In his first hundred days as President, Donald Trumps plans to shutter the Department of Education. Top legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, has regrettably affirmed that there is no constitutional limitation against such an action. Assuming that Congress will give its consent, and that we make it past the first 100 days, this seems dangerously likely. As a Great Books course, the Core Curriculum might suggest that to make America great again might involve its more rigorously studying the Great Books again. It is nice that Donald Trump wants the United States to be a great country, but bad that he seeks to accomplish this by making it more like Donald Trump. Naturally, step one would be to do away with education, recommended first in his ominous oeuvre, Crippled America. Abby Jackson at the Business Insider writes:
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri. Image for Business Insider
This makes Trump’s pledge to eliminate the Department of Education a legally possible feat, though it would certainly not be something he could achieve on his own.
“No president could eliminate the department unilaterally, by executive order or otherwise,” Tribe said.
Education policy was largely a second-tier issue during Trump’s campaign, which focused instead on issues such asnational security,trade, andHillary Clinton’s email scandal.
Still, in the plan for his first 100 days in office, he described his intention tobring educational supervision to local communities. It remains to be seen whether he reinvigorates the call to abolish the Department of Education.
This would mean on the one hand that many states whose constituencies voted for Trump will be reading much more of the Bible, a book that must necessarily feature in any Great Books course. On the other hand, this also means that many states whose constituencies voted for Trump will be reading much more of the Bible to understand biology, physics, and if things go very wrong, Donald Trump.
