Why is there a Department of Education?

[Anonymous]

[DrPepper12]

70% of what they do is college related. MAGAs think they control a national woke curriculum cuz they're morons

[monorprise]

At the moment its somewhat unclear who if anyone really controls "public education" given how many conflicting cooks are in the kitchen.
Which is why in practice unaccountable bureaucrats are really running the show.
If we want an accountable education system there has to be 1 set of politicians ideally elected spesficly for the propose in control.

The federal goverment is constitutionally incapable of offering that @DrPepper12, which is why ONLY at the state and local level do you have any elections on the subject. This is the propose of getting rid of the FEDERAL department of education.
So that state & local politicians actually elected to run education can't point their fingers at Washington to avoid responsibility for their results.

[DrPepper12]

You obviously do not have any special education students in your life.

[monorprise]

@DrPepper12 You would be shocked how many of them I know, Including a many would would assert the Federal government's mandated special education policy by way of exclusion ruined their education and life.

It is certainly true that there are unfortunately students who are soo crippled they are incapable of sharing a classroom with the rest. Theses people are easy to identify and deal with.
But for many others particular those drugged and diagnosed with ADHD when they simply had displine problems. This was a terrible system the feds created.

[OddBeMe]

Because it's such a large part of public funding it needs management you fucking moron

[Asker]

Temper!

[monorprise]

@OddBeMe
Really? They make states apply for grants offering and not offering particular courses on the basis is of ever changing wims of distant and apathetic federal politicians elected or otherwise.

We were and would be far better off without them and their 10% contribution.

[OddBeMe]

@monorprise actually the education system changes on whim by school boards overrun with maga karens

[Anonymous]

Things have gotten worse not better since DOE, and really federal involvement in education which started 20 years earlier.

Turns out effectively unaccountable federal bureaucracy in D. C. at best only gum up the works of education conducted thousands of miles away from them by very different people with different agendas.

Getting rid of the Federal department of education isn't an argument for getting rid of public education but simply putting the federal goverment back into its constitutional box.
State's Not the federal goverment are responsible for education and if there were really a issue someone in the state would be aware of it and bring that before the courts.

We never needed 4000 full time federal employees getting in the way.

[Asker]

Really? No improvement in a century and a half? No more literacy?

Oh, wait: "very different people with different agendas".
Education is all about agendas, is it? Like the asshole who's requiring students to pray for Trump?

[Asker]

I love how you responded to a 45 minute video in 15 minutes.

[Opinion Owner]

I can skip her arguments for public education as that isn't relevant to the department of education, i can also read her points on the board.

[Opinion Owner]

in 1979 the illiteracy rate in the USA among adults was 0.6% This followed a steady decline from 1870 . That is basically everyone could read before they got started, and the pattern of improvement showed how unnecessary they were.

nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy

If you want to say DOE is responsible for people being able to read your just claiming credit for someone else's prior hard work

[Asker]

Literacy is a very low bar. It would mean you could stop schooling at 10 or less.

[Opinion Owner]

Literacy was at least the gateway to all other knowledge, that may not be the case anymore. But once you can read you can learn whatever else you need or want more or less for free on your own if your soo motivate.

To that end Literacy is or rather was (as we now have freely available TTS) the minimum justifiable standard of education. After which you have ventured into the realm of teaching people things at the public expense they need not learn.

So while Literacy may have been a low bar it is the only one you can really justify forcing people to endure the very high cost of education both in time and their future money.

[Asker]

How much does internet access cost where you are? Is it less or more important than, say, food? How do you "learn whatever else you need or want more or less for free on your own"?

[Opinion Owner]

I guess you never heard of a public library in it the cost of internet and books to any indiviual are negligible. Until TTS the only bar for entrance was the ability to read, which just happens to be the primary objective of the first school systems.

After that math is generally nice, and we generally want you to know basic civics for no other propose than to know which political is responsible for what when you vote.

[Asker]

How many public libraries are there in the US? What's happening to them under Republicans? Where's your nearest one?

[Opinion Owner]

There are around 17 thousand public libraries in these untied states:
https://libguides.ala.org/c.php?g=751692&p=9132142

Which is around 3k more than there are school districts, the nearest one to me is a few miles away.

Nothing of note happened to them under republicans, nor is it likely they would given such libraries are funded by local taxes.

[Asker]

"the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.

