I’m still working my way through the education discussion at the Thursday night debate between Fred DuVal and Doug Ducey in Tucson. Here’s the biggest educational gaffe of the night, made by Ducey. It’s one of those classic “When I was a boy” blunders. He was talking about how today’s schools in Arizona and across the country are under-performing compared to schools in other countries, and he compared them to the wonderful schools America’s K-12 youth attended back when.

“Anyone that’s my age in this audience or older grew up in an America that was number one in the world in K-12 education, and so far and away number one, we didn’t know who number two was.”

Ducey graduated high school in 1986, so his “We’re Number One!” glory days were the 1980s. Those were his happy-go-lucky teen years, so he probably didn’t read the Reagan White House document, A Nation at Risk, which came out in 1983, when he was a freshman. [NOTE: Ducey graduated college, not high school, in 1986, which means his high school graduation rate was probably 1982, a year before A Nation at Risk was published but part of the time the report is referring to. I regret the error.] It didn’t exactly trumpet the excellence of our schools. Quite the opposite. In its early paragraphs, the report said:

The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

Things got even more dire in the next sentence.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the schools Ducey attended which, according to him, were “so far and away number one, we didn’t know who number two was.”

And for those of us older than Ducey, well, there was the Sputnik scare of 1956. The Russians put a satellite up in space before we did. Why? We were told it was because our math and science education had slipped way behind the Russkies. Scared the hell out of everyone.

Oh, and in 1955 there was the book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, that described the deplorable state of our schools. That same year, the film, Blackboard Jungle, came out. Pretty serious film. If you watch it, you’ll learn what a mess our schools for poor and minority students were back then.

If we want, we can go back even further, to Plato’s day, when the adults of Athens deplored the poorly educated, undisciplined youth running wild around the agora. There was this one especially terrible teacher at the time, by the name of Socrates, who was “corrupting the youth of Athens.” Instead of firing him, they gave the old man a dose of hemlock. Talk about taking away a teacher’s tenure protections!

This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.

17 replies on “Ducey’s Education Blunder During The Debate”

  1. If Ducey had his way he’d probably be happy with with AZ schools being all charter or private schools subsided with tax credit B.S.

    But I don’t think I agree with this writer’s assessment. Regan was an ass…but my public school teachers in the 70’s…and I graduated HS early 80’s….were pretty damn good. I don’t care what Regan said, the school system was only beginning to take a turn for the worse starting in the 80’s….and I suspect you and I would totally disagree on why it did. So I don’t see this as a Ducey blunder…he has a bunch of them, don’t use weak ones to make your case.

  2. The problem is not with our schools but rather parents. With attendence rates down to under 85% – do not think kids are sick twice as much today as in the 50s when I was in grade school – hard to get a continuium. Johnny does not read because mom and dad often do not read, nobody is at home when junior gets home, and kids with active involved parents go to charter schools or they find a public school in a neighborhood with involved parents.

    Ducey blunder – not really. Schools have just continued downward as parents and kids would rather sell drugs and live off mom and dad.

  3. The past 2 commenters, one went to school in the 50s, one in the 70s, talk about how good their schools were in comparison to today’s schools. Hmmmmm??? This is from a Gallup Poll done in 2010, “Americans continue to believe their local schools are performing well, but that the nation’s schools are performing poorly. More than three-quarters of public school parents (77%) give their child’s school an “A” or “B,” while 18% of all Americans grade the nation’s public schools that well.” Gallup then compares the 2010 poll with polls they did in 1980 and 1985. The result is that parents like their child’s local schools BETTER today than the parents of 30+ years ago! It seems that America’s schools as a whole aren’t thought of as doing very well, but NOT the school their child goes to. Did Ducey blunder? YUP! You can read the whole thing here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/142658/american…

  5. Given gaffes such as this one, it is no wonder that Ducey is dodging other debate invites. He hopes to keep a low public profile and win office by spending his attention and money on a craven, deceptive negative advertising campaign. In that effort, he’ll have both his own substantial resources and all the dark money ads his corporate friends and ideological allies will throw into this race.

    When any politician avoids public discourse and the chance to explain his ideas, the electorate should be wary. How can this kind of campaign give the public any idea as to how Ducey would govern? His tactics are ignorant and ill-advised, not just manipulative, because independent swing voters usually punish candidates who try to scam them and take them for granted.

  6. Ducey made his money bankrupting hopeful entrepreneurs. Is it any surprise he’d tell a deliberate fib about public schools?

