Republicans Don’t Need No Education

It really is a shame Jeb Bush’s last name wasn’t “Smith” or “Johnson” or “Morter” or something. Jeb is a brilliant reform-minded candidate that would have been a welcome addition to the Senate and/or as a powerful voice in the Republican Party. But, and let’s be honest with ourselves, there’s really only one reason he isn’t running for the senate in Florida next year, and it’s not because he wants to spend time with his family.

::cough::draftmarcorubio::cough::

Fred Barnes recently sat down with the former Governor of Florida to discuss his career and some ways he’d like to see the GOP become the reform party. One of them had to do with education. So sayeth The Man They Call Jeb…

What comes through when Mr. Bush is asked about education is how radical his views are. He would toss out the traditional K-to-12 scheme in favor of a credit system, like colleges have. “It’s not based on seat time,” he says. “It’s whether you accomplished the task. Now we’re like GM in its heyday of mass production. We don’t have a flourishing education system that’s customized. There’s a whole world out there that didn’t exist 10 years ago, which is online learning. We have the ability today to customize learning so we don’t cast young people aside.”

This is where Sweden comes in. “The idea that somehow Sweden would be the land of innovation, where private involvement in what was considered a government activity, is quite shocking to us Americans,” Mr. Bush says. “But they’re way ahead of us. They have a totally voucherized system. The kids come from Baghdad, Somalia — this is in the tougher part of Stockholm — and they’re learning three languages by the time they finish…there’s no reason we can’t have that except we’re stuck in the old way.”

He’s not the only one to speak out on education recently. RNC Chairman Michael Steele had this to say…

We did it right here in my home town of the District of Columbia. The president of the United States, when he was a U.S. senator, blocked three times – tried to block three times legislation that would enable poor black children in this city to go to the high school that I graduated from, what they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to do. So create those opportunities. Put people on a pathway to earn a job, earn an education, so they can empower themselves. I don’t need the government to do that.

I think we have a unique opportunity to really draw a line in the sand and make ourselves the education reform party, because there’s no limits to the ideas we can come up with. The Democrat Party on the other hand is tied to only the ideas that the teacher’s union agree with, because the Democrat Party is bought and paid for by the teachers unions.

Chairman Steele said recently, “If we haven’t done it, let’s do it. If we haven’t thought of it, think about it.” I can’t think of a better place to do this than our current education system.

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