Jay-Z's Roc Nation Takes On Public Schools
- Thread starter Costanza
- Start date
To some tweets, man?
This is not a Colin thread!
You are not familiar with my game. You remember the kind of content I used to drop?
10,000 hours
If you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours A new book by the Tories’ favourite sociologist claims practice is the secret of success in sport, business, art and science Steven Swinford The search for success has spawned a motivational industry worth millions of pounds and libraries full of...
www.bgol.us
Really, Art?
Cliff notes, man.
Just because I posted Colin doesn’t mean I didn’t read itTo some tweets, man?
This is not a Colin thread!
You are not familiar with my game. You remember the kind of content I used to drop?
10,000 hours
If you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours A new book by the Tories’ favourite sociologist claims practice is the secret of success in sport, business, art and science Steven Swinford The search for success has spawned a motivational industry worth millions of pounds and libraries full of...www.bgol.us
You have certainly put in your 10,000 hours when it comes to trolling and bullshit.
Never trolled and never posted a bullshit thread.
U on the other hand are the Chris Farley of BGOL who thinks he Corey Booker.
@Amajorfucup
Jay been told us who he is
50 too snoozing with republicans that’s don’t give a dam about him, or folks of his color. All the while trying to work with Ben Crump to address the wealth gap for Black people just shows he has no true direction.
50 too snoozing with republicans that’s don’t give a dam about him, or folks of his color. All the while trying to work with Ben Crump to address the wealth gap for Black people just shows he has no true direction.
I was in one of these programs from middle school through high school in the Bay Area and I benefited immensely, but the criticism is correct, only a few benefit.
My neighborhood transformed when the kids I grew up with became political activist and advocated for tax dollars to be spent on our public schools.
My neighborhood transformed when the kids I grew up with became political activist and advocated for tax dollars to be spent on our public schools.
i genuinely curious to learn about your experience. can you share more with theboard to give us a bit more perspective the challenges, issues and the pro and cons of the program from your perspective?
Jay Z will Jay Z
Sorry people but public schools or private schools, if the home ain't right the student won't be right either.
Not against the voucher programs, they've helped a lot of black students according to some data.
That being said, public schools need to be better because 90% of American kids go to public. The math makes it blatantly obvious.
The question is how can the schools be improved?
Not against the voucher programs, they've helped a lot of black students according to some data.
That being said, public schools need to be better because 90% of American kids go to public. The math makes it blatantly obvious.
The question is how can the schools be improved?
First the cryptoshit, now this fuckery? I would say shut up and make another album, but I am afraid he will concoct a heap of shit like "4:44" with cheap 2002 Fruity Loops III snare packs and hi-hats.
I don’t trust the Jay to the Z
It's no different than what's already going on but if they can take tax payers money and educate our youth and create lawyers,doctors and black business owners over what's being produced than I'm all for it.
Tax payers money has done nothing but fed another industry,the prison system so....
Tax payers money has done nothing but fed another industry,the prison system so....
To improve the schools you need to improve the households, because shiity households, create shitty communities, which in turns create shiity schools.
I don't know if much improvements can happen with the caliber of women there. Just imagine if your city had 500K Sexy Redds as residents alone? That is not counting the other Special Olympics type of degenrates within the city limits. That is what living in Philly is like.
Isn’t Jay Z a high school dropout?
Hova did that so hopefully you won't have to go through that.
What Jay-Z is doing is nothing new.
This shit has been going on since the Reagan Administration of the 1980s.
PRESIDENT REAGAN'S MAN FOR EDUCATION
By Edward B. Fiske
Dec. 22, 1985
www.nytimes.com
IN HIS YOUTH, WILLIAM J. BENNETT PLAYED OFFEN-sive tackle on his college football team, and the burly professor-turned-public-servant is fond of using occasional metaphors from his favorite sport. In the world of politics, he once told a young colleague, there are no referees to make sure that you get your turn on offense: ''If you don't act as if you had the ball, if you don't put yourself on the offensive, setting the terms of debate around your agency, then you're on the defensive. And that's no place to be.''
There is no doubt that in his 10 months as the third United States Secretary of Education, William Bennett has been on the offensive. Only five days after his swearing-in, Bennett launched what turned out to be the most sustained verbal attack ever made by a high official on the Federal student-aid program, long a favorite program of lawmakers from both parties. At a news conference, he suggested that the main impact of proposed cuts for some students might be ''divestiture of some sorts - stereo divestiture, automobile divestiture, three-weeks-at-the-beach divestiture.'' He went on to take some swipes at American colleges and universities, some of which, he said, have ''ripped off'' their students with low-quality courses. In later speeches, he has taken aim at a host of other issues, from Federal bilingual education programs to the place of religion in schools.
Bennett, who is 42 years old, occupies the lowliest of Cabinet positions - one that even he will readily agree is by no means essential to the survival of the Republic. Yet he has turned it into a bully pulpit for advancing a conservative approach to education.
Last fall he made a highly publicized tour of public schools, teaching several social studies classes on subjects such as the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
''My goal,'' he declares purposefully, ''is to force a national debate over fundamental education issues.''
Some observers see parallels between Bill Bennett and the President he so loyally serves. Ronald Reagan, ideologically opposed to centralized government, has turned out to be perhaps the strongest President the country has had in 40 years. ''Bill Bennett's a real winner,'' said Senator G. Orrin Hatch, the conservative Republican from Utah. ''He has brought tremendous intellectual power to the Department of Education. He's not afraid of ideas, and he's willing to stand up for what he believes.''
