Leave it all Behind

By Crispin Sartwell

"No child left behind": the first time I heard that phrase, I think, it was

emerging from the mushmouth of Liddie Dole. Before long, George W. Bush was

using it in every speech. Al Gore picked up on it too, and soon all of our

political cherubim were choiring in unison, strumming their golden harps and

flitting hither and thither with a glaze of empty benevolence in their eyes.

And now "No Child Left Behind" has literally become the Department of

Education anthem. Written by two producers for the DOE's propaganda wing, the

Public Broadcasting Service, the song is being employed by Secretary of

Education Rod Paige as he barnstorms blankly through the nation promoting the

administration's education plan.

Here is a sample:

We're here to thank our great president

For signing this great bill,

That's right! Yeah,

Research shows we know the way,

It's time we showed the will!

The DOE is considering having the song performed by children as Mr. Paige

makes his way around the country and playing it for holding callers to the

DOE.

"No child left behind" is the very acme of American political rhetoric, a

perfect crystallization of who we are as a culture. First of all, it is

trivial: the reason people keep saying it is because no one could possibly

disagree with the sentiment it expresses.

Second, it is false. No matter whose education plan is passed, many

children will be left behind, and perhaps I may be excused for noticing that a

lot of them will be black and poor. No party has the will or the way to

educate every child effectively; that's reality. For one thing, people are,

thank God, in part responsible for their own education and the education of

their children.

Third, in the mouths of the people who mutter it, "no child left behind"

is meaningless: something that emerges when the brain ceases to function

entirely, when the politician is thinking about something important (like a

good alibi) and intends to let his mouth keep going without him.

Thus "no child left behind," in its epiphanic synthesis of banality,

mendacity, and vacuity, crystallizes in a single phrase who we are as a

people: our deepest beliefs and our deepest public commitments.

The folks who wrote the tune are Christopher Cerf and Sarah Bruce Durkee,

creators of the PBS series "Between the Lions." The White House, in hiring

Cerf and Durkee, missed a signal opportunity to get R Kelly on board as

songwriter-in-chief. Kelly specializes both in children and in trite, and has

recently issued his self-exculpatory anthem, "Heaven I Need a Hug." His ethics

baste in the sewer while his rhetoric takes to the skies, so he's obviously

presidential timber.

"I believe I can fly": trivial, false, and empty: American politics in a

nutshell.

But despite the missed opportunity, the PBS connection is perfectly

appropriate. Really, I suggest you try to sit down and watch PBS kids' shows

such as "Caillou" or "Dragon Tales": moral gruel served up by blank-eyed

tokens.

These shows go so far out of their way to avoid controversy that they

entirely avoid content of any kind.

The poor unsuspecting children who are submerged in this slop will grow

up thinking that emptiness is truth, that vacuity is profundity, and that Al

Gore or Rod Paige has just said something. They will grow up into a public

life that is utterly piddling and totally disingenuous.

They will grow up, in short, to be Americans.

Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.