Socrates Now!: No Politician Left Behind

That’s it. Enough already. Unless the public discourse changes dramatically—and soon-my mind is made up. When it come to public education our elected leaders are failing, and our current President is their Headmaster.

Politicians insist that the solution to our educational woes is black and white: As for our teachers, rowdy and disconsolate lot that we are, what is needed is more compulsory training, more public scrutiny, and most importantly, more evaluations. As for the students all they need is more testing. And since we all now know what the true problems are, we can rebuild the little red schoolhouse in a proper fashion by extending the probationary period for teacher tenure to six years. Without any training on their part politicians know all there is to know about better schools and being a better teacher. Once their fixes are in place, if those teachers and students insist on failing us once again, the church-based voucher system will be our saving grace.

I look at it this way: If your child had a life-threatening illness, who would you trust to diagnose their disease? Your doctor, or your car mechanic? Which one has more direct experience and knowledge related to your child’s health? Seeking medical care from an auto mechanic makes as much sense as listening to these politicians prattle on about their inspired cure-alls. If we keep listening to these quacks, our public school systems will suffer a slow, painful death.

All of this said, I appreciate the challenges posed by our failing school system and our ill-equipped teachers. So, here’s the first part of my solution. Let’s make every politician’s salary commensurate with the current starting pay of our Junior College instructors. That seems fair enough. A quick perusal of the Internet will show this to be around $35,000 a year. (Private universities oftentimes start much lower). Raising a family of four on that salary should prove quite educational for everyone concerned.

Then, once they’ve gotten used to traveling coach instead of first class, let’s test the buggers. You see, our President is correct. We can solve the problem with more testing. The only problem is that he wants to test the wrong people!

Therefore, the second part of my solution is a qualifying “Political Aptitude Test” for all aspiring politicians. This will demonstrate competency in the following areas:

1) World history: They will have to learn more than glib quotes from our dead forefathers. They could start with the history of the northern Indo-European tribes, work their way south-east into Persia, and finally begin serious meditations upon the Mediterranean cultures of ancient Greece. It’s only about a three-thousand year trip from there to here, with lots of useful information to be gained along the way (particularly about educational and political systems; see Plato’s Republic).

2) U.S. History: They must each write a ten-page essay exploring a difficult topic. For example, Donald Rumsfeld might be required to explain the difference between Hamas and the band of American brigands who destroyed British ships and cargo in Boston Bay while camouflaged as natives. (That was quite a “tea party”!). President Bush could pontificate on the U.S. treatment of the American Indians, including the government sponsored program of dispersing small-pox infested blankets and bottles of whiskey to the Indian tribes. If that proves too difficult, perhaps he could explain why the U.S. invaded Canada in 1812.

3) Accounting: Those who control the purse-strings should know where the money comes from, where it goes, and how to account for it to the public. For example, thousand-dollar screw-drivers will be summarily used upon those who sanctioned their purchase. The first task would be to locate the two billion dollars currently unaccounted for in the current Iraq war. (Hint: Hand calculators allowed, but aspiring politicians must leave their accountants at home.)

4) Logic: Testees will learn to distinguish between truth and fiction, factual statements and sales pitches, value systems and scientific methodology, valid conclusions and “spin”. Proctors will wear a bullshit meter during this section of the test.

After completing this four-part curriculum, political aspirants wishing to formulate educational policy will be required to serve as a teacher’s assistant one year. They will have to do more than read “My Pet Goat” to a class of first-graders. Instead they will actually present a year’s worth of curriculum in reading, mathematics, science, music, art, P.E., history, and English grammar. (We’ll leave out sentence diagramming, just to play fair.)

To make the experience more reality-based, this edifying, educational experience will take place in a normal inner-city school. A random choice should land us with the usual challenges most teachers face each school day: Neighborhood violence, rampant poverty, drug and alcohol abuse among students and their families, learning disabilities, physically and emotionally abused children, outdated or simply no text books, no school supplies like paper and pencil, and many students who speak no English at all.

At the end of the year we’ll test the lot of them, both the aspiring candidates and their students. If their students fail, the politician’s provisional credential will be revoked, and his or her current political aims ended for the time being. To show that we liberal-progressives are as compassionate as conservative politicians, washouts won’t be left to wander the streets. After all, there are far too many homeless already. Qualified counselors will guide their re-entry into the private sector. Of course, the worst of the bunch won’t need our help. They will always find work in private, conservative think-tanks, making lots of money churning out deceptive sound-bites like: “No Child Left Behind.”

-- Mitchell J. Frangadakis