Not everyone, however, finds Bill Bennett so winning. Some of his critics, especially college officials who say they are concerned about his lack of commitment to Federal student assistance, portray him as an ideologue bent on reshaping American education to be in line with the social philosophy of the Reagan Administration. ''Bill Bennett is a study in the blindness of ambition,'' said Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and one of the few critics willing to be quoted by name.''He is a man of great brilliance and strong convictions, but he is a preacher, not a teacher. He is trying to manipulate public opinion to accept his ideas of what is right and wrong. This would be forgivable if he were not as gifted as he is and if he were not the Secretary of Education.''
Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House Director of Communications, defends the Secretary against such charges, calling him ''one of the few interesting political figures'' in town. ''Most political speeches are pretty dreary and boring, but Bill talks about things people really care about - right and wrong, social issues, whether parents should have a right to inculcate their own values in their children,'' he commented. ''This is the politics of the future.''
There are some intriguing paradoxes in all this. William Bennett rose to power by cultivating a spectrum of influential conservative groups ranging from the Heritage Foundation to the religious right, at all of which he was seen as one who could be trusted to carry out their agenda of a diminished Federal role in education. As a White House mandarin, Bennett has said what the conservatives wanted to hear, but the pitch of his voice and the force of his personality may in the long run make a reality of their worst fears.
''What he's doing is why I opposed having a Secretary of Education,'' commented Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democrat from New York who was one of 21 Senators to vote against the elevation of education to an independent, Cabinet-level department in 1979. ''Bill Bennett is the first Secretary to understand the ideological and political possibilities of the office that were there from the beginning. In Bill Bennett we're getting our first Minister of Education.''
BENNETT WAS TRAINED IN BOTH POLITICAL PHILOS-ophy (at the the University of Texas) and the law (at Harvard University), and his emergence as the ''Refrigerator Perry'' of American education may be largely explained by that combination. Rarely has Washington seen a Cabinet member who has put together Bennett's genuine fascination with ideas and the ability to marshal arguments on behalf of a predetermined position.
Bennett's definition of the ''fundamental education issues'' he seeks to raise extends well beyond his immediate responsibilities - administering the student-aid program, handing out research contracts and signing citations honoring the Teacher of the Year - to areas that have traditionally been viewed as none of the Federal Government's business. In dozens of speeches and interviews, he has taken the ''back to basics'' movement one step further, plugging not only for more attention to the three R's but for the teaching of specific content. ''My sense is that among the American people there is agreement on a kind of national curriculum,'' he told me during a train trip to one of his speaking engagements. ''They are emphatic and consistent about what it is that our children should be taught in math, what should be taught in science, what should be taught in history.''
Bennett has called for an overhaul of the politically volatile Bilingual Education Act of 1968 so as to put more emphasis on the teaching of English and to give local school districts more discretion in choosing teaching methods. And last month, he waded in with a controversial new voucher plan that would give parents of disadvantaged children funds that could be spent in private and parochial as well as public schools.
He has also shown no reluctance about mixing religion with education and politics. ''The fate of our democracy is intimately intertwined - 'entangled,' if you will - with the vitality of the Judeo-Christian tradition,'' he said in a speech to a Roman Catholic laymen's group. ''From our Judeo-Christian tradition come our values, our principles, the animating spirit of our institutions.'' He called for a new ''national conversation and debate on the place of religious belief in our society.''
Critics accused him of trying to tear down the constitutional separation between church and state, and of making improper use of his position as a ranking member of the executive branch to criticize the judiciary. Asked about this, Bennett was unrepentent: ''Was Abraham Lincoln showing disrespect for the rule of law when he criticized the Dred Scott decision?''
AT 6:30 ONE RECENT evening, the Secretary of Education edged his 6-foot-2, 220-pound body forward on the back seat of the limousine that was to carry him to a reception at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library and told the driver, John Cleveland, to turn up the volume on the radio. ''That's Neil Sedaka,'' he exclaimed excitedly, beating his foot in time with the music and singing along: ''I'm livin' right next door to an angel, and I'm gonna make that angel mine.'
''Do you know how to tell a Neil Sedaka song?'' he asked rhetorically. ''It ends like it begins. Just listen.'' The song ended as predicted, and only a few notes into the next one the Secretary of Education proclaimed, ''That's Manfred Mann - 'Do Wah Diddy.' '' ''Hey, Cleve,'' he called out, ''Ever know a Secretary who knew rock-and-roll before?''
Bennett is enthusiastic about rock, but then he tends to be enthusiastic about most things he does. He works in shirtsleeves and exudes physical as well as intellectual energy. He smokes a lot but otherwise keeps in shape by jogging three or four times a week. Department of Education employees are now accustomed to seeing their leader, perspiration dripping from his brow, climbing the fire stairs to his fourth-floor office after a lunchtime jaunt around the Mall.
Bennett lives with his wife, Elayne, a part-time social worker, and their 21-month-old son, John, in a newly purchased house in suburban Chevy Chase, Md. They met in North Carolina when he was directing a new research group called the National Humanities Center and she was doing graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
They clearly enjoy the life of the Cabinet couple. ''Elayne likes the sit-down dinner parties; I like the receptions,'' says Bennett. He adds that at first he found it difficult to make small talk. ''I learned to take big talk and cut it down to size: 'How are you? I'm working on bilingual education.'
Bennett was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where his father was an officer at a local bank. His parents were divorced when he was four years old, and his mother, who had remarried, subsequently moved the family to the national capital.
After attending Gonzaga College High School, a Catholic institution in Washington, Bennett won a partial scholarship to Williams College, where he intended to become an English major, start an advertising agency and ''make lots of money and have lots of cars.'' But such ambitions were soon sidetracked. ''I took a philosophy course - remember distribution requirements? - and ran into a great philosophy professor, Laszlo Versenyi,'' he says. ''We did Plato's Republic, and I really got hooked on those things -questions of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice.''
