Nominated by then-President Donald Trump for the position of United States Secretary of Education and approved by the US Senate in a close vote, Elizabeth Dee DeVos devoted her career in politics and in the private sector to the cause that is especially dear to her: the educational freedom.
Between 2016 and 2016, Betsy DeVos, as she is known professionally, worked at against the democratic trend (accentuated during the Obama administration) to strengthen a standardized education system that is increasingly inefficient and, worse, ideological: for the businesswoman, it is up to families to decide what and how their children will learn. On January 7, 2021, shortly before the end of his term, he presented his resignation from his position due to the invasions of the Capitol.
His book “Hostages No More, which has just been released in the United States, deals with the hijacking of education in one of the most powerful nations in the world and the ways to overcome it. Through the Acton Institute, DeVos gave an exclusive face-to-face interview to Gazeta do Povo, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in which he addressed the challenges of American families and the future of educational freedom. in the post-Trump era.
In your book, you argue that American education has been hijacked by ideologues. How did this kidnapping happen? Was there negligence on the part of parents and teachers who defend freedom?
What happened was the long progression of a system created about years old. The title “Hostages No More” is a reference to a quote by Horace Mann, widely considered the father of the K-12 education system [N/E: the K system 12 is the basic education system in the United States, more or less like elementary school, grades 1 to 9 in Brazil) , when he said that “educators have the right to see parents as hostages to their cause”.
I understand that what he meant at the time was a little different from what is seen today , considering the context of parents and students of his time. But I believe that, especially in the last couple of years, American families have watched from the box the failures of this system that has become, basically, a single, enforceable, government-controlled approach. Although it has not essentially changed in terms of form, much of its agenda has continued to shift to the left in terms of what children are hearing and experiencing in the classroom.
In addition, this system it has also been failing in its mission to educate millions of American children in the basics of education, and they are falling further and further behind each year. Learning levels in the United States have been deteriorating every year. There are some successful cases, places where there is more educational freedom like Florida, but generally speaking, when families don’t have many school options, many children simply don’t learn even the minimum necessary.
In other words, not only are they learning bad things, but they’re not even learning the basics of language, math, and the like. Is that it?
Precisely. They don’t learn to read, to do basic math, to be able to reason and think critically, or to analyze problems. There was, in fact, a serious failure, especially for children from low-income families.
What should be, in your opinion, the main fronts of investment and attention to recover American education? What should the focus be?
The most important thing to do is to abandon the financing system that sustains, so to speak, the system itself – which has already proven to be flawed -, and to make that this money reaches the family, giving them the possibility to choose how the child will be educated. By doing this, we will create a huge market of consumers who want something better for their children.
Some of them may even choose the same school that the child already attends – which is great, if it is working for them. him or her – but for those who want something different, who know their child would be more excited or would have their curiosity piqued by another teaching method, the money should be available for them to make the best decision.
I often use the backpack metaphor: every day, children go to school with the things they need to complete their activities. Our job is to make sure that the money arrives precisely in this “backpack”, which will go along with the child to the most suitable educational system for them.
How do you see the republican projects that aim to stop ideological teaching, such as critical racial theory or queer , through laws?
I think they are well-meaning, but they won’t solve the problem. For every action to ban a certain type of curriculum – be it critical racial theory, gender theories, or anything else – those who are eager to implement it will find ways to evade the law and re-enter whatever they want. want to teach in some way.
I think a better approach to our system is to demand radical transparency about the curriculum. If a parent asks “what is happening in my child’s classroom today?”, he needs full access to what will be taught and what the children will hear.
And that’s it. it serves as much from a curriculum and learning perspective as it does from a financial perspective: we spend more than any other country in the world, and yet we do poorly. We are in 37 th place in mathematics, 80 th place in science and 13º in reading, comparing with the most competitive countries in the world. Parents have a right to know why.
Speaking of competitive countries, what do you think about China’s education system? In some respects, they perform better than the United States. Is there anything that can be learned from the Chinese?
I visited some Chinese schools many years ago and my understanding is that you cannot trust much of the data that come from China – what are their actual results, how are the students doing, etc. Clearly, they place a high value on education and charge a lot from students. There is a work ethic that is imposed by the system itself, which would not happen in a democracy.
But, having said that, I think there are things we can learn from the Chinese, especially about hard work and having high expectations regarding the results, values that have been abandoned by some educators in the United States.
What Brazil can learn from recent successes and mistakes from United States?
As I don’t know the Brazilian context in depth, I cannot make great connections between what we went through here and what you experience in terms of education. However, I think our main learning is that respect for federalism, for the way each state will approach education according to its own needs, as well as the idea of delegating the decision of how and where a child will be educated at the family level. , will result in a much more dynamic educational environment, as we will have all kinds of people getting involved in creating new schools and new solutions.
By respecting federalism, you don’t require everyone to follow the same approaches, the same methods, etc. Note that not all regions have the same opportunities and needs. In our case, for example, what works for students in Alaska is very different from what works for children in Florida. With so many geographic, cultural, economic differences, why should we insist on a standard, top-down approach?
The end of the Trump administration was quite traumatic, with the invasion of the Capitol and all that followed. With regard to education, how do you assess the advancement of causes in favor of freedom after “Trumpism”? Have they been contaminated by the rejection of the former president or have they gained more strength?
I would say that the commitment to educational freedom is strong and tends to grow because, like me said, over the past two years, families have had unprecedented access to what is being taught to their children, especially because of the way schools have handled the pandemic. And many of them didn’t handle it at all well. I think this awakened in many people the sense that something had to be done.
These issues already worried parents who wanted a different education for their children, but did not have the money or resources to do so. But now, many families who have moved to another school district, bought more expensive homes in more expensive neighborhoods, all to provide a better education, are increasingly disappointed with the results.
Furthermore , the chasm between the philosophy of the two parties has never been clearer. This can be seen during the Virginia gubernatorial election, when former Governor Terry McAuliffe stated that parents should not meddle in what goes on at school, while Republican Glenn Youngkin insisted on the role of the family and its right to intervene. in whatever is necessary. The intentions of both sides, therefore, were quite clear.
McAuliffe even doubled down and continued to appeal to unions, school unions and other allies of the status quo, just like the rest of the Democratic Party. 37, 7% of the party’s collections — which is obviously taxpayers’ money going to teachers’ unions — ends up supporting politicians committed to protecting and expanding a flawed system , in a scheme in which “one hand washes the other”. And that became much clearer to an audience that hadn’t paid attention to it until then.
This, then, made even those who didn’t like Trump care about the question.
Exactly. I don’t think the educational freedom agenda is associated with Donald Trump. I mean, he supported her, he was the first presidential candidate and then the president to speak openly about it, but that was never his central concern. I think that, for those who care about the cause, he was always seen as a supporter, but this whole educational issue emerged in a way that no one would have predicted and that extrapolates the figure of the former president. In this sense, the pandemic was a watershed.