Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“In 1977, millions of American tempers flared against the treaty giving Panama control of the canal that bisects its country. A bemused senator said: My state’s residents are of different races, ethnicities, religions and politics but are united in white-hot attachment to the canal, which until now they had not thought about since hearing of it in third grade. Today, there are widespread laments about the diminishment, perhaps to extinction, of the Education Department, although the lamenters cannot connect it with educational improvements since its founding nearly 46 years ago; there having been few, if any. Although the department has been often slathered with high-minded devotion, it was born from a banal political transaction between a notably pious politician and one of the principal causes of the subsequent decline in K-12 education quality.” (04/23/25)