Bennett decided on an academic career and went to the University of Texas for a doctorate in political philosophy under John R. Silber. Bennett taught for a year at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, but then, doubtful about his taste for the pure academic environment, he enrolled in Harvard Law School.
By then, Bennett's old mentor, Silber, had begun a stormy career as president of Boston University, and he recruited Bennett to teach philosophy and serve as his assistant. Then came a year as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, after which Bennett was tapped to help organize the National Humanities Center. When Bennett's friend and boss at the center, Charles Frankel, was killed during a burglary attempt at his New York home in 1979, the center's board picked Bennett to succeed him.
Bennett's scholarly production has consisted primarily of articles in neo-conservative journals like Commentary, Policy Review and The Public Interest. ''His main interest is how serious thinking can be applied to the daily life of people in a constitutional republic,'' said Edwin J. Delattre, the president of St. John's College and a longtime friend. During his four years at the humanities center, Bennett hit the lecture circuit attacking ''values clarification,'' a teaching fad of the time in which teachers attempted to get students to discuss moral issues while scrupulously refraining from taking positions themselves.
In 1979, Bennett published his one book, ''Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber.'' The volume, written in collaboration with Terry Eastland, a journalist who is now press spokesman for Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, was an attack on quotas and reflected the evolution of Bennett's social philosophy.
At Williams, Bennett had flirted with the civil-rights movement and Students for a Democratic Society, but by the early 1970's he had become disillusioned with the direction of social protest on campus. ''People were trashing their country and what it stood for,'' he said. ''My reaction was one of revulsion.'' Bennett insists, though, that it is the country that has changed, not his ideas. ''I agreed with Martin Luther King that people should not be discriminated against because of their race, and I still do,'' he said. ''In 1964, that put you to the left of center. Now, it makes you a conservative.''
When the Reagan Administration took office, Irving Kristol, editor of The Public Interest, and other leading neo-conservatives, successfully pushed Bennett to become chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He got the job when M.E. Bradford, a professor of English at the University of Dallas and the candidate being backed by Senator Jesse Helms and other representatives of the far right, self-destructed over scholarly writings in which he attacked Abraham Lincoln for ''inflammatory'' rhetoric about racial equality.
Among other things at the endowment, Bennett wrote a study, ''To Reclaim a Legacy,'' accusing American colleges and universities of failing to educate their students in ''the culture and civilization of which they are members.'' He called for new curriculums organized around a ''core of common studies'' including the history of Western civilization and a ''careful reading of several masterworks of English, American and European literature.''
Somewhere along the line - critics say that it was earlier rather than later -Bennett set his sights on the post of Secretary of Education, then occupied by T. H. Bell. Although the endowment was technically an independent agency, press releases began identifying the chairman as an Administration spokesman on education. When Bell stepped down as Secretary of Education, friends stepped up the lobbying in Bennett's behalf.
John Agresto, his top aide at the endowment, tells how the White House called one morning to ask if Bennett was available to see President Reagan that afternoon. Agresto took one look at the gray corduroy jacket and tattersall shirt Bennett was wearing, and ''We zoomed off to his house,'' Agresto recalled. ''He found a dark blue suit and a white shirt and threw me a box of ties and told me to find the clean one. On the way out, I said 'Bill, you need a belt.' ''
Bennett's new job was, by Washington standards, a modest one. Established by President Carter to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association, the Department of Education had a budget of $14 billion but evoked little enthusiasm outside the teachers' union. The Reagan Administration came into office in 1981 determined to dismantle what Meese used to call ''that bureaucratic monstrosity.'' Bell, who had served as Commissioner of Education before the job was elevated to Cabinet rank, arrived in town with his furniture in a U-Haul trailer and plans to be back in his native Utah by the end of the year. But he remained suspect in the eyes of many conservatives who felt he was too soft on tuition tax credits, school prayer and student aid cuts.
In Bill Bennett, conservatives at last have one of their own. ''He really believes in a lot of what Reagan stands for,'' says Bennett's brother Robert, a Washington lawyer. ''He's a loyal Cabinet member,'' adds Buchanan. ''Lots of Cabinet people come back after six months wearing native costumes. But if you send Bill a budget target, he meets it.'' Bennett reportedly has good access to the President, who seems to enjoy the Secretary's blunt style. ''I've been following those press reports of your interviews,'' Reagan once jokingly told Bennett at a public appearance, ''and I just wish you'd stop mincing your words.''
Loyalty ranks high among the virtues Bennett admires, and from the outset he threw himself behind Reagan Administration objectives. The most visible of these now, as the White House has backed away from its initial commitment to dismantle the education department, is its commitment to reduce Federal student aid. In public speeches and private meetings Bennett has argued that, while the Federal Government has a role in promoting access to higher education, it has no responsibility to help poor or minority students, however talented, gain access to elite private schools. ''The betterment of oneself in college,'' he said, ''is still largely a do-it-yourself kind of operation.''
Such remarks have alienated many of his former colleagues in academe. ''I get tired of a guy who went to Williams College and Harvard telling the poor kids that the state college or junior college is good enough for them,'' said the Rev. Timothy S. Healy, president of Georgetown University.
Bennett has sent out a series of signals pleasing to the right. In one speech he suggested that better teaching of history would lead to more support for Government policies. If children ''have never heard of the Cuban missile crisis,'' he said, ''they cannot comprehend the Sandinista head of secret police when he states that 'Cuba's friends are Nicaragua's friends.' '' On the other hand, Bennett stopped short of endorsing Accuracy in Academia, a newly formed conservative watchdog group that has begun signing up students to monitor what professors say in their classes, describing it as ''a bad idea.''