It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
...
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy."

[Asker]

Oklahoma, ranked 48 out of 50 for education, want to buy thousands of Trump bibles for schools at 20x the wholesale price, in violation of the first amendment.

[Opinion Owner]

You mean this 1st amendment which spesficly refers to CONGRESS not the state legislators?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This was ratified by the same state legislators that had been doing exactly that for hundreds of years and would continue to do so for over a 100+ years thereafter..

The whole point of this amendment was to keep the FEDERAL goverment from doing precisely what your implying it should in interfering in State established religion laws.

Laws such as the one Oklahoma is proposing on the minor side to actually requiring church attendance as was required by many if not most states at the time the 1st amendment was ramified and for decades after.

As for the quality of Oklahoma's Education system I guess that depends on what your measuring and how you measure it. Because people want their ideology pushed Everyone has their own agenda when it comes to "education".

[Opinion Owner]

Obviously that effort failed and things got a lot worse in every respect.

1: Our heath is far worse
2: Our education progress has stalled or reversed.
3: Our welfare system exploded taking enormous shares of working age Americans out of the workforce and bankrupting costs to the idiots slaving away to pay for them.

Even still that was a reorganization of existing goverment less a new agency. Not that republicans in the early 1950's were particular conservative.

[Asker]

"The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposes on the states the same limitations the First Amendment had always imposed on the Congress."
But I know how you think things were so much better back when you could own people.

[Opinion Owner]

Really? Because:
1: It doesn't say that at all.
2: Did not have that effect for 60+ years thereafter.
3: The few extremist who allegedly ratified (under the gun for 11 states and only accepting one answer for the rest) that poorly written amendment didn't have that understanding.
4: Due process of law refers to the actual 'process' of law: making, enforcing and adjudicating. IE: Don't lynch people. It has nothing to do with whatever the law is.

The incorporation doctrine is just that a lawless act of federal politicians in black robes. Its very significant and devastating contradiction with the text, history, definition, rules of construction, and nature of the Federal constitution just reinforces how utterly made up and out of the blue it is.

The policy idea the lawless federal politicians were trying to impose with their doctrine was in fact already wisely considered and rejected by the court that was actually there when the amendment was written and "ratified".

As that court pointed out "rights of Americans" can never by the court itself be defined as in nature there exist a right to everything a man can do which invariably conflicts with the rights of everything any other man might do.

With such arbitrary power a court might latterly enact whatever policy they want by simply cherry picking a 'right' to some aspect of it. Effectively making themselfs a dictator on a case by case basis. Which is essentially what we have with the court today thanks to the lawless progressive politicians ~60 years later. Hence why everyone is desperately fighting for control over the same all powerful court.

This is why the incorporation doctrine is a self-serving power grab and the 14th amendment for opening itself up to it with vague language is irresponsibly written. The imperial & extremest crusaders who wrote the 14h amendment were not exactly genius. At least they had the good sense to use Jefferson's language for the 13th amendment.

[Asker]

SCOTUS disagrees with you. Admittedly, not today's SCOTUS which would love to return to 1860.

[Opinion Owner]

That is in fact the point is it not?

A law is defined as an unchanging rule that apply equably to everyone. Indeed the whole point of the concept of 'due process of law' the 1920's SCOTUS tried to redefine to push their policy agenda was to ensure that said law did not change and could be applied equally.

The 14th amendment of course never came close to inventing this many thousands of years old concept, it's authors simply wanted to give the federal goverment the power to force their conquered state to apply it with their "civil rights act of 1864'. They passed the 14th amendment preemptively in haste to ensure they had that power.
Sadly one of many bad things that happened under them in the 1860s in their crusade to end slavery and repress their political enemies at all cost. Such is why and how republics fall.


Regardless the legacy of not what they did so much but what the 1920's court did in overturning the precedent of the 1870's court is what has reduced American to living under an effectively lawless court that has and can do anything at anytime.

[Asker]

The difference is that today's SCOTUS was forced into existence in a nakedly partisan way by McConnell and other Republicans. There was no filibuster allowed on Trump's three appointments, the Whitehouse interfered in the investigation of Kavanaugh, and, of course, Obama's nominee wasn't even brought up for discussion, while Trump's was confirmed while the presidential election was ongoing.

