In Which Ironicus Laments Our Late Great Profession

Oh, hey look. Michele Bachmann announced she is running for president. Is it just us, or is this year's presidential race a lot like the race for California governor back in 2003. You know the once that had candidates like Gary Coleman, Arianna Huffington, porno star Mary Carey, retired sumo wrestler Tachikaze Rightmyer, custom denture manufacturer Ivan Hall, Trek Thunder Kelly and Angelyne--whose bio reads, "American model and occasional actress who ostensibly became an icon of Hollywood and Los Angeles, best known for purchasing billboards advertising herself"--and was eventually won by a man whose greatest claim to fame was pretending to be a homicidal robot. 

And speaking of Mitt, how's he taking this new challenge? Oh, we weren't speaking of Mitt? OK, well the whole thing has caught us a little off guard because we thought Bachmann was already running for president. Turns out she was "unofficially" running and now she's "officially" running.

Glad she cleared that up.

You know, as professional educational technicians when we listen to people like Bachmann, or Santorum, or Huckabee, or Palin, we tend to think the critics of American education are right, just not for the reasons they say, or in the areas they describe. The schools have not failed because Johnny can't read, or Jane isn't ready to become a corporate drone when she graduates, they have failed because they turn out people like the above named, and worse, people who vote for them. People who live by the slogan "Simple solutions to complex problems." People who are isolationists in the most basic and fundamental sense of the word because they see each issue as completely disconnected from the issues around it, untouchable by any effort except that which is directly focused upon it, and immune to the ramifications of any but the most direct intervention.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are people who just do not know what they do not know. They weren't born that way, they had to learn it somewhere either directly, or more likely indirectly, and school had some part to play it that. Want to take credit for people like Linus Pauling, or Aprille Ericsson? Got to take the blame for people like Bachmann and Louie Gohmert.

So Bachmann launches her campaign by calling on the spirit of John Wayne Gacy and when the first question out of the box is are you a flake, is truly offended and responds that she is a serious person. A serious person who thinks John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father, which would make John Adams a Founding Grandfather we guess.

Life can be challenging when you don't know what you don't know, yet you feel no hesitancy about expounding on the issues anyway. So Bachmann is going to say stupid things like evolution is a hoax, crazy  things, like the census is a government plot to herd people into concentration camps and bigoted things like schools are turning kids gay.

And you know, if that was all there was to it this wouldn't even be a blog post, but every time Bachmann says we don't need a minimum wage, or Santorum says if you're gay you're not really a person, but if you're a blastocyst, you are, or Louie Gohmert says just about anything, there are thousands of people out there nodding their heads up and down.

Those are the people the schools have failed, but we all will pay the price of that failure.