Much of the controversy surrounding Bennett comes from his rhetoric. Phrases like ''stereo divestiture'' come tripping off his tongue without the forethought that opponents often perceive, and even his most fervent supporters acknowledge that he often appears to be arrogant. ''He does intimidate people,'' said Senator Hatch, ''but that's because of the power and force of his ideas. Sometimes it's pretty hard to argue with him.''
''The man is absolutely candid,'' said Agresto. ''He doesn't know what 'off the record' is, and he will never speak behind a person's back. If he thinks you are wrong, he will tell you. He'll cross the street to tell you. He's also so cocksure of himself. Look at his speeches. You will never see him hedging. He doesn't start out saying 'I'm glad to be in Hoboken.' He once did an interview with a magazine at the University of Chicago, and when they sent him a transcript for approval, he called back and said, 'Take out all the maybe's and perhaps's.' ''
Bennett's ideas have the virtue of simplicity. ''I have seen the American child,'' he likes to tell audiences, ''and I can assure you that he or she is educable.'' Even his critics admit that he has brought a certain common sense to the discussion of educational issues. One often hears comments to the effect that ''I don't like Bill Bennett, but I have to admit that his ideas on bilingual education make sense,'' or, ''I like what he says about the importance of content.''
Critics argue that Bennett's ideas about education are narrow and even autobiographical, reflecting his parochial-school values, liberal-arts training and the political route that he traveled on the way to power. They charge that he does not understand the diversity of American society and the multiple goals it imposes on its public schools, from vocational education to the integration into American society of a whole generation of ''new immigrants.'' Graeme Forbes, an associate professor of philosophy at Tulane University, takes issue with Bennett's view of the source of democratic values such as tolerance and freedom of inquiry and expression. ''The idea that we owe such values to the Judeo-Christian tradition is ludicrous,'' he wrote. ''We owe them to the Enlightenment.'' Others accuse Bennett of blatantly contradicting himself. How, they say, can he argue for more ''choice'' at the primary and high school level (in the form of vouchers) while suggesting that poor college students may have to be content with public universities? His reply is that ''we already have an extraordinary amount of choice at the college level, much of it supported by Federal dollars.''
Many on Capitol Hill wonder whether Bennett's aggressive rhetoric will translate into political effectiveness. He and his aides have conspicuously played no role in work on higher-education legislation that could provide for reauthorization of a $50 billion, four-year program and is arguably the most important piece of legislation of his tenure. He declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Education, Arts and Humanities, having decided to go hiking in the Adirondacks with some college friends on that day. ''It's inconceivable that a Cabinet member would turn down this kind of an invitation,'' says John Brademas, the president of New York University who, as a Congressman, was a major architect of the current legislation. ''He just doesn't understand how Washington works.''
BENNETT CLEARLY REL-ishes the bully pulpit aspects of his job. Television reporters who request interviews are asked how many viewers they have. It is normal in Washington for staff members serving high officials to collect press clippings every morning to see how they are faring in the public eye; Bennett recently ordered his aides to do it twice a day.
''I'm interested in education,'' Bennett says. ''Here's a chance to talk about it and be an actor in the great debate. And I'm happy and proud to be part of this Administration.'' Where will he go from here? Friends speculate that he might be an effective Senator, though Bennett, a registered Democrat in North Carolina, lacks a clear political base.
Bennett himself tends to talk about ''when I go back to teaching.''
''I will have done seven years of serious administration,'' he explains. ''I'll be ready for teaching and writing and thinking about things.'' Bennett says that running a university is a possibility, ''assuming I can still find one that would hire me.'' Before going after the Secretary's job, he applied for the presidency of Fisk University, a prominent black institution that has been facing severe financial and enrollment problems. ''Fisk has a great tradition and deserves to survive, and this would have been worth doing,'' he said. ''But all I got back was a form letter.''
Agresto suggested that, if Bennett were to run a university, it would not be a prestigious one. ''Harvard and Yale are not the kind of places that would be of any interest to him. He has no interest in maintaining an institution. He would much rather take a bad institution and make it good, or a near-great one and make it great. It's his missionary streak - go out and save institutions.''
In the meantime, Bennett's evangelistic impulses are focused on his current job. Previous Secretaries and Commissioners of Education were viewed, among other things, as spokesmen for education interests -a notion Bennett emphatically rejects. ''The education establishment is not the same thing as our public schools,'' Bennett has said, ''and its members do not always speak either for, or in the best interests of, our public schools.'' For all his talk about teaching, he has conspicuously refrained from joining appeals for substantially higher salaries for teachers. ''I think that good teachers should get more than they do now and poor ones less,'' he says.
Not surprisingly, leaders of education groups say they feel betrayed. ''You don't see Caspar Weinberger saying that good generals should get paid more than lousy generals and that lousy generals ought to work for nothing,'' said Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, referring to the Secretary of Defense.
Paradoxically, having helped establish the Federal education structure, many liberals can now be heard warning against the heavy hand of Washington, a turnaround that some conservatives find amusing. ''Bennett has taken this enormous megaphone built by liberals, and used it to articulate an anti-liberal philosophy,'' commented Burton Pines, vice president of the Heritage Foundation. ''The liberals have made him the country's chief educator.''
George Will, the conservative columnist and a friend of Bennett's, suggests that the newest Cabinet post ''deals with the subject most Americans care most about, yet at a level where the Federal Government does not exercise great control.'' The job, he said, ''is ideally suited to an intellectual who can raise questions and start arguments and set a national tone without the weight of thinking that the stakes are enormous.''
