President Trump’s signal accomplishment during his first term has to have been appointing and confirming judges who actually respect the Constitution. Now, he is moving quickly to set up an executive branch that will actually drain the Swamp. He’s rapidly naming people he trusts to do serious work. But along this path, his most important appointment has not been announced as of this writing: Secretary of Education.
Education? Why is that second in importance only to judges? I’m glad you asked. Because sometimes things are so obvious that we look right past them.
Let’s begin with the kerfuffle that led to Glenn Youngkin being elected governor of Virginia. The Loudoun County school board went coco-loco with its transgender policies, leading to sexual assaults that the school board covered up. Don’t try to understand why they wouldn’t want to protect the kids in their schools. Nothing the left does makes sense.
Many observers of our socio-political landscape comment that “politics is downstream from culture.” They then bemoan two streams of cultural change: “Hollyweird” and “Higher Education.” We may largely discount the entertainment stream because it suffers from the “Go woke, go broke” disease.
Disney is in free fall after its big-budget movies, such as the late Star Wars franchise offerings, have lost serious money. It’s even shopping its many divisions to prospective buyers to stop the bleeding. Who knows? You might be able to pick up a sports entity like ESPN or a failing network like ABC for cheap.
For the rest of us, the question at hand is, “How do we fix our broken education system?” There are two parts to this question. The first has to be teaching the four Rs: readin’, ‘ritin’, ‘rithmetic, and responsibility.
Since the teachers’ unions are uninterested in actually teaching these core subjects, the public is doing an end-run around them with homeschooling and school choice. Trump’s Education Secretary can give great vocal support for full state financial support for all the alternatives.
Notice that I did not say “federal support.” The feds do an awful job, moving us down from being leaders when Carter started the DOE to our present world ranking in the 40s. Meanwhile, simply eliminating the heavy federal hand on local schools would be of great benefit to students. The bully pulpit has been vastly underused.
Second, moving up to “higher education,” many schools are graduating unemployable student loan debtors with degrees such as Puppet Arts, EcoGastronomy, and Costume Technology. The list is long, but most of the even marginally useful skills are actually better learned at apprentices or at trade schools.
Why would I need a college degree to be a farrier (shoeing horses), arrange flowers, or enjoy leisure studies? Most kids in my generation picked up their leisure “skills” at leisure without the benefit of a Federally Insured Student Loan or Pell Grant. Most of those skills would come faster on the job than in a structured four years paying the freight for worthless tenured professors.
But I digress. The major function of colleges today is to turn out radical leftists who emote rather than think. They are completely unaware of basic facts. They don’t know that science is a method, not an answer. They have no understanding that the money that paid for their underwater basket-weaving courses came from taxpayers who actually worked to earn it. So, when they can’t pay back the loans they were encouraged to get by colleges that didn’t educate them, we have to ask the eternal question: Quo bene?
Sutton’s Law tells us to follow the money. Students enticed into perpetual debt will naturally cry out for relief. They ask legislators to continue fleecing the taxpayers who paid for them to go into debt in the first place. And those CongressCritters will “righteously” cry out that “education is a right” and “everyone should have a right to go to college.”
Of course, the colleges are the real beneficiaries and quietly cheer this on because they are in the market of selling extended schooling, not education. Most colleges simply do not care what happens after you leave their premises. You showed up, put money in their pockets, and then they shooed you out the door. “Next!”
The Higher Education Act provides the Secretary of Education with the tools to fix this problem. Title IV of the Act provides for rule-making authority. Since the Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decided that it is unconstitutional to discriminate based on race, every DEI program is unlawful.
And because the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, any campus speech code, “safe spaces” rule, or DEI indoctrination class is likewise unconstitutional when financed by the taxpayer. Allowing any protest on campus that interferes with the right of any person to freely attend class or any speaker to come to present ideas is similarly impermissible. By extension, spending federal money on unconstitutional activities is itself unconstitutional.
The Secretary can simply follow the Administrative Procedures Act and, on January 21, propose a new rule implementing these legal principles. Schools can do whatever they want, but if they violate any of those rules, the federal government will no longer be legally able to send them money through FISLs or Pell Grants.
The fallout would be immediate. The rule would be fully implemented by summer, and most schools would dump their DEI coursework because that would be forbidden under the new rule. All those coddled skulls full of mush would suddenly lose their feather beds. A few might even discover the value of cooking French fries at McDonald’s.
Disruptive protesters would be rounded up and given three hots and a cot overnight at the local crossbar hotel. Professors of social justice and critical race theory would have to find a livelihood elsewhere because their employers could no longer afford them. And the beat goes on.
Over 90% of professors at public universities are hard lefties. With many of them suddenly becoming supernumerary, another class of public nuisances will be removed from places of influence. Students will have an easier time hearing both sides of political and social issues, making them better prepared citizens.
Will these changes cure everything? No, but as the expression goes, we have to pick the low-hanging fruit first. With this complete, the next step will become easier to see.
Ted Noel is a retired physician who posts on social media as Doctor Ted. His Doctor Ted’s Prescription podcast is available on multiple podcast channels.
