KINDER'S COMMENTARY: DR. ROBERT BARTMAN'S BOMBAST

Now we know why he doesn't ever take questions at the annual regional education conferences. Now we know why those meetings are always held at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, in relatively distant locations, the better to minimize opportunities for ordinary working Missourians to attend and offer questions or comments. Now we know.

In the graduate schools of education, where they teach the teachers who teach the teachers, and where they're liable to strap you down while force-feeding you 35 hours of graduate-level courses in Advanced Techniques in Blackboard Erasing, they