OBAMA MAKES A F#$* UP!
OK, I’ll cop to being a shameless Obama supporter, but I will admit that the man is capable of making mistakes (Trusting the GOP to go along with the “new era of bipartisanship” springs to mind). But now Obama has made a possible game changer of a screw up in the field of cabinet nominees.
President Obama has named former Washington State Governor Gary Locke as his third pick for Secretary of Commerce. Gary Locke? You have to be kidding.
I was living in Washington State during Locke’s tenure as Governor and he was, for the most part, not completely incompetent. However, there is one area where he sends up a burning hot red flag: Education. Education 2000 to be exact.
Education 2000 was a conference held in the last year of the twentieth century. The goal was to define a curriculum that would be used to write a state wide exam for high school students, with the eventual goal of having this test be a graduation requirement. This was before No Child Gets Ahead came along and soiled the whole concept. There were several things that went wrong with this event, but only one relates to former Gov. Locke
Before I go any further, I must confess that I’m working off of second hand information. One of my professors at Washington State University attended this conference and LOVED to tell horror stories to her College of Education students. The employees of WSU are mostly fools and knaves, but I trust this particular teacher enough to relay this story.
It was the end of the conference (whether it was also a dark and stormy night I’ll leave to your imaginations). The curriculum has been finalized and everyone is patting each other on the back and enjoying the last of the free food (teachers are one of those groups to whom, if you promise free food, you had better deliver if you value your kidneys).
It was about that time that the Governor rolled up and gave the final approval for what would and would not go into the test, and therefore what subjects would and would not be funded and focused on in schools. Please note that he had not attended the rest of the conference and was only looking at a bullet point list of subjects.
The subjects that he crossed out and essentially eliminated from Washington State public schools include, but are not limited to:
Health
Listening Skills
Art
Geography (as a separate subject from Social Studies)
and Civics (CIVICS! The professional politician cut CIVICS from the exam that tests whether or not students know what they need to know to be proper members of US society! W! T! F!!)
Now both of you may be wondering (and please note that I make no illusions about my readership) why any of this matters for the Commerce Secretary. Fair question. To find the answer, just re-watch President Obama’s I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a State of the Union address. One of Obama’s stated priorities to fix America was a heavy investment in Education. Who controls where and how that money is spent? If you said the Commerce Department, you get a gold star. And who will be running the department if he is confirmed? That’s right! The man who thinks Americans don’t need to know how the government works, how to find China on a map, or how to follow basic instructions.
Just to be clear, we’re all aware that this is a bad idea, right?
Until next time, I’m RyuSensei and I’m not kidding.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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