Drug Czar William Bennett’s appearances on national Sunday television showed what a difficult challenge he has undertaken. Some might think he has just been confirmed to lead the charge in a no-win war.
He is, however, a very resourceful man. If anyone can demonstrate national leadership and innovation is tackling the drug problem, Bill Bennett is our best bet, based on his record in his last job.
The Cabinet post of Secretary of Education was created by Jimmy Carter as a political payoff to the National Education Association, the teachers’ union that had played a preeminent role in his election as President. Accordingly, the first couple of Secretaries were NEA-approved appointments.
And then came William Bennett. He was a most unlikely successor in this post that had been considered a sinecure for NEA mouthpieces. He was like a breath of fresh air in an already overgrown bureaucracy. He rattled the icons of the education establishment and he dared to ask questions on one else ever had.
Bill Bennett raised our expectations at both ends of the school years. He tried to encourage college students to appreciate Western civilization, while at the same time demanded that elementary grades teach the basics: reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, and right vs. wrong.
Secretary Bennett didn’t have any school or college on which he could impose his curricular ideas. All he had was the Secretary’s pulpit, but it was a mighty one. To that pulpit he brought an educated American’s grasp of the priceless heritage of Western civilization, a teacher’s skill in transmitting to the young, and a common sense approach of how to keep it all in focus.
Just as he left that office, Simon and Schuster published a volume of the best of his nearly four years of speeches under the title Our Children and Our Country. A collection of 24 speeches by a government bureaucrat is hardly the sort of volume that one sits down and expects to read from cover to cover. But you might just do that with this book because the speeches contain a lot of helpful common sense about a subject of many people’s primary concern: their children.
Part 1, What Works in Education, lays out Bennett’s “three C’s”: content, character and choice, as essentials in elementary schooling, along with the traditional three R’s. Part 2, Let Us Now Praise, tells about good schools, good teachers, and why recent immigrants excel in U.S. schools.
Part 3, the Nurture and Protection of Our Children, states Bennett’s views about moral education, sex education, AIDS education, and drug education, and why it is unrealistic to say we can’t teach values. The question is whose values will our schools teach, and Bennett proved that he isn’t chicken about controversy.
Part 4, Higher Education: Promise and Reality, includes Bennett’s provocative address at Harvard, in which he told the faculty some unpleasant truths that they needed to hear.
Part 5, Our Common Culture, contains an inspiring lecture on young James Madison, whose study, scholarship and statesmanlike ideas made him the father of the U.S. Constitution. Part 6, In Defense of the West, explains why the West is better by every test than what lies beyond the Berlin Wall.
William Bennett changed the education debate in America much as Ronald Reagan changed the political and cultural environment. Indeed, the Reagan Revolution might have stopped at the schoolhouse steps were it not for Bill Bennett speaking out.
Bennett quotes George Orwell as saying that the first duty of intelligent men is to restate the obvious. That’s precisely what Bennett did in this book, in a way that is interesting, provocative, and refreshing.
Now, we hope will “go get ‘em” on the drug scene, perhaps starting by restating the obvious. Here are some suggestions that won’t cost any money.
How about recommending that the Bush Administration set a standard of leadership by instating that everyone who crosses the threshold of the White House sign a pledge that he is wholly free of illegal drugs? That would include government officials, visitors from all walks of life and countries, and the Washington press corps.
How about asking Congress to pass a law saying that no federal funding can go to any recipient unless the person or institution certifies that he or it has a drug-free environment? That would include all education institutions, and it would be the responsibility of the university president or school principal to find some way to ascertain compliance.
One thing Bill Bennett should NOT do is take the advice of television media to imagine that he is or should be the gun control czar. He has a big job to do as the drug control czar.