What will happen, though, when the political pendulum swings away from the conservatives? Will the ultimate rewards of Bill Bennett's efforts fall to the National Education Association and others seeking a stronger Federal presence? Some conservatives have worried out loud about the ''centralist'' tendencies inherent in issues like school prayer and core curriculums, and Bennett acknowledges the validity of the question. Characteristically, though, he also rejects the conclusions implied.
''There are some conservatives who think I should not be so far out in front on issues like the need to nurture an appreciation of the values of Western civilization,'' he commented. ''The problem is I don't know any other way to be than I am.''
This shit has been going on since the Reagan Administration of the 1980s.
PRESIDENT REAGAN'S MAN FOR EDUCATION
By Edward B. Fiske
Dec. 22, 1985
REAGAN'S MAN FOR EDUCATION (Published 1985)
IN HIS YOUTH, WILLIAM J. BENNETT PLAYED OFFEN-sive tackle on his college football team, and the burly professor-turned-public-servant is fond of using occasional metaphors from his favorite sport. In the world of politics, he once told a young colleague, there are no referees to make sure that you get your turn on offense: ''If you don't act as if you had the ball, if you don't put yourself on the offensive, setting the terms of debate around your agency, then you're on the defensive. And that's no place to be.''
There is no doubt that in his 10 months as the third United States Secretary of Education, William Bennett has been on the offensive. Only five days after his swearing-in, Bennett launched what turned out to be the most sustained verbal attack ever made by a high official on the Federal student-aid program, long a favorite program of lawmakers from both parties. At a news conference, he suggested that the main impact of proposed cuts for some students might be ''divestiture of some sorts - stereo divestiture, automobile divestiture, three-weeks-at-the-beach divestiture.'' He went on to take some swipes at American colleges and universities, some of which, he said, have ''ripped off'' their students with low-quality courses. In later speeches, he has taken aim at a host of other issues, from Federal bilingual education programs to the place of religion in schools.
Bennett, who is 42 years old, occupies the lowliest of Cabinet positions - one that even he will readily agree is by no means essential to the survival of the Republic. Yet he has turned it into a bully pulpit for advancing a conservative approach to education.
Last fall he made a highly publicized tour of public schools, teaching several social studies classes on subjects such as the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
''My goal,'' he declares purposefully, ''is to force a national debate over fundamental education issues.''
Some observers see parallels between Bill Bennett and the President he so loyally serves. Ronald Reagan, ideologically opposed to centralized government, has turned out to be perhaps the strongest President the country has had in 40 years. ''Bill Bennett's a real winner,'' said Senator G. Orrin Hatch, the conservative Republican from Utah. ''He has brought tremendous intellectual power to the Department of Education. He's not afraid of ideas, and he's willing to stand up for what he believes.''
Not everyone, however, finds Bill Bennett so winning. Some of his critics, especially college officials who say they are concerned about his lack of commitment to Federal student assistance, portray him as an ideologue bent on reshaping American education to be in line with the social philosophy of the Reagan Administration. ''Bill Bennett is a study in the blindness of ambition,'' said Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and one of the few critics willing to be quoted by name.''He is a man of great brilliance and strong convictions, but he is a preacher, not a teacher. He is trying to manipulate public opinion to accept his ideas of what is right and wrong. This would be forgivable if he were not as gifted as he is and if he were not the Secretary of Education.''
Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House Director of Communications, defends the Secretary against such charges, calling him ''one of the few interesting political figures'' in town. ''Most political speeches are pretty dreary and boring, but Bill talks about things people really care about - right and wrong, social issues, whether parents should have a right to inculcate their own values in their children,'' he commented. ''This is the politics of the future.''
There are some intriguing paradoxes in all this. William Bennett rose to power by cultivating a spectrum of influential conservative groups ranging from the Heritage Foundation to the religious right, at all of which he was seen as one who could be trusted to carry out their agenda of a diminished Federal role in education. As a White House mandarin, Bennett has said what the conservatives wanted to hear, but the pitch of his voice and the force of his personality may in the long run make a reality of their worst fears.
''What he's doing is why I opposed having a Secretary of Education,'' commented Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democrat from New York who was one of 21 Senators to vote against the elevation of education to an independent, Cabinet-level department in 1979. ''Bill Bennett is the first Secretary to understand the ideological and political possibilities of the office that were there from the beginning. In Bill Bennett we're getting our first Minister of Education.''
BENNETT WAS TRAINED IN BOTH POLITICAL PHILOS-ophy (at the the University of Texas) and the law (at Harvard University), and his emergence as the ''Refrigerator Perry'' of American education may be largely explained by that combination. Rarely has Washington seen a Cabinet member who has put together Bennett's genuine fascination with ideas and the ability to marshal arguments on behalf of a predetermined position.
Bennett's definition of the ''fundamental education issues'' he seeks to raise extends well beyond his immediate responsibilities - administering the student-aid program, handing out research contracts and signing citations honoring the Teacher of the Year - to areas that have traditionally been viewed as none of the Federal Government's business. In dozens of speeches and interviews, he has taken the ''back to basics'' movement one step further, plugging not only for more attention to the three R's but for the teaching of specific content. ''My sense is that among the American people there is agreement on a kind of national curriculum,'' he told me during a train trip to one of his speaking engagements. ''They are emphatic and consistent about what it is that our children should be taught in math, what should be taught in science, what should be taught in history.''
