ROGER SIMON: Trump2.0 Should Be the Education President.
Now I realize we’ve already had a self-described “Education President”—George W. Bush. But he wasn’t very good at it. He brought us “No Child Left Behind.” Then President Obama brought us “Common Core”—a bureaucratic Washington-centric mess that never improved anything, actually made things worse and left us with the propagandistic nightmare we have now.
Incongruous as it may seem—and it’s really not—Trump should assume that mantle and make it the number one issue of his campaign to recapture the presidency.
He should start now, very publicly, because, as I noted, we are in crisis, destroying more of our youth by the minute and with them America’s future.
In so doing, Trump would be expanding his base. Conservative activists are far from the only people who are appalled by what is going on in our schools. Parents and indeed grandparents across the country—who have seen it all on Zoom now—are worried stiff about what is happening to their children though many are too fearful of the repercussions to speak up.
They would welcome Trump taking this on, even if they didn’t admit it at first.
This would be especially true of two key parts of the electorate where he did not fare particularly well—suburban women and blacks (where he did better than most Republicans but not yet good enough).
The suburban women will need some wooing (they’ve been propagandized endlessly against him), but many blacks already see school choice as the civil rights movement of our time. (Teaching young black kids that it’s okay not to learn basic math is about as condescending… and racist… as you can get.)
When I say Trump is the man to do this—to take these issues and run—it is because he has already made several early and meaningful steps in that direction. In a sense he has already begun.
Near the end of his presidency he took on phony “diversity” training, critical race theory, and the fundamentally dishonest 1619 Project that even the New York Times, where it first appeared, walked back. Instead, he initiated the 1776 Commission that Biden, of course, killed.
He did make one error, I regret to say, choosing Betsy DeVos for secretary of education. Still tethered to the Bush approach, she didn’t have the courage or the moxie to carry through the necessary reforms and right the ship.
Trump should build his own ex-officio education commission now, actually continue building what he started while in office, and publicize their ideas and initiatives as only he can.
It’s both fun and necessary to dunk on the DNC-MSM for their ridiculously slanted bias, but education reform should be the American right’s number one goal.