The part of ‘Student Debt Relief’ Mr. Biden does not get
A political blind spot for Biden and for Democrats is haunting success at the polls.
Above: an early picture of Bidens, father and son. Courtesy family of Joe Biden, Jr.
Can one part of the Democratic party advocate for student relief while another part defend pluto-meritocracy? Education is the “existential fault line” for Democrats in 2022: public education and labor market access. And for Democrats to win, a serious discussion about support for public education and for student debt relief needs to take place.
While centrist political forces in Congress dither about student debt and climate change, what seems like entire generations are being neglected. Rich or poor, talented or not, endowed with ‘innate abilities’ or challenged, the audience of “Don’t Look Up,” (1) is equally bereft. The comet is coming for America and the storm shelters and lifeboats are full.
The “public” understands ‘being cheated:’ the difference between working to ‘get ahead’ and working ‘not to fall behind’ is a subtle difference but disproportionately works damage on the psyche.
And on the body politic.
There are clues.
Beto O’Rorke recounts a story about Biden which he shared during a phone conversation offering Beto support after Beto’s 2018 loss to Ted Cruz. Explaining to O’Rorke the frustration at Cruz’s ability to tap huge donor dollars, Biden detailed the pluto-meritocracy predilection of American politics:
‘I remember what my father told me after we visited Amherst, a college I really wanted to attend. ‘Don’t go there, Joe,’ my father said, ‘you’ll be waiting on the tables of your classmates and they will look down on you.’
What that comment taught the young Biden was that his path did not cross America’s wealth divide, and that in order to cross it, young Biden had to accept his “place.”
Joe, Jr. picked the University of Delaware, a ‘land grant’ university, closer to home. His father paid Joe’s “in state tuition,” funded in part by public tax dollars.
Both O’Rorke and Biden attended private independent schools: O’Rorke (Woodberry Forest) and Biden (Lechmere Academy). Each did not experience public schools during their social formative years. For Biden his public education exposure evolved with his wives, both of whom came from public Community College environments (2). In the culturally ‘woke’ seventies and eighties, Biden and O’Rorke were privileged, white preppies. Now thrust into the politics of establishment norms O’Rorke bristled over, both display a blind spot for public education as a tool of social and labor inclusion.
“Preppy” is not just a Seventh Avenue ensemble moniker; it is a short version of “college preparatory.” Before helicopter parents and pay to play college admission scandals there were a consortium of “independent college preparatory schools,” where for a fee, young white boys and girls could be groomed for elite universities. One heard of an Anglo-Saxon prep school pipeline to the “Ivies”- Andover/Yale; Hotchkiss/Yale, Exeter/Harvard, Lawrenceville/Princeton.
Thus the new industrial era elites sequestered their kin and kind: where could be found ambition fusing with maintaining appearances and appurtenances of financial success. The world Joe Biden, Sr., introduced to his son after the son’s indulged visit to Amherst.
“They will look down on you.”
There is an economic underpinning and a reflexive oblige to Biden Senior’s orientation. And a blatant institutionalized misogyny, as Joe, Jr. would experience: women served education. Education did not serve them in the same way as men. A different model, yet an all encompassing one.
As white, male elites set the rules of labor access to the professional class, the pluto-meritocracy infrastructure of American society flourished. The ambitious Biden Junior managed a public career and trajectory into the US Senate with barely a law degree and an elected County Council seat under his belt. Tragedy and the grief of a young family ripped apart and the forlorn young widower now managed political ambition and parenting.
He commuted between the world of elite Washington and reading bed-time stories to his boys in Wilmington. He did not traverse the wealth divide.
Father was right: “they will look down on you.”
A seminal ‘education’ moment during the 2020 Presidential Campaign Debates occurred when Sen. Kamela Harris ‘schooled’ candidate and former Senator Joe Biden Jr. on his support of school busing, “Well, Mr. Vice President, I was on that bus (you voted for).”
Looking at the crisis in public education through the lens of institutional neglect, Harris adeptly pronounced the pluto-meritocracy alive and well in America. Quickly, the seasoned cynical press jumped in, ‘critic-drooling’ about Harris as (an) “angry Black Woman.”
Was message received?