Bennett has called for an overhaul of the politically volatile Bilingual Education Act of 1968 so as to put more emphasis on the teaching of English and to give local school districts more discretion in choosing teaching methods. And last month, he waded in with a controversial new voucher plan that would give parents of disadvantaged children funds that could be spent in private and parochial as well as public schools.
He has also shown no reluctance about mixing religion with education and politics. ''The fate of our democracy is intimately intertwined - 'entangled,' if you will - with the vitality of the Judeo-Christian tradition,'' he said in a speech to a Roman Catholic laymen's group. ''From our Judeo-Christian tradition come our values, our principles, the animating spirit of our institutions.'' He called for a new ''national conversation and debate on the place of religious belief in our society.''
Critics accused him of trying to tear down the constitutional separation between church and state, and of making improper use of his position as a ranking member of the executive branch to criticize the judiciary. Asked about this, Bennett was unrepentent: ''Was Abraham Lincoln showing disrespect for the rule of law when he criticized the Dred Scott decision?''
AT 6:30 ONE RECENT evening, the Secretary of Education edged his 6-foot-2, 220-pound body forward on the back seat of the limousine that was to carry him to a reception at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library and told the driver, John Cleveland, to turn up the volume on the radio. ''That's Neil Sedaka,'' he exclaimed excitedly, beating his foot in time with the music and singing along: ''I'm livin' right next door to an angel, and I'm gonna make that angel mine.'
''Do you know how to tell a Neil Sedaka song?'' he asked rhetorically. ''It ends like it begins. Just listen.'' The song ended as predicted, and only a few notes into the next one the Secretary of Education proclaimed, ''That's Manfred Mann - 'Do Wah Diddy.' '' ''Hey, Cleve,'' he called out, ''Ever know a Secretary who knew rock-and-roll before?''
Bennett is enthusiastic about rock, but then he tends to be enthusiastic about most things he does. He works in shirtsleeves and exudes physical as well as intellectual energy. He smokes a lot but otherwise keeps in shape by jogging three or four times a week. Department of Education employees are now accustomed to seeing their leader, perspiration dripping from his brow, climbing the fire stairs to his fourth-floor office after a lunchtime jaunt around the Mall.
Bennett lives with his wife, Elayne, a part-time social worker, and their 21-month-old son, John, in a newly purchased house in suburban Chevy Chase, Md. They met in North Carolina when he was directing a new research group called the National Humanities Center and she was doing graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
They clearly enjoy the life of the Cabinet couple. ''Elayne likes the sit-down dinner parties; I like the receptions,'' says Bennett. He adds that at first he found it difficult to make small talk. ''I learned to take big talk and cut it down to size: 'How are you? I'm working on bilingual education.'
Bennett was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where his father was an officer at a local bank. His parents were divorced when he was four years old, and his mother, who had remarried, subsequently moved the family to the national capital.
After attending Gonzaga College High School, a Catholic institution in Washington, Bennett won a partial scholarship to Williams College, where he intended to become an English major, start an advertising agency and ''make lots of money and have lots of cars.'' But such ambitions were soon sidetracked. ''I took a philosophy course - remember distribution requirements? - and ran into a great philosophy professor, Laszlo Versenyi,'' he says. ''We did Plato's Republic, and I really got hooked on those things -questions of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice.''
Bennett decided on an academic career and went to the University of Texas for a doctorate in political philosophy under John R. Silber. Bennett taught for a year at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, but then, doubtful about his taste for the pure academic environment, he enrolled in Harvard Law School.
By then, Bennett's old mentor, Silber, had begun a stormy career as president of Boston University, and he recruited Bennett to teach philosophy and serve as his assistant. Then came a year as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, after which Bennett was tapped to help organize the National Humanities Center. When Bennett's friend and boss at the center, Charles Frankel, was killed during a burglary attempt at his New York home in 1979, the center's board picked Bennett to succeed him.
Bennett's scholarly production has consisted primarily of articles in neo-conservative journals like Commentary, Policy Review and The Public Interest. ''His main interest is how serious thinking can be applied to the daily life of people in a constitutional republic,'' said Edwin J. Delattre, the president of St. John's College and a longtime friend. During his four years at the humanities center, Bennett hit the lecture circuit attacking ''values clarification,'' a teaching fad of the time in which teachers attempted to get students to discuss moral issues while scrupulously refraining from taking positions themselves.
In 1979, Bennett published his one book, ''Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber.'' The volume, written in collaboration with Terry Eastland, a journalist who is now press spokesman for Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, was an attack on quotas and reflected the evolution of Bennett's social philosophy.
At Williams, Bennett had flirted with the civil-rights movement and Students for a Democratic Society, but by the early 1970's he had become disillusioned with the direction of social protest on campus. ''People were trashing their country and what it stood for,'' he said. ''My reaction was one of revulsion.'' Bennett insists, though, that it is the country that has changed, not his ideas. ''I agreed with Martin Luther King that people should not be discriminated against because of their race, and I still do,'' he said. ''In 1964, that put you to the left of center. Now, it makes you a conservative.''
When the Reagan Administration took office, Irving Kristol, editor of The Public Interest, and other leading neo-conservatives, successfully pushed Bennett to become chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He got the job when M.E. Bradford, a professor of English at the University of Dallas and the candidate being backed by Senator Jesse Helms and other representatives of the far right, self-destructed over scholarly writings in which he attacked Abraham Lincoln for ''inflammatory'' rhetoric about racial equality.
Among other things at the endowment, Bennett wrote a study, ''To Reclaim a Legacy,'' accusing American colleges and universities of failing to educate their students in ''the culture and civilization of which they are members.'' He called for new curriculums organized around a ''core of common studies'' including the history of Western civilization and a ''careful reading of several masterworks of English, American and European literature.''
