The Worst Education Secretary Ever Compares U.S. Schools to East Germany

By David Boddiger | May 18, 2019 | 4:40pm

Trump Administration

With so many sycophants, industry insiders, and corrupt
individuals in Donald Trump’s administration, it’s hard to say exactly who’s
the worst of them. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos certainly is in the
running.

The person who wanted to wipe
out funding for the Special Olympics delivered a bizarre, pro-Reagan
speech Friday at the conservative Young America’s Foundation in which she
blamed “governments,” “unions,” and “associations of this, and organizations of
that” for the country’s troubled education system. And to demonstrate just how
out of touch she is with the year 2019, DeVos dropped a reference to East
Germany.

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DeVos used the Berlin Wall as a metaphor: “Each dismantled
piece of the Berlin Wall is a testament to [Ronald] Reagan’s force of purpose
and principle. While that wall was reduced to rubble, there’s another kind of
wall that needs tearing down today,” she said. “I’m referring to a wall in
education that keeps too many students from learning. It separates wealthy,
powerful, or well-connected students from those who aren’t wealthy, powerful,
or well-connected. They have about as much education freedom in America today
as East Germans had freedom to do anything back then.”

Good one, Betsy.

“Too many students are up against another empire—governments,
unions, associations of this, and organizations of that. It’s an education
cabal that protects the status quo at the expense of just about everyone else,”
she added, according to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution.

DeVos’ solution to the country’s education woes is a $5
billion plan to create tax credits that allow families to attend schools of
their choosing, including private ones, Politico noted. “More government is
clearly not the solution to this problem,” she said on Friday. So what is?
“Freedom.”

“Students win with freedom,”
DeVos said. “First, freedom from government.”

She also blamed the “social engineering” of the Obama
administration, a reference to Title IX, a federal
civil rights law that protects people from discrimination based on sex in
education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.
Late last year, DeVos released
rule changes to the Title IX law that would provide more protections to
students who are accused of sexual misconduct, to the detriment of victims.

And finally, DeVos set out to redefine public education. “[L]et’s
stop and rethink the definition of public education,” she said. “Today, it’s
often defined as one-type of school, funded by taxpayers, controlled by
government. But if every student is part of the public, then every way and
every place a student learns is ultimately of benefit to the public. That
should be the new definition of public education.”