While the intelligentsia is proclaiming ‘end of democracy,’ as we know it, the rest of America is squirming under the weight of dashed ambition. Herein lies the challenge and the denial of the present moment in ‘education:’ call it what you will, ‘democracy’ hinges on a collective investment in a viable future: not rhetoric, not prediction, not helicopter parenting. Just “knowing our place.”
The upshot of this national blind spot is an increasing public pressure on ‘education’ to address an increasingly needy and challenged client.
Battle lines around cultural totems are being drawn. Fleeing the institution of public education, schooling today resembles the Wild West, where students and student allies are shunned and eclipsed by squabbling adults, occupied with creating turf wars and repression.
‘Inclusion’ is a dreamy mirage: during the pandemic “Public Education” devolved to in person ‘schooling’ for the wealthy and privileged; at home and remote ‘learning’ for the marginalized.
The disproportionate performance metrics and declines are stunning making education and its current malcontents a politicizing force of the 2022 midterms.
Some of the best data come from the nationally administered assessment called i-Ready, which tests students three times a year in reading and math, allowing researchers to compare performance of millions of students against what would be expected absent the pandemic. It found significant declines, especially among the youngest students and particularly in math.
The low point was fall 2020, when all students were coming off a spring of chaotic, universal remote classes. By fall 2021 there were some improvements, but even then, academic performance remained below historic norms.
Take third grade, a pivotal year for learning and one that predicts success going forward. In fall 2021, 38 percent of third-graders were below grade level in reading, compared with 31 percent historically. In math, 39 percent of students were below grade level, vs. 29 percent historically.
Damage was most severe for students from the lowest-income families, who were already performing at lower levels.
A McKinsey & Co. study found schools with majority-Black populations were five months behind pre-pandemic levels, compared with majority-White schools, which were two months behind. Emma Dorn, a researcher at McKinsey, describes a “K-shaped” recovery, where kids from wealthier families are rebounding and those in low-income homes continue to decline.
-Laura Meckler, “Public Education is Facing a Crisis of Epic Proportions,” Washington Post, January 30, 2022
The financial underpinning of public education is steering toward private and charter schools, reenacting the same class aligned struggle as took place at the dawn of public education in America. Early settlers quickly grouped themselves into those who could afford at home tutors or be sent to remote ‘private’ schools and those who relied on community resources and public learning. The rise of the ‘normal’ or ‘public’ school in America reflected the village commons — shared, accessible, community situated, removed a manageable (walkable) distance from home and farm. Moreover, the public school embraced notions of an engaged society based on self improvement calibrated by social needs.
Contrast this aspiration with present day school corridors:
“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”
Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.
Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.
-https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/30/public-education-crisis-enrollment-violence/
During a ceremony in the Rose Garden in May, 2021 following the signing into law of the America Cares Act, the mic was left on.
Overheard by White House celebrants was a hushed whisper between the Vice President and President: “This will help ‘mom and pop’ realtors.”
Not family and childcare workers, not nurses, not students, not out of work drivers but, ‘mom and pop’ — independently owned — realtors.
This singling out of a shadow industry speaks to the precarious struggle of the pluto-meritocrats and the blind spot of student debt. Imagine if cancelling all student debt — a societal foreclosure, borne equally by all — were the overheard incantation. “This will help families and help ease access to labor.”
In an article about Joseph Biden Sr. and Joe Biden Jr.’s political career in Marie Claire (3) the writer mentioned that Dad in support of son’s political career surmised that being a used car salesman might not look appropriate for a politician and vote getter. So he picked a more fitting enterprise:
He put out a real estate shingle.
February 3
Footnotes
1-”Spoilsporting,” January 7, Medium
https://link.medium.com/t3N1BwvNonb
2–Neilia, Joe Biden Jr.’s first wife who died tragically in a car crash was raised by a father whose career was in food services for Cayuga Community College in Auburn, New York. Jill, Joe Biden Jr’s second wife is a Professor of English. at North Virginia Community College. “Dr. Jill” is the first ‘career working First Lady.’
3-Katherine J. Igoe, “Who was Joe R. Biden, Sr., Joe Biden Jr.’s Father?.” Marie Claire, October 21, 2020
https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a33573986/who-was-joseph-r-biden-sr/