Somewhere along the line - critics say that it was earlier rather than later -Bennett set his sights on the post of Secretary of Education, then occupied by T. H. Bell. Although the endowment was technically an independent agency, press releases began identifying the chairman as an Administration spokesman on education. When Bell stepped down as Secretary of Education, friends stepped up the lobbying in Bennett's behalf.
John Agresto, his top aide at the endowment, tells how the White House called one morning to ask if Bennett was available to see President Reagan that afternoon. Agresto took one look at the gray corduroy jacket and tattersall shirt Bennett was wearing, and ''We zoomed off to his house,'' Agresto recalled. ''He found a dark blue suit and a white shirt and threw me a box of ties and told me to find the clean one. On the way out, I said 'Bill, you need a belt.' ''
Bennett's new job was, by Washington standards, a modest one. Established by President Carter to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association, the Department of Education had a budget of $14 billion but evoked little enthusiasm outside the teachers' union. The Reagan Administration came into office in 1981 determined to dismantle what Meese used to call ''that bureaucratic monstrosity.'' Bell, who had served as Commissioner of Education before the job was elevated to Cabinet rank, arrived in town with his furniture in a U-Haul trailer and plans to be back in his native Utah by the end of the year. But he remained suspect in the eyes of many conservatives who felt he was too soft on tuition tax credits, school prayer and student aid cuts.
In Bill Bennett, conservatives at last have one of their own. ''He really believes in a lot of what Reagan stands for,'' says Bennett's brother Robert, a Washington lawyer. ''He's a loyal Cabinet member,'' adds Buchanan. ''Lots of Cabinet people come back after six months wearing native costumes. But if you send Bill a budget target, he meets it.'' Bennett reportedly has good access to the President, who seems to enjoy the Secretary's blunt style. ''I've been following those press reports of your interviews,'' Reagan once jokingly told Bennett at a public appearance, ''and I just wish you'd stop mincing your words.''
Loyalty ranks high among the virtues Bennett admires, and from the outset he threw himself behind Reagan Administration objectives. The most visible of these now, as the White House has backed away from its initial commitment to dismantle the education department, is its commitment to reduce Federal student aid. In public speeches and private meetings Bennett has argued that, while the Federal Government has a role in promoting access to higher education, it has no responsibility to help poor or minority students, however talented, gain access to elite private schools. ''The betterment of oneself in college,'' he said, ''is still largely a do-it-yourself kind of operation.''
Such remarks have alienated many of his former colleagues in academe. ''I get tired of a guy who went to Williams College and Harvard telling the poor kids that the state college or junior college is good enough for them,'' said the Rev. Timothy S. Healy, president of Georgetown University.
Bennett has sent out a series of signals pleasing to the right. In one speech he suggested that better teaching of history would lead to more support for Government policies. If children ''have never heard of the Cuban missile crisis,'' he said, ''they cannot comprehend the Sandinista head of secret police when he states that 'Cuba's friends are Nicaragua's friends.' '' On the other hand, Bennett stopped short of endorsing Accuracy in Academia, a newly formed conservative watchdog group that has begun signing up students to monitor what professors say in their classes, describing it as ''a bad idea.''
Much of the controversy surrounding Bennett comes from his rhetoric. Phrases like ''stereo divestiture'' come tripping off his tongue without the forethought that opponents often perceive, and even his most fervent supporters acknowledge that he often appears to be arrogant. ''He does intimidate people,'' said Senator Hatch, ''but that's because of the power and force of his ideas. Sometimes it's pretty hard to argue with him.''
''The man is absolutely candid,'' said Agresto. ''He doesn't know what 'off the record' is, and he will never speak behind a person's back. If he thinks you are wrong, he will tell you. He'll cross the street to tell you. He's also so cocksure of himself. Look at his speeches. You will never see him hedging. He doesn't start out saying 'I'm glad to be in Hoboken.' He once did an interview with a magazine at the University of Chicago, and when they sent him a transcript for approval, he called back and said, 'Take out all the maybe's and perhaps's.' ''
Bennett's ideas have the virtue of simplicity. ''I have seen the American child,'' he likes to tell audiences, ''and I can assure you that he or she is educable.'' Even his critics admit that he has brought a certain common sense to the discussion of educational issues. One often hears comments to the effect that ''I don't like Bill Bennett, but I have to admit that his ideas on bilingual education make sense,'' or, ''I like what he says about the importance of content.''
Critics argue that Bennett's ideas about education are narrow and even autobiographical, reflecting his parochial-school values, liberal-arts training and the political route that he traveled on the way to power. They charge that he does not understand the diversity of American society and the multiple goals it imposes on its public schools, from vocational education to the integration into American society of a whole generation of ''new immigrants.'' Graeme Forbes, an associate professor of philosophy at Tulane University, takes issue with Bennett's view of the source of democratic values such as tolerance and freedom of inquiry and expression. ''The idea that we owe such values to the Judeo-Christian tradition is ludicrous,'' he wrote. ''We owe them to the Enlightenment.'' Others accuse Bennett of blatantly contradicting himself. How, they say, can he argue for more ''choice'' at the primary and high school level (in the form of vouchers) while suggesting that poor college students may have to be content with public universities? His reply is that ''we already have an extraordinary amount of choice at the college level, much of it supported by Federal dollars.''
Many on Capitol Hill wonder whether Bennett's aggressive rhetoric will translate into political effectiveness. He and his aides have conspicuously played no role in work on higher-education legislation that could provide for reauthorization of a $50 billion, four-year program and is arguably the most important piece of legislation of his tenure. He declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Education, Arts and Humanities, having decided to go hiking in the Adirondacks with some college friends on that day. ''It's inconceivable that a Cabinet member would turn down this kind of an invitation,'' says John Brademas, the president of New York University who, as a Congressman, was a major architect of the current legislation. ''He just doesn't understand how Washington works.''
