“The War Will Be Won in Education”

I recently became aware of a YouTube video of a speech given by Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran, as part of a Hillsdale College Lunch Lecture entitled “Education is Freedom.” The video was posted on May 14, 2021 and can be watched here. In it, Corcoran makes it clear that winning the battle between the right and the left will depend on who controls Education.

Corcoran was introduced by Hillsdale College President, Larry Arnn, as “one of the most important men in the United States today.” Hillsdale College is a small private Christian college in Michigan which is considered to be one of the most conservative in the country. Part of Hillsdale College’s mission involves advancing the establishment of Classical Charter schools through its Barney Charter School Initiative. Such schools vow to provide public school children “instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue.” Richard Corcoran’s wife founded a Barney Charter School Initiative Charter and Hillsdale College was intimately involved in the embedding of Civics education into the writing of Florida’s new B.E.S.T. standards.

I encourage you to watch the lecture. The Q&A period is pretty interesting (begins at 20:30).

The first question comes from a Classical Charter School board member who suggests America needs a massive change in its education system and wonders if, beyond opening more Barney Charter Schools, does Corcoran see Florida schools changing for the better?

Corcoran responds (at 22:10) “Absolutely, but it’s volatile.” He explains that Ron DeSantis won Governor’s race in 2018 by just 30,000 votes. and imagines if Andrew Gillum had become the governor and “along comes Gwen Graham and all of the radical left and what they’d do to our school system.” Corcoran goes on to explain that Republican’s have won the Florida Governor’s race by razor thin margins in each race since 1998. He shudders to think what might happen if a democrat were ever to win the office.

“We just got done with the legislative session on Friday and passed another 1.2 million kids are eligible for choice in Florida. It happens, but I will tell you, leadership is everything. And as soon as that leadership changes everything else does, too. That’s the reality. 

In the world that we live in Education it is 100% ideological and, so, in no time … what we have to do is cross the Rubicon and we’re very close … I always say the three things that have changed education are accountability… absolutely, the second we flipped on the lights, and a parent became aware (despite liking their child’s teachers, school, etc)… we flip on the lights and say “that’s an “F” school,” immediately change happened and people became frustrated and angry… so that’s really changed Florida more than anything… the second was this advancement of choice, so we have 3 million school children, if we can ever get to 1.5 million across that Rubicon, we’re probably there now with about half a million children in choice because… even if you had a Gwen Graham or Andrew Gillum or whoever comes in, a Nancy Pelosi in Florida, you can’t take those 500,000 kids and bring them back into the public school system. So you have to keep doing what we’re doing as quickly as we’re doing… Dr. Arnn was talking about Tennessee asking for 100 Barney Initiative Charter Schools, that’s a game changer, once you have that and the governor leaves… and its a liberal that comes in, you can’t put the animals back in the barn.” 

The next question (at 26:20): The audience member says “It seems like a very ideological debate that we’re having and not always connected to outcomes in a beneficial way. It appears that quite frequently, it’s hard to find common ground.” He then asks Commissioner Corcoran what approach helps him find common ground with “people who may have an adverse reaction to your ideological position?” Corcoran’s response:

“The way I have found common ground is, literally, I have fought… because they will roll over you… I always say, I’m always open, I’ll sit down with anybody and have that discussion… I think if you’re talking about people, you know, can a Joe Biden sit down and have a conversation with a Tom Cotton? Yes I think they can. But I’m talking on the outer sides, and really it’s the outer left, they… there’s no negotiation. I don’t think Antifa wants to sit down with me and have a conversation about how can we make the society better? And again, Dr. Arnn gave a great analogy about the warring in the street in Germany pre-World War 2, was between the Nazis and the Communists and the Nazis ultimately won and Hitler became the leader of the Nazi street fighters. That’s what I think you’re seeing with Antifa and what have you, what they want is complete upheaval. And so those people… where necessary I’ll sit with them but I think we need to be efficient and very strategic in how we go about what we’re doing and the war will be won in Education.

