I can’t say I was surprised.  Not at the Senate’s tie vote, not at Pence’s toadying, tie-breaking affirmative, not even that Betsy DeVos, the most unqualified of the unqualified, is now our Education Secretary.  For a long time our education system has been broken.  Now it is shattered, perhaps beyond repair.

But what did we think?  How many of the children and grandchildren of those Senators – or even the Senators, themselves – went to public schools? (A 2003 survey showed that 46% of U.S. senators send or have sent at least one of their children to a private institution. That contrasts with the rest of the country, where only 10% of families send kids to private schools.) So, how much do they know of public education beyond the occasional TV special about an inner-city high school that is “turning itself around” ala the Hokey Pokey?

I began teaching in 1961 – twenty years after I had started Kindergarten at Edison School in Alameda, California.  Back in 1941, the educational system as our parents and grandparents had known it was already beginning to break down.  Class sizes burgeoned.  Male principals (and most of them were) went off to war.  Dads went, too, and moms got jobs.  After the war we tried to put ourselves back together… but it was never quite the same.  Not in the schools, anyway.

In 1965 we were blessed with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. We saw the beginning of the Head Start Program and we had the first glimmer that schools were stepping up to do what families had been doing for centuries. Not ‘instead of’ the education part.  In addition to.

Before long we began to lower student-adult ratios in our classrooms – not with additional teachers and smaller class sizes, mind you.  (I had 32 students in my class every year for the first sixteen years I taught.)  With added personnel.  We hired classroom aides and added psychologists, speech therapists, nurses, and occupational therapists to the mix.  In some schools, even doctors and dentists were added to the adult-student ratio.  Teachers had scheduling logistics and personnel oversight added to their duties. Access to the entire class reduced to a minimum so individualized instruction became the watchwords.

If families couldn’t manage the basics, schools were told to step up.  After school programs, breakfast in addition to the hot lunch program, head checks for lice infestations, drug abuse programs, increasing time for physical education.  Less time for academics but, lest we be accused of neglecting the three r’s, we began testing as much as we were teaching.  Something had to give so… the curriculum began to be dumbed down.  And no one bothered much about the states that were teaching their own brands of history and science.

In 2001, along came the No Child Left Behind Act.  (Really?)  I retired that year.  But I didn’t stop watching and waiting for America to wake up.  When were we going to stop insisting that college was for every kid?  What happened to trade schools where honest-to-goodness skills could be taught and students could be prepared for real world jobs?  Why were kids told “good job” every time they burped? Yes,  the “system” is broken for sure and, for whatever reason, it has gotten worse, not better.

Now we Betsy DeVos.  She’s not part of the system and, not only that, she hasn’t a clue.  As horrified as I am, the thought creeps in that maybe, as an outsider, she can fix our ailing educational system.  I admit to a teeny tiny glimmer of hope… but, if I were a betting woman, I’d say there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell.  She hasn’t the skills, the knowledge or the experience. And I don’t think throwing money at the problem will help.  Which part of ‘great again’ is this, anyway?