Congressman to Trump: Betsy DeVos Is 'Rich, White, and Dumber Than a Bag of Hammers'
"Correspondent Lesley Stahl questioned whether it's wise to remove funds from public schools and inject them into charter schools, as DeVos had a hand in doing in Michigan. DeVos avoided answering the critique directly and pivoted by saying she 'avoids talking about all schools in general, because schools are made up of individual students attending them.'"
You could search for a metaphor or a simile about the irony of placing such a person in charge of Education. Perhaps you could go with something like John Oliver's classic: "It's like hiring a dingo as your baby-sitter." But you don't need to construct a jokey simile. It's like nominating an anti-science climate change denier to a position which is required by statute to be one of the "distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research." Or like putting Rick Perry in charge of Energy, or Ryan Zinke in charge of the Interior, or Ben Carson in charge of anything, or ... or ... or ...
There are also public charter schools. They aren't the 'magic bullet' in education that those who engage in hype like to claim, but, in many ways' they can be superior to 'neighborhood schools.'
ReplyDeletePretty stupid to bring her race into it. Democrats need to stop doing that if they want to build a real majority.
ReplyDeleteI was just going to mention that. Would a better person for Secretary of Education be 'Poor, Black and dumber than a box of rocks'? With the condition of our public schools in recent years, something tells me that the 'Dumber than' part of either statement is quite probably true.
DeleteFor that matter, why bring her wealth into it. Once somebody is dumber than a bag of hammers, race, gender and class become irrelevant.
DeleteI think the congressperson was just trying to show that a rich white person would probably be out of touch with the realities of public schools, since she presumably sent her own children to lily-white private schools or home-schooled them. (Anything to keep them out of actual public schools.) She herself was educated in Christian schools.
Of course that's unfair. A rich white person could be very effective in her job if he or she dug into the problems with an open mind.
Also, it would help to have a mind which was not only open, but also capable of learning things.
Representative Jared Huffman brought the white and rich into it because, if you read his tweet, he was referencing something Trump either said, or Huffman claimed that he said, about black people supposedly being unintelligent.
DeleteSo, Huffman's comment was basically referencing both the false idea that because black people are disproportionately poor that they must be stupid, and the true idea that many white people, especially wealthy white people are recipients of privilege through unconscious bias.
I know a lot of white people bristle at these notions, but in behavior psychology and the related behavior economics, the reality of unconscious bias against black people and in favor of white people isn't even subject to much serious debate, the only area of debate seems to be whether or not white people can lose this privilege through appearances that other people denote as negative (i.e so-called white trailer trash.)
Behavioral psychology and behavioral economics that should say.
DeleteBut undermining education is a lynch-pin to Republican success. An educated, well-informed public capable of independent thought would screw them at the polls.
ReplyDeleteSadly enough, that's almost true. But don't lose sight of the fact that poorly educated voters always leaned Democratic before Trump, not Republican, and the least educated (high school dropouts) voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won high school grads 51-48 over Romney and won high school dropouts 64-35. Adding the two groups together, Obama won them 53-46. Both parties need the support of the ignoramuses - just not the same ones.
DeleteTrump, however, did alter the calculus. After Romney lost the "high school or less" group 46-53 in 2012, Trump won it 51-46. Without having looked at how that broke down in the swing states, I'm guessing that is one of the most important factors in his victory.
Uneducated doesn't equal dumb. Less-educated voters used to vote union because that meant good jobs.
DeleteWith unions dead or dying and no one really on their side, there's less reason to be loyal to a party. Hillary was awful enough to make the rotting ham in a wig look less bad.
If only some stereotypes weren't 100% accurate. She is the perfect living example of the rich, dumb white woman who thinks she understands complex problems that apply to poor minorities. I'd love for it not to be true, but holy hell, she is that.
ReplyDeleteWe already have "Rich, Black, and Dumber Than a Bag of Hammers" in Ben Carson. So clearly Rich and Dumb are the key qualifications for being a member of the Trump team.
ReplyDeleteYou must have some mighty brilliant hammers where you come from. You don't get to be one of the top ranked pediatric neurosurgeons in the country and be dumb. Maybe you should just say "Ben Carson is no brain surgeon..." Wait he is.
DeleteThat doesn't make him right about housing and I get that the way he tends to speak, slowly and softly makes it easier to call him stupid, but clearly he's not. I hate that so many people can't disagree with a person's ideas without resorting to personal attacks.
I gather that Carson is some kind of a savant when it comes to surgery. His academic record was just OK.
DeleteHe obviously does not possess a great scientific mind since he's a biblical literalist who believes in a 6000-year old earth, which means he wasn't really absorbing much in those science classes in school.
And he has publicly said some incredibly dumb things.
But I don't think anybody would object if he had been named Surgeon General, a position for which he was actually qualified. As head of H.U.D. he has a complex government bureau to run, and he's never run anything. Not even a convenience store. He has been labor all of his life (albeit highly compensated labor), and now he is thrust into management and seems hopelessly overmatched.
I think you're probably missing something important. I'm pretty sure that Trump knows Ben Carson is incompetent. Despite appearances to the contrary, The Donald is pretty crafty. Incompetence is precisely why Carson holds the job. Having him there is a way to slowly destroy HUD without being obvious.
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On the other hand, it will be interesting to see how the media react to Mike Pompeo now that he's so visible as Secretary of State. He graduated first in his class at West Point and got his law degree from Harvard, but is a basic Tea Party guy. It won't be easy to hang the "dumb conservative" tag on him. Perhaps they will go with the "evil genius" narrative they used on Admiral Poindexter back in the Reagan days.
Outside of his specialty, Carson has proven to be incredibly ignorant. Or have you not been exposed to his opinions on the pyramids?
DeleteAnd it looks like, as in all thing Trump, there was personal profit at play in his appointment to HUD. His son is a--wait for it--chairman of a construction firm who has already dipped more than a toe into the Unethical Pool.
It was embarrassing that Betsy Devos could answer so few questions about pedagogy during her confirmation hearings. But I agree with her larger idea, mainly that increasing competition is better for students. I have worked as both a lawyer and a public high school teacher in the South Bronx. You can debate what that says about my character later. But I have seen both inspired and inspiring teachers and teachers just counting the days till retirement.
ReplyDeleteCharter schools are not a magic bullet, but the best thing about a charter school is if a charter school fails it will be (or at least should be) closed. Personally, I would expand vouchers for poorer students to use at public or private schools. But what do I know. I am one of those ignoramus GOP voters. Or at least I was until Trump was on the ballot. Then I became a dumb Gary Johnson voter.
The main thing for me with charter schools is that, unlike the 'one size fits all approach' of the neighborhood schools is that the charter schools offer diversity of teaching methods and curriculum.
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