> the Dept. of Education might shake up things. Not for the better, I think.
Given how mediocre and even harmful public education in the US is, especially relative to its (now waning) superpower status, how large the US is, as well as the promotion of weird ideologies by the DoE, I cannot help but welcome its death. In general, I welcome to end of all sorts of vast educational bureaucracies, including those that have occupied private universities and drain them of resources without providing any justifiable benefit.
I think this is where people don't grasp that we didn't always have the kind of overbearing, cabinet-level department of education we have today. This really only goes back to the early 80s. Meaning, opposing the DoE isn't the same as opposing education. The principle of subsidiarity ought to be respected. Decentralization is good. It should be liberating.
So, in practice, I anticipate a greater diversity of curricula. There already exist competing views on pedagogy. This would allow greater flexibility and educational liberty, but also the opportunity to observe how well various pedagogical approaches work. It also introduces a certain accountability, because while you can blame mediocrity on a distant DoE today, the responsibility for education will lie closer to home when there is no DoE to blame.
Incidentally, people like Feynman ostensibly lamented that he expected physics to stagnate given what he saw as the homogenization of education. A similar principle could be said to apply here.