Department of Education

Surfing around the interwebs this evening, we come upon this article at Hot Air, that questions Michelle Backmann's idea that we might consider abolishing the US Department of Education.

The not-so-subtle implication of PT’s prominent placement of this Bachmann statement is that it’s obviously extreme. You know those crazy “constitutional conservatives”! But is it? Abolishing the Department of Education might sound like an ultra-conservative pipe dream — and anything but advisable in the Information Age, when education is key to global competitiveness — but, perhaps, just perhaps, Bachmann has a point.

Of course, Bachmann has a point, the same one that many of my conservative brethren have been making for years. The US Department of Education is an unnecessary bureaucracy that had no founding in practice or government until it was founded by Jimmy Carter in 1980. For over 200 years our country had been educating children without a cabinet level department. There's no reason to believe that such a department is necessary now. The very question is one that should be debated regularly by the people, along with the other departments that might once have had a legitimate purpose. As an observer of our school system for the past eight years, I can say with an educated opinion that the DOE does little to educate children and often stands in the way of innovative teaching methods that might not meet the criteria established by a far-off federal bureaucracy.

The DOE is unnecessary. Education is properly the province of the parents and local school boards. The individual state education departments can provide the necessary supervision to ensure that standards are maintained. We certainly don't need a federal bureaucracy.

Bachmann's right. The DOE should be abolished.