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December 7, 2004
Advent of federal curriculum mandates?On occasion BoardBuzz has taken state legislators to task for succumbing to the temptation to play school board. Now the LA Times reports that U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has gotten into the school board act.
The Senator, who carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his breast pocket, also has a habit of rebuking his colleagues in Congress for conveniently ignoring the Constitution when there are political points to be scored. "An informed public is the best defense against tyranny," he correctly observes.
But last week Senator Byrd tacked onto the massive federal spending bill a requirement that every educational institution that receives federal funding—kindergarten through graduate school, private and public—devote at least part of every September 17 to teaching about the U.S. Constitution. On that date in 1787 the Constitution was signed.
Needless to say, education groups are wincing at what this may portend for Congressional meddling in educational decisions. NSBA's Director of Federal Programs Dan Fuller pointed out to the Times that more and more extra mandates make it harder for schools to comply with the Mother of All Mandates, the No Child Left Behind Act. Recipients of federal funding, by the way, typically have to report their compliance with all of the strings attached, so we'll be watching for what kind of new paperwork comes with this one.
Given how often political correctness from both right and left commandeers state-level textbook decisions, the further politicization of curricular decisions in Congress is a prospect earnestly to be avoided. Today, it's a mandate on the Constitution. Tomorrow, maybe a federal mandate on one day's worth of diversity and tolerance training. Next week, how about a mandate on a day dedicated to discussing the importance of the Ten Commandments to the American system of government? Why not a federal decree on teaching alternative theories of the origins of species? The culture warriors must be salivating already. As it is, this stuff is hard enough for schools.
Here's the larger problem. Discrete requirements like this frequently sound perfectly reasonable when each is considered in isolation. But the whole litany is foisted on schools by politicians, think tanks, lobbyists, and advocacy groups who never, ever have any responsibility for making the system work as a whole. The next thing you know, our schools are buried in an avalanche of mandates, many of which are important but bear only a tangential relation to academic achievement. And inevitably, we wind up hearing some of these very same people blustering about school budgets that are increasing faster than test scores.
For the record, we agree that the U.S. Constitution should get solid treatment in schools and colleges, certainly more than one day a year. For one thing, better understanding of the Constitution and civics would go a long way toward undermining much of the opportunistic public school bashing that's out there.
But we can only hope this latest mandate isn't a sign of things to come. BoardBuzz has a suggestion for a good place for Congress to start with its own September 17th observances.
Posted December 7, 2004 12:00 AM
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