Congress: The Legacy of Unsuccessful Students

We have to step back in disbelief when we observe the intellectual ineptitude displayed by Congress, even when Congress strives to do the right things. The things for which they are Constitutionally responsible. The things for which they advocate and champion policy, laws and governance. The things for which they collect our taxes, institute public agencies to carry out, and allocate their budgets to paradoxically over and underfund simultaneously. And often those essential things that are at the heart of our democratic nation. This is no less the case for American education than for any of the other gladiatorial arenas that our representatives contest over with the feckless skills of an untrained juggler attempting five balls simultaneously before a live audience.

Once the best educated citizenry in the world, we are witness to the accelerating retrograde of our global educational position in general, scientific, technical, business, and even knowledge of the arts to a lesser light in the darkness. And this intellectual recession is not a brief momentary period brought about by some small transient error in judgment or direction by a small dedicated though misguided group of Congressional leaders; but rather is the result of the prolonged diligent efforts on the part of every amalgam of Congressional compositions assembled by the American electorate over decades.

Sure Congress has had the occasional serendipitous stumble into some legislative actions that promoted either a slight impetus toward advancement or at least impeded our rush toward decline; but overall Congress has not managed to pass the grade. Oh yes, they have managed and continue to spend an enormous amount of the public treasury on education. But only with the results that we see about us daily, and hear about now and again when some study illuminates the accumulating anti-achievements from their accredited attention to the education of the nation's children and our society's future.

Perhaps it is not to be unexpected that a nation that has failed for decades to maintain an adequate level of public education, let alone a superior one, has produced political leaders (and correspondingly their electorate) that are unable to face and especially unable to meet the challenge of national education. We may only have to look to science to provide an explanation, something of course difficult for the ill-educated to do. Many of these politicians were of course educated by the same educational system that has failed so many others. As products of these institutions they are thus the recipients of the quality of intellectual DNA transferred from annual school crop to crop. And as genetics will tell you, if you create a selection bias for recessive or harmful traits then you will progressively year over year, generation over generation cultivate a weaker and weaker species. Hence, even if you subscribe to the theory of 'the best and brightest' in pubic service, you will find that the quality of individuals at the 'top' is ever declining.

How then to salvage the American educational system? For Congress the answer to this lies in the same process that saves alcoholics and addicts; they have to admit that they have a problem and that they cannot solve it on their own. Congress's strength (enfeeblement?), their courage (cowardice?) or their vision (blindness?) requires that they seek out wisdom and understanding beyond their comprehension. They may find that the same principles that have fostered the decline can be employed to guide the improvement of the breed. Oddly, Congress could rely upon a basic American principle to gain success in this endeavor; they could depend upon capitalistic competition to restore America to preeminence in education. They only need to find people who can show them how to make it work because their only excuse for not having already done so is that they are not sufficiently capable of doing it by themselves.

Whether they are Republican or Democrat, our legislators and administrations of the moment must learn to hold true to ideals of our founding fathers, to forgo the personal advantage from special-interests, and to serve the pubic need. Education must be returned to a primary obligation of the nation and hence of federal, state and local politicians. Education must be more important than party, than affiliation, than special-interest; it must be once again a pillar of our freedom.