Betsy DeVos Quotes
If we can manage to break free, to open the system and embrace all choices for education, we will be the first to give politicians awards to hang on their office walls.
DeVos, Betsy. Keynote Address. SXSW EDU Conference, Austin, TX, 10 Mar. 2015.
Lankester was a preeminent scientist of his day and a leader of the conservative British establishment. Germany had a system of scientific education which at the time was the envy of most other sophisticated countries. It is noteworthy that he was the only conservative who was among the 9 mourners at the funeral of Karl Marx.
At the time the Colonial British Government controlled the Indian Educational System. Kahn and a few others thought that the Indians should take control of their own educational systems.
There are still some extreme conservatives who hold this view. To them and Mises, public education should not be allowed, much less required.
This plank if ever actually implemented would clearly destroy the American educational system. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The phrase “national care and expense” was one that was seen as precedent for those advocating federal aid to education and a strong Department of Education. However, the majority of Adams contemporaries saw education, even public education, as a local matter. The word “education” or “school” never appeared in the Constitution. Adams was well before his time on this point.
The Freedmen’s Bureau was an institution established after the Civil War to provide assistance to the newly emancipated and free slaves. Every constructive step taken by the Bureau was opposed and obstructed by “unreconstructed” Southerners and some Northerners. They had very limited resources and there was little known technically about how to accomplish their mission. However, tens of thousands of individual new freed Negroes profited immensely and there were some systemic successes such as Du Bois describes in this quotation. There were also some failures he believed—See Quotation 643645.
Elisabeth Dee DeVos is a former American government official who served as the 11th United States secretary of education from 2017 to 2021. DeVos is known for her support for school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools. She was Republican national committeewoman for Michigan from 1992 to 1997 and served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000, with reelection to the post in 2003. She has advocated for the Detroit charter school system and she is a former member of the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. She has served as chair of the board of the Alliance for School Choice and the Acton Institute and headed the All Children Matter PAC.
