custom ad
NewsMarch 26, 1994

With a doctorate in philosophy and a resume that includes stints as the national education secretary and drug czar, William Bennett might have missed his true calling. In an hour long speech at the campus of Southeast Missouri State University Friday, Bennett -- also a best-selling author with a law degree from Harvard -- delivered a pretty fair stand-up comedy act before a packed house of about 550 people...

With a doctorate in philosophy and a resume that includes stints as the national education secretary and drug czar, William Bennett might have missed his true calling.

In an hour long speech at the campus of Southeast Missouri State University Friday, Bennett -- also a best-selling author with a law degree from Harvard -- delivered a pretty fair stand-up comedy act before a packed house of about 550 people.

Bennett is author of "The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories," and the "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators," an assessment of the moral, social and behavioral condition of modern American society.

In a speech Friday peppered with one-liners and anecdotes, Bennett discussed those factors that he believes have led to the decline of Western civilization.

He quipped that ever since his appointment in 1989 as the nation's drug czar during Ronald Reagan's presidency, he has been able to refer to his wife as "Czarling" and his two sons as "Czardines."

Bennett said that as Secretary of Education under President Reagan, he taught in 105 classrooms across the nation. As director of the National Drug Control Policy, he visited 110 drug-ridden communities.

Those experiences have prompted a few conclusions about the state of affairs in this nation.

"I don't think we're experiencing a health-care crisis," he said, referring to the present administration's fixation with the implementation of a national health care program. "But I think we're probably in a crisis situation when it comes to many aspects of our educational system."

Bennett said that while spending on public education is at an all-time high, learning is at an all-time low -- particularly in the nation's urban school districts.

Crime is another issue that approaches crisis levels, he said. Bennett said that in the past 25 years, there has been a 500 percent increase in violent crimes. At the same time, criminals are increasingly younger. "The criminal justice system is broken," he said.

Bennett said that "prisons do work" and that violent criminals need to be put away for longer periods -- something he claims has been lauded by a groundswell of public opinion.

Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!

"The people who want law enforcement more than anybody else are those getting their brains beat out by the criminals -- those people living in the lowest socio-economic scale," he said. "Congress says that we're just warehousing people. I say, `all right, don't warehouse them. Let them stay at your house.'"

But Bennett said the greatest crisis facing the United States is the breakdown of the family.

"Fifty percent of marriages today leave in divorce," he said. "Marriage used to be treated as a sacrament -- a commitment --but now it's treated as a convenience."

Of the children born in 1960, 5 percent were born out of wedlock, Bennett said. That figure has since swelled to 30 percent.

Bennett poked fun at President Clinton's surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, who has endorsed the distribution of condoms for school-age children and drug legalization.

"The political short-hand of the age would have to be, `Tax it, regulate it, and put a condom on it,'" said Bennett.

He derided Elders' recent comments that the basic problem in America is that people are "hung up" on sex.

"Yeah, that's our problem in inner cities -- Victorian morality," Bennett quipped. "They're having too many tea parties.

"I don't know what planet she lives on," he said. "We're saturated with sex in this society. What we need is some healthy inhibitions."

Bennett also criticized "outcome-based education" in the nation's public schools, which he said puts less emphasis on learning the "3 r's" than on self-esteem building.

"What I've found is outcome-based education has as much to do with outcomes, as people's republics have to do with people," he quipped.

"If you can teach self-esteem, you can teach Algebra, and if you can teach Algebra, you don't have to teach self esteem -- the joy of learning takes care of it," Bennett said.

Story Tags
Advertisement

Connect with the Southeast Missourian Newsroom:

For corrections to this story or other insights for the editor, click here. To submit a letter to the editor, click here. To learn about the Southeast Missourian’s AI Policy, click here.

Advertisement
Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!