If we can get Education right, we can have kids be literate and then understand what it means to be a self-governing citizen in a self-governing country, we’ll win it back. I think Dr Arnn again… he said Education is our sword, you know, that our weapon is education and we can do it and we can get it right. And I do think… I try not to sound biased, but we are willing to sit down. We are willing to have those conversation and we are willing to look at the Science… I think we’re willing to have those conversations, we’re willing to be rational, we’re willing to look at the Science and the facts… I mean the truth is the truth. This room believes in truth, we believe it’s objective… the truth is the truth but they want to deny that… I mean the whole argument on university campuses is there is no truth, it’s all subjective. And so there’s going to be a battle and so sit down, have that discussion, be transparent, be open – always, I think all of us would do that- but the way we’re going to get to where we’re going to get is by fighting every step of the way. It will be a battle and we will have to fight. And, as Winston Churchill says, all the other virtues are great but courage is the most important because without it none of the others are possible.”

The next question (at 33:30) is regarding curriculum and the state’s role in oversight of local curriculum. The woman tells a story of dressing up like Pilgrims for Thanksgiving and two young guests (ages 8 and 10 years old) put a damper on the feast by not knowing the name of the Mayflower, referring to “Indians” as “Indigenous People” and suggesting the Pilgrims “came to kill” them. She suggested that the children’s school (described as “very progressive” by their mother) was indoctrinating them. “All of these years our children have been reading books, being taught books, that present things a certain way and I bet you that a good majority of parents are totally unaware.” She also suggested that “Critical Race Theory has permeated our curriculum” and asked “Who decides what books are going to be used in instruction?”  Corcoran responded:

“That’s a great question. So we’ve fought that battle and we still fight it on a daily basis. And there’s multiple ways you can fight it. First we rewrote all our standards. We’re on a 5 year book adoption… so we disrupted the whole book adoption because we rewrote our whole standards. And we rewrote them with the Science of Reading, we have the first in the nation – a Civics reading list from Kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, we have a reading list for all other courses, its content rich and the quick answer… is content matters, that’s the vocabulary matters as much as the decoding. So we rewrote all of our standards, we did all of that stuff and then we do a book adoption… and now all the publishers – and the publishers are just infested with liberals – so we would have to say to them in our bid specs: we’re not going to approve your bid unless you have…  a certain percent of our reading list has to be in your text. You can have no Whole Language or Blended Literacy or anything. It has to be the Science of Reading. And we went through a whole criterion and, then, when the books came in we evaluate the books on the criterion we set … so now the books have come back and… of course Covid came in and I got a little distracted… but I didn’t think to say “okay and keep all of the crazy liberal stuff out” and so now we literally have them, and they hide it in “social emotional learning” so it doesn’t say “Critical Race Theory” but you could definitely have a teacher who teaches Critical Race Theory so now we have to go back and say, if it’s electronic, we want it out and, on top of that, we’re passing a rule this coming month that says, for the 185,000 teachers, you can’t indoctrinate students with stuff that’s not based on our standards, the new B.E.S.T. standards…

But you have to police it on a daily basis, it’s 185,000 teachers in a classroom with anywhere from 18-25 kids and it you’re not physically there in the classroom. I will tell you it’s working in the universities and it’s starting to work in… I’ve censored or fired or terminated numerous teachers for doing that. I’m getting sued right now in Duval County … because it was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter… we made sure she was terminated and now we’re being sued by every one of the liberal left groups for “freedom of speech” issues and I say to them … “look let’s not even talk about whether it’s right or true or good what you have there… my issue is, when you’re a third grade teacher and only 42%… of your kids are on grade level … why don’t you do me a favor, get them on grade level and then we’ll have that discussion. Make them at least be able to read and understand it first.” To try to not act like I’m radical right or whatever they want to call me. But it’s a constant vigil and fight. It’s a terrible battle.“

[For the record: The Duval County teacher he refers to taught 12th grade English Literature (not third grade) and was dismissed when she refused to remove a Black Lives Matter flag from her classroom’s doorway.]

I’m going to just leave Commissioner Corcoran’s comments here. Listen to him speak. I believe his words speak for themselves. Like the second questioner surmised this “seems like a very ideological debate that we’re having and not always connected to (academic) outcomes in a beneficial way.” Florida’s new B.E.S.T. standards have been written to “keep all the crazy liberal stuff out.” Under Corcoran’s leadership, the goal, it appears, is not to improve outcomes at all but to wield education as a sword, battle Antifa and win the country back. And he intends to get there by fighting every step of the way.