[Opinion Owner]

You need to learn to look past your own political inclinations so you can see the system instead of the trees. Republicans view Democrat's court packing of the 1930s, 40s 50s and 60s in a similar way.

They can at least point to some very dramatic changes in the nature of the court and Constitution there demonstrating this dictatorial power for the first time and dramatically alternating the nature of the "federal" goverment in the process.

But even that is shortsighted compared to what happened in the 20s almost without notice not because of democrats or republicans but mere federal politicians seeking power unhindered by accountability to the states (post 17th amendment).

A Constitution is a system designed to distribute and balance power, making it possible for the same to be accountable to the people. It was broken by theses changes and we are living in a world that results from the same.

We can blame each other for the very different things we want to do or not do. But in the long run it both will happen either way so all that matter is what can be done. That is a constitutional question not a political one.

The current system is broken and falling apart the fact that we both recognize that vast power exist over which we must fight bitterly and with which anything can be done demonstrates that fact.

Sooner or later someone is going to use it to secure their own hold on power and what remains of the republic will be gone with that act.

[Asker]

"Republicans view Democrat's court packing of the 1930s, 40s 50s and 60s in a similar way. " Only because they've been told to and don't know that every nominee until Trump's had to get past a potential filibuster. Most didn't, because they were confirmed with massive bipartisan acceptance. Until 1991, Clarence Thomas, no justice was confirmed with less than 60% of the Senate, often in the 90s. Since then, Republicans simply put up unacceptable nominees and confirmed them on a partisan basis.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SCOTUS_justices

The current system is BEING broken, it's not just happening by itself. Republicans have packed the court with partisan "justices" who have no sense of ethics, taking money from billionaires and refusing to recuse on cases their wives are involved in. Trump's nominating a lawbreaker for AG, someone who only graduated high school to run the department of education, an ex-Major (not a Major General) to run the military, and the list goes on and on.

[Opinion Owner]

11 democrats voted for Clarence Thomas in a democrat controlled senate. Clearly Clarence was not unacceptable.

I could point out other areas where what you was told was simply incorrect propaganda and we could go back in forth on he said she said and argue about the merts of each position but really none of that would matter.

These acts took place decades ago even if the people who did it could be punished it is long past time when that punishment would mean anything to anyone going forward.

The system failed to prevent them that is what really matters to a constitutional system. The question is how?

I have suggested to you some of the structural changes that made it possible. I am inferring that your suggesting the "good dictator" solution of only ever appointing "good" men to wield such power. Hence your complain about Thomas somehow not being "good". As much as I very strongly disagree with given Thomas's orientalist history, It really doesn't matter.

The idea that even if we could agree on what is a "good" man (and we clearly never did). Our we could not, and our politicians would be disinclined to try to consistently pick such people. Indeed we would generally do a fairly bad job rather consistently.

The system either constrains the people we pick or there will be little to no constraints in the medium to long run. If a "good dictator" exist we are unlikely to find or retain him, that is why we invented democracy in the first place.

Seriously go learn about the tyrants who led to Athenian democracy.

Then go study what happened to that democracy for want of rules.

What matters is not whom, but how in the grand scheme of things. Answer that question.

[Asker]

"I could point out other areas where what you was told was simply incorrect propaganda"
No, you can't because they weren't. Not even that one was.

Tell me, what is false about: "Until 1991, Clarence Thomas, no justice was confirmed with less than 60% of the Senate, often in the 90s."?

[Opinion Owner]

Even Wikipedia shows 11 democrats voting for Thomas.

William Smith March 8, 1837
Nathan Clifford January 12, 1858
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar January 16, 1888
Stanley Matthews May 12, 1881

en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_confirmation_votes_for_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

We can agree on the desirability of a high threshold but its not required nor is it in itself system breaking.

So yes you are following left wing propaganda, here among many other areas. Ultimately however it doesn't really matter because even 60%+ senators will routinely vote for dishonest judges.

They do this either unintentionally - As the American people regularly do
or
Intentionally - As said politicians wanting to expand their own power have a compelling motivation to do if they are not held accountable.

So this particular "Good Dictator" by threshold rule makes little difference in the end, as you might expect given the history of goverment and "democracy".

[Asker]

Well done! So I'd have to correct that to "in the 100 years before Clarence Thomas...", and now there are, what, six on the same bench?

