Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a new interview that she is working hard to hand states more power in determining education policies and rules, and she also wants to make sure students in grade school and college are learning civics and government.
“Students aren’t getting the kind of foundation in civics and government that I recall getting. They’re coming into higher education without the background to even know and understand competing ideas and then without the ability to discuss and debate them,” she said in a podcast interview.
‘They’re a Very Important Need’
DeVos recalled she went into a classroom recently where a teacher wore a shirt saying “Find Your Truth,” suggesting truth is a “fungible thing” instead of focusing on the fact that there’s objective truth and focusing on teaching students that truth.“There’s a very important need for students to know the foundations of our country and the ideas around which our country was formed and to then have the ability to discuss and debate those ideas freely.”
DeVos also touted the Education Department almost immediately “rolling back a number of regulations that were very broad overreaches by the previous administration.”
She said she and her education administration have worked on implementing the “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 but, according to DeVos, not fully implemented until the past year.
