More on Bush "the Education President"

A previous post noted an article praising George W. Bush as the education president. When the moderator of an education discussion group posted this article, electronic road rage resulted. The article was described as "right wing crap" and as "homage to Bush"and its author as a "neo-Nazi war monger." Defenders of the article, including its author, responded in kind, describing liberals as "irrational, America-hating, lying, McCarthyite left that is doing so much to poison our society's political and intellectual discourse."

An easy conclusion is that this experience illustrates how much society's discourse has been poisoned. It particularly illustrates the use of labels to dismiss the need to look at the merits of an idea. To criticize an idea as "liberal" or "conservative" is often a way to try to shut down discussion, to say the idea is not worthy of discussion.

Yet the members of this group, despite their nastiness to each other, pretty much agree on some of the big issues of education: the need to test students and the need for effective programs to replace ineffective ones which too often were introduced for ideological reasons. In this they are largely in agreement with the thrust of the No Child Left Behind act and of the Bush educational initiative.

Yet, as the reaction to the article showed, they are by no means either Republicans or conservatives. And this hints at why the Bush educational legacy may be much more negative than the Bush educational plan would suggest.

NCLB is the one example I can recall where the Bush administration had genuine consultations with the Democrats. Initially the law enjoyed wide bi-partisan support. That it is now the Bush NCLB and not the Kennedy-Bush NCLB reflects in large part the administration's decision to play to its base rather than work for consensus. By being such a divisive president, Bush has made the reforms supported by members of this discussion group less politically viable, at least among Democrats.