BENNETT CLEARLY REL-ishes the bully pulpit aspects of his job. Television reporters who request interviews are asked how many viewers they have. It is normal in Washington for staff members serving high officials to collect press clippings every morning to see how they are faring in the public eye; Bennett recently ordered his aides to do it twice a day.
''I'm interested in education,'' Bennett says. ''Here's a chance to talk about it and be an actor in the great debate. And I'm happy and proud to be part of this Administration.'' Where will he go from here? Friends speculate that he might be an effective Senator, though Bennett, a registered Democrat in North Carolina, lacks a clear political base.
Bennett himself tends to talk about ''when I go back to teaching.''
''I will have done seven years of serious administration,'' he explains. ''I'll be ready for teaching and writing and thinking about things.'' Bennett says that running a university is a possibility, ''assuming I can still find one that would hire me.'' Before going after the Secretary's job, he applied for the presidency of Fisk University, a prominent black institution that has been facing severe financial and enrollment problems. ''Fisk has a great tradition and deserves to survive, and this would have been worth doing,'' he said. ''But all I got back was a form letter.''
Agresto suggested that, if Bennett were to run a university, it would not be a prestigious one. ''Harvard and Yale are not the kind of places that would be of any interest to him. He has no interest in maintaining an institution. He would much rather take a bad institution and make it good, or a near-great one and make it great. It's his missionary streak - go out and save institutions.''
In the meantime, Bennett's evangelistic impulses are focused on his current job. Previous Secretaries and Commissioners of Education were viewed, among other things, as spokesmen for education interests -a notion Bennett emphatically rejects. ''The education establishment is not the same thing as our public schools,'' Bennett has said, ''and its members do not always speak either for, or in the best interests of, our public schools.'' For all his talk about teaching, he has conspicuously refrained from joining appeals for substantially higher salaries for teachers. ''I think that good teachers should get more than they do now and poor ones less,'' he says.
Not surprisingly, leaders of education groups say they feel betrayed. ''You don't see Caspar Weinberger saying that good generals should get paid more than lousy generals and that lousy generals ought to work for nothing,'' said Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, referring to the Secretary of Defense.
Paradoxically, having helped establish the Federal education structure, many liberals can now be heard warning against the heavy hand of Washington, a turnaround that some conservatives find amusing. ''Bennett has taken this enormous megaphone built by liberals, and used it to articulate an anti-liberal philosophy,'' commented Burton Pines, vice president of the Heritage Foundation. ''The liberals have made him the country's chief educator.''
George Will, the conservative columnist and a friend of Bennett's, suggests that the newest Cabinet post ''deals with the subject most Americans care most about, yet at a level where the Federal Government does not exercise great control.'' The job, he said, ''is ideally suited to an intellectual who can raise questions and start arguments and set a national tone without the weight of thinking that the stakes are enormous.''
What will happen, though, when the political pendulum swings away from the conservatives? Will the ultimate rewards of Bill Bennett's efforts fall to the National Education Association and others seeking a stronger Federal presence? Some conservatives have worried out loud about the ''centralist'' tendencies inherent in issues like school prayer and core curriculums, and Bennett acknowledges the validity of the question. Characteristically, though, he also rejects the conclusions implied.
''There are some conservatives who think I should not be so far out in front on issues like the need to nurture an appreciation of the values of Western civilization,'' he commented. ''The problem is I don't know any other way to be than I am.''
He got used to suppress Kaepernick and didn't get a team. Goodell is still laughing his ass off.
He was used to steal property, and toss Black people out in Brooklyn and he didn't get real ownership.
He is now being used to destroy public school education that will literally destroy a generation.
I didn't make the money moves that he did, I am not that wealthy, but I fucking hate that I ever put any money into his pocket supporting him as he grew.
His vision of power, is covert mass fiscal transfer and mass oppression sold as entertainment.
He was used to steal property, and toss Black people out in Brooklyn and he didn't get real ownership.
He is now being used to destroy public school education that will literally destroy a generation.
I didn't make the money moves that he did, I am not that wealthy, but I fucking hate that I ever put any money into his pocket supporting him as he grew.
His vision of power, is covert mass fiscal transfer and mass oppression sold as entertainment.
uuumm not gonna disagree with ya but if your listening to ANY rapper no matter what... you already lost. True a broke clock is right 2x a day but why bother looking at it. just saving. I'm not giving any fucks on Jay or Bey.. they doing them while I'm doing me.
That's a lazy thought process. So they help a few kids instead of using that same money or hell the money that tax payers are already paying to properly fund the schools. The vast majority of schools in black & brown areas are under funded & that's done on purpose to create a situation where they fail.
They only people truly making out in this are the folks running the private & charter schools. Even when these kids get sent to some of these schools they don't exactly thrive in many cases because they are thrust into environments they've never been in and the YT's aren't exactly that welcoming. Sure they welcome the $$ but they don't welcome the black/brown kids that come along with it.
It's already happening, though there are no loans similar to what's used for college tuition. But schools can offer options
So pushing school choice and getting rid of child labor laws all part of the plan. These Republicans are truly pieces of shit.
A lazy thought process?Ok well what do you suggest he do? cause when it comes to education I believe none of the people who have so much to say don't have a solution as to what to do,they either aim to high(it's not their money) or end up regurgitating what's already been said.
Show a successful school that's actually working,that's been duplicated that's turned things around(what state,what city,what urban area)?