Accountability for Members of Congress

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), who gave the Tea Party response to President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address, seems to have difficulty with American history. She must have taken history in school somewhere in her scholarly travels, but clearly if she did, she didn’t take the course very seriously, had a very poor teacher, or little aptitude for the subject. In an Iowa speech not long before her national address, she said that the founding fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” Apparently, she had not known that slavery continued in the United States and only ended with the Civil War. In fact, it was written into our Constitution by our founding fathers. For purposes of apportioning representatives to the House, each slave was explicitly counted as three-fifths of a person.¹ And those early founders owned slaves: George Washington owned 316 when he died; Thomas Jefferson owned as many as 187 slaves, and James Madison owned 106. Many observers of Rep. Bachmann’s performance in Iowa have pointed out her ignorance of this history, but her lack of knowledge raises some serious questions about what we ought to require of our congressional representatives.

Gay Rights and University ROTC Policy

In lauding the legislation that ended the “don’t ask, don’t tell” [DADT] policy that will allow gay and lesbians to serve openly in the American military, President Barack Obama in his second State of the Union address called “on all our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.” While the legislation that ended the hypocritical DADT policy was surely welcome and a step forward, and although legislation already existed (the 1994 Solomon Act) that forced universities to open their campuses to military recruiters, the president made a mistake in equating (even implicitly) an end to an opprobrious military policy with basic equal civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans.

Is Miss Jean Brody Still Alive & Well?

In his second State of the Union address on January 25, 2011, President Barack Obama placed the need for excellent education and superb teachers at the center of his speech to Congress and the nation. Innovation and American welfare depended upon building human capital and that could only be accomplished by parents dedicated to the education of their children, and by creating excellent schools that housed and honored exceptional teachers. “We need to teach our kids,” the President said, “that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” In comparing the way we, as a nation, treat teachers he noted: “In South Korea, teachers are known as ‘nation builders.’ Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect.”

Waiting for Superman or Godot?

It’s not news to say that our educational system is at risk. The problem is that things are getting worse rather than better. The precariousness of the system is exacerbated by the reluctance at all levels of government to recognize the magnitude and consequences of this disease, to determine its causes, and to do the serious work needed to cure it. The paradox in the American educational system is that at its apex — at the great American research universities — we are the very best in the world, while we simultaneously are suffering, along with most of the Western post-industrial societies, from a deteriorating K-12 system that simply is not functioning in a way that will fulfill our society’s needs in the 21st century.

Education nourishes the health of every institution in our country, and its quality will have much to do with the longer-term health of those other institutions. If over half the nation’s children are incapable of solving simple mathematical problems; are incapable of using our language appropriately; are incapable of understanding how to solve problems; are incapable of learning enough to make considered choices during elections that reflect their interests; are incapable of critical reasoning skills; then family, business, politics, and the health of individuals suffer — and the society begins to deteriorate.