No More Preppy-Ivy Leaguer Secs of Education

Quick word before I go to work.   It should be a matter of statute that the Secretary of Education and their higher subordinates should have been the product of the public schools and public universities.  Arne Duncan* should never have become the Secretary of Education, he has nothing but contempt for the public school system that is one of the pillars of American democracy.  Michelle Rhee could serve as evidence in local school administration, as well.  Not to mention that Democrats should seriously consider the prep-school-Ivy League president who, it is rumored, appointed Duncan to have someone he liked playing basketball with close by and so appointed him to a position he seems to have spent attacking teachers and promoting the public funding of quasi-private prep-schools, which is what charter schools are.   Considering the sleazy record of that flash in the panacea in its trial period, anyone still carrying water for it today is either an idiot or they're a crook. 

I suspect Hillary Clinton will be the nominee for president in 2016 but her vice president should be someone who has at least attended a public school and a public university as a student.  I'm tired of the prep-school-Ivy axis that is way, way too comfortable with privatizing public institutions, public education most of all.   She should know better than Barack Obama, having gone to  public schools before she went to rather elite private colleges and universities.  I hope she had the experience of being looked down on by the preppies who held that all public school graduates were stupid and that she remembers what that is like. There are a lot more of us who will be her constituents than the Arne Duncan class of folks.  I hope that Wellesley and Yale didn't impart to her that odd form of oligarchic dementia that it seems to produce in even those from a humble beginning. 

*  Arne Duncan education: Harvard University (1987), University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, University of Chicago, Harvard College
Michelle Rhee education: Cornell University, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Maumee Valley Country Day School
Hillary Clinton education:  Yale Law School (1969–1973), Wellesley College (1965–1969), Maine South High School (1964–1965), Maine East High School (1964), Yale University