If a 60 vote threshold for SCOTUS nominees wouldn't have made a difference, why did the Republicans remove it? (Echos of "if voting didn't make a difference, why do they work so hard to stop you?".)

Obviously, it was because senators on both sides correctly believed the nominees would overturn Roe.

This is not "propaganda", it's facts and logic. Propaganda is saying things like "Even Wikipedia shows...", as if it's not reasonably sourced information on matters of fact.

[Gwendoline]

I'm not sure but with so many failing schools homeschooling seems to be the answer.

[monorprise]

I agree, although that has little to do with the Federal department of education @gwendoline Which doesn't educate anyone it just dangles money before State department's of education in an effort to get them to jump thou whatever hoops federal politicians (whether elected or otherwise) want them to do instead of what their people want.

They in this respect both get in the way of homeschooling reforms like vouchers and any other form of reform that we could have had in the last 50+ years. In a word they are one more cook in the kitchen this one working remotely a thousand miles away.

[DrPepper12]

So have a significant portion of the paid labor force drop out? Great idea

[Gwendoline]

@DrPepper12 in what respect?

[DrPepper12]

Parents homeschooling and not in workforce

[Gwendoline]

@DrPepper12 what is the problem there, a lack of a 2nd income aside who loses out there?

[DrPepper12]

+70% of USA Americans can't make it without a second paycheck.

[RedInnocent69]

@Gwendoline homeschool what?

[Gwendoline]

@DrPepper12 I looked into childcare recently and it would take a 2nd wage to afford it. So many are basically paying nannies, babysitters and daycare workers
It's no wonder so many people are working nightshifts and weekends to basically raise their kids and so many others are latchkey kids. No wonder there are so many problems with childhood obesity, criminality, underage sex, behaviour issues etc.
There's also to consider working at home, a huge number are doing that now.

[monorprise]

@DrPepper12 Only because everything cost far too much where they are trying to live.

Mean while our income tax, trade, and immigration policy advantages forign low skilled labor for every good & service further suppressing American wages in similar skilled areas.

Yes I get it high skilled/rich people like it because there are relatively few of them in the world. But for the common man it means he can't afford to support a wife and family anymore.

[DrPepper12]

@monorprise so let's return to the Eisenhower tax system that built the prosperity of the 50s-70s!

[monorprise]

@DrPepper12
You seem to be confusing a tax system people were avoiding with the fact that all of our competition had been destroyed in the 2nd world war. As their industry recovered over the 2 decades ours fell behind while we bankrolled the difference until we ran out in 1971.
The 70s were not a good time, worse than today economically speaking.

But if you can arrange to have Russia destroy India, Europe, Mexico, china, and japan while leaving us alone then sure we can have that tax system and prosperity for a few decades. We would however be even more prosperous if we didn't.

[CaptainSmartass]

Because schools need money and operational instruction.

Simples...

[exitseven]

A lot of politicians' friends and relatives needed a good paying cushy job with a big fat pension in the end.

[DrPepper12]

Oooooookkkkkkkaaaaaayyyyyyy

[Anonymous]

the Department of Education is all about woke garbage, gender fluidity and rainbow flags when students are failing at literacy and numeracy

[DrPepper12]

Siri, what does an uninformed coward write?

[Opinion Owner]

@DrPepper12 case in point. the DoE created idiots like yourself

[DrPepper12]

DoE doesn't set curriculum. Are you that uninformed?

[Opinion Owner]

@DrPepper12 actually they can and they will. you can happily watch Trump get rid of transgenderism from schools in the next 4 years while drinking your soy

[DrPepper12]

Sure jan

[Opinion Owner]

@DrPepper12 so goodbye to your MAP groomers once Trump kicks them out of the schools

[DrPepper12]

Shhhh. The adults are talking...

[Opinion Owner]

@DrPepper12 yeah you're right. when you're shedding tears on TikTok due to an election loss, shaving your head and using death threats, yeah you ain't ready to be an adult yet

[noohair]

The governmant fu@ks up everything it tries to control.

[monorprise]

@noohair This is about the Federal goverment not the State or local governments which operate their own Departments of education and provide 90% of the money.

One of the reasons school systems have done soo poorly since the Feds got involved with the federal department is their involvement gives the elected branches someone to blame for failure as well as someone to get in the way of any meaningful reform.

[NamerOfStars]

Because Johnson was smarter than Lincoln.