Kevin McCarthy Has Some Thoughts About Education

Kevin McCarthy has some thoughts about what priorities of the GOP-controlled House should pursue in the 188th Congress, and that includes education (and, no kidding, Hunter Biden's laptop). They're worth a quick look, just to see where those folks are headed next year. 

Tucked amidst the concerns like the swamp's bureaucracy is a section on "Education & Woke Ideology." It's a short rant and a list. First, the rant. For starters:

Schools should educate not indoctrinate. Unfortunately, the classroom has become a battlefield where competing political ideologies, gender theories, and junk science wage war against the well-being of children across the country. Worse, the Biden administration has promoted harmful policies pushed by the far-left teachers unions that have restricted learning and funded radical curriculums that poison the minds of children across America.

Far left teachers unions. Poisoning the minds of children across America. Sure.

But I do like this one--

Students should be learning in the classroom – not over Zoom.

Other than the small percentage of students who actually do prefer distance learning, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with this. Well, also except all those people who spent the last couple of decades arguing that with computers students can learn anywhere and innovative charters like the Rocketship chain where students bat away at keyboards in front of screens all day are awesome. Folks are going to have to get their story straight on that one.

The next line is a dumb one.

Schools should focus on raising test scores.

No, they shouldn't. No parent in America sends their kids off to school--any kind of school--with no aspiration higher than "Just get a better score on that annual standardized math and reading test." 

There's one more sentence, but I'm going to save it. 

Next comes the list, and it tells us something about where the Republicans are that it is a list of things they oppose, not a list of things they propose. They should know better, having watched the Democratic party sit back on its heels reacting and rarely acting, but no, here they are, stuck waiting for Democrats or liberals or the Great Woke Monster to do something so they can leap up and say, "We don't like that!!"

The list of Things We're Agin' is familiar. Federal promotion of Critical Race Theory. Legality of Biden's loan debt plan. Department of Education attempt "to erase scientific definitions of gender" (which is, well, not what they seem to think it is). Promoting transgender surgery and puberty blockers. Violating religious liberty by making people do things they don't like. Oh, and they still want to relitigate "scientific justifications for school closures" (though schools weren't closed for long--just the buildings) and mask mandates.

The final sentence in the opening graph is this one:

House Republicans are committed to empowering parents and ensuring the best education possible for America’s children.

Are they? Because while some of the issues raised here deserve some serious discussion, McCarthy's document sounds like a weak attempt at rank political opportunism rather than an attempt provide high quality education for US children. Not that I'm holding my breath waiting for the Democrats to come up with a serious attempt to support public education in this country, but they certainly won't get there by following the GOP example.