Undercooked Thoughts: Serving Ideas Maybe a Little Underdone

Until a couple of weeks ago, basically all of the action to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education had been with the Trump administration. Using interagency agreements, it began moving functions out of Education and into other agencies. On July 15, Congress finally got meaningfully involved, with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce advancing ten bills to codify many of Trump’s moves, as well as cut a handful of dormant programs. The right direction, but countless miles to go.

Is this what America is all about? I consider myself a pretty patriotic guy. I also very much enjoy grilling. And I sure don’t turn down a hamburger if it’s offered. Which you’d think would equal loving to grill burgers. But I hate it. Does that make me un-American? It seems so, at least based on the latest polling. A CBS News survey finds that people think the food that best represents America is the hamburger, ahead of barbecue, apple pie, hot dogs, and pizza.

It looks like Netflix recently acquired a bunch of bios of Founding Fathers and other American political luminaries, or at least started featuring them more prominently.

What should college sports look like? Historic rivalries with unpaid athletes? Big national matchups with major players getting major compensation? Transfers sitting out a year at their new schools to discourage changing teams? Players every year getting the best deals—and programs getting the best players—they can? Football subsidizing water polo? Football funding football?

You can really learn a lot when you have seemingly endless news feeds. But only some of it is helpful, as a bit of my recent reading drives home. “Random” versus “Judgmental” in Arizona The first, but far from the best, thing I saw in the news in the last few days was a story out of Arizona about a “damning report” with “explosive findings” concerning the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program. “Oh no,” I thought.

There are so many terrible things going on in the world—did you see they’re expanding the NCAA tournament to 76 teams!—you didn’t need me steering you horrifically wrong. But I did, and I am sorry. Back in August, I published a post discussing all of the different kinds of charcoal I have used over the years, and gave a not-bad review of the bag below—generic Harris-Teeter hardwood lump.

Discover more from Undercooked Thoughts: Serving Ideas Maybe a Little Underdone I know enough about public policy, politics, history, the law, and barbecue to have something to say. But my ideas might not always be perfectly done. Hungry for that? Come and get some Undercooked Thoughts! Already have an account? Sign in Are public schools working for everyone as choice is challenged to do? The idea of all children attending uniformly excellent public schools is compelling: no one is left behind.

As you have likely seen, I just finished my three-partseries on Cato’s Letters, the famous collection of essays on British politics so highly influential with the American Founders. The series is part of my largerexploration of founding thought as we celebrate America 250. If you haven’t read any of those pieces, I know you’ll want to dive into them right now. But I’ve also been up to other stuff you might want to check out.

In the firsttwo installments of my America 250 series on Cato’s Letters, the famous essays on British politics highly influential with the American Founders, I laid out what authors John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon viewed as essential governmental and culutral components for liberty, as well as major threats to it. In this final installment, I lay out Cato’s views on education. And no, he does not prescribe formal education for all. Not even close. Cato is certainly interested in education.

It is frequently lamented that colleges are overstuffed with staff, especially of the administrative variety. A widely discussed new report from Yale’s committee on reforming itself—and to some extent all of higher ed—mentions the public’s concern about administrative bloat, but focuses more on another, related complaint: No one seems able to clearly delineate what resources are going to instruction versus costs such as administration. So does higher ed have an administrative bloat problem?