-whistle’ for fundamentalist Christians.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.