  7. I give up. Who can trump those experts on education. How many people graduated from high school after World War ll before the Korea “conflict” who went right into the work force and build this wonderful country that was handed to Reagan when he became President.
    People were actually joining the work force without more education prior to the early fifties. Along came the John Birchers attacking books, schools, and everything from the FDR new deal.
    Robert Taft, commonly referred to as Mr Republican through the thirties and forties opposed President Roosevelt on many issues. Taft, however, did support collective bargaining (unions), stock exchange regulation, setting a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, laws against child labor, old-age pensions to name a few of the stands the majority of the Republicans had prior to 1952.
    In 1952 a very popular General Eisenhower beat Taft for the Republican Presidential Nomination and the narrow group of “old guard” Republicans walked away.
    Many forget Eisenhower had been a favorite of the New Dealers during the war, especially Franklin D. Roosevelt and his very special adviser, Harry Hopkins. Rejecting Democratic efforts to nominate him in 1948 and 1952, Eisenhower instead chose to run for the Republican Party nomination in 1952 to stop the Taft wing of the GOP.
    Had Eisenhower accepted the Democrat’s offer of the nomination, another choice for vice-president than Richard Nixon would have been made.
    Eisenhower saw Nixon’s strong vocal opposition against communism as an asset to his campaign.
    Remember this was the time of the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had come to the Senate in 1947. Domestically communism was a threat, Nixon and McCarthy raged a vocal war on Communism as did the book burner, anti-United Nations, anti-communist, right-wing John Birch Society at the end of the fifties. In my opinion not much different than the Tea Party today just a fringe element of the conservative movement.
    As the off-shoot of the Birchers, schools were forever changed. Curriculum was put under attack, teachers went on the defensive and in some people’s minds the downhill slide of education was the result.
    So here goes another Liberal Democrat, don’t blame Ducey for his memory of the glory days of Reagan and education in his youthful days it was those Conservative Right-Wing Extremists who took over the Republican Party.
    Just another good reason to vote for Fred DuVal for Governor, we desperately need to get rid of those extreme right-wing elements of the GOP.
    A second good reason to elect Fred DuVal is the programs and vision he will restore to a forward moving Arizona. Check the record Ducey doesn’t even come close to the experience and list of public service positions that Fred DuVal offers.

  8. So Duval has more experience than the guy you elected President…twice?

    I’m not sure I follow your thinking.

    And then to say he made his money bankrupting entreprenuers? So everybody that sells ice cream should have a guaranteed success?

    Blanket statements hide real shortcomings in thought.

  9. AZ hasn’t had a really bad governor in a long time but it used to be the norm. So many liberals thought moderate Republican Brewer was horrible. Wait until they get a taste of life under Ducey. I hope he doesn’t get elected, but the political math makes his chances look very good.

  10. Elect Fred DuVal for governor and the long siege of dry hate will come to an end and graciousness will fall like rain on AZ. Fred offers positives that clear the way for Arizona to move forward.

  11. i wonder what bslap’s time frame is: “AZ hasn’t had a really bad governor in a long time”. And what constitutes “a very bad governor”? I’d say we have one right now but bslap considers Janice K. Brewer a ‘moderate’. And how does he define ‘moderate’? His judgments make me nervous about agreeing with him that Ducey would be worse. But I’ll be delighted to have his vote alongside mine for Fred DuVal. Thanks, bslap!

  15. The debate was introduced as an opportunity to interview candidates for a job. Most business people would agree that veracity is an important quality in a new hire or promotion. That said, Doug Ducey should be shown the door, and not to the governor’s office.

  16. I just wanted to add, Harry Hopkins was a Communist sympathizer, if not an agent, many New Dealers were Socialists or Commmunits, now proven, not a McCarthy witch hunt, their Soviet paychek stubs have been found sine the USSR collapse. Plus I just read, the Delano family made its fortune peddling opium in China, I think I would rather have an ice cream vendor.

  17. Hey Bodies….what a twist. During the Civil War, Delano shipped opium to the Medical Bureau of the U.S. War Department. So I guess you’re RIGHT, he was a drug dealer. Sure glad all those Communist sympathizers didn’t get past Harry Truman. Harry fought them (Henry Wallace & the Progressive Party, Strom Thurmond, the States Right Party & the GOP led by Tom Dewey to turn over a plenty healthy United States to IKE.

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