Jeb: Beware Big Words

Well, here's another possible explanation for why Jeb Bush favors reformster policies for breaking down public education and selling off the parts.

Jeb sat down for an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, and as written up, it presents a fairly boilerplate Bush campaign talk. The Union Leader reported one section of the interview like this:

"We don't have to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world's leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more dangerous world." 
 

ave to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world’s leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more dangerous world."
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf

"We don’t have to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world’s leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more dangerous world."
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf

But when C-Span took a look at the raw footage, they discovered that the Union Leader might have cleaned that quote up for Jeb a bit. The full quote sounds a little more like this:

You don’t have to be the world’s policemen, but you have to be the world’s leader and there’s a huge difference. This guy — this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry – when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense. You know what I’m saying? Big syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings and – We’re not leading. That creates chaos. It creates a more dangerous world. So restoring the alliances that have kept the world safer and our country safer – getting back to a position in the Middle East where there’s no light between Israel and the United States.

I get the Jeb is trying to paint himself as a plain-speaking, straight-shooting, git-er-done kinda guy. But his picture of the opposite-- some fancy-pants guy with his fancy conferences and big syllable words who just isn't a leader-- how does Jeb want to square that with his notion that kids need to get an education so they can compete globally and make America better?

Is his beloved Common Core supposed to provide just a basic meat-and-potatoes education without getting too fancy? Should it have a cap on number of syllables in words, or a limit on how many clauses can be put in one sentence? Will we have a federal ban on semi-colons because they're just too fancy for a simple American piece of punctuation? A limit on the number of abstract nouns used in any composition?Should we also require Microsoft to strip Word of fancy swirly script fonts? I mean, shouldn't Times New Roman be enough for any plainspoken American (okay, maybe Comic Sans for when you're feeling kind of wacky)? And the most meta of concerns-- does the word "syllable" have too many syllables?

Does any red-blooded American need a vocabulary of more than a few hundred words? Could we perhaps focus the Common Core by simply listing the, say, 500 words that every American needs to know and just drop the rest of them? Syllables, nuance, complexity-- that way lies madness and chaos.

In fact, I think we need to find out right away which five hundred words should be on Jeb Bush's List of Real American Vocabulary so that we can get our lesson plans aligned for the fall. Let's see if we can get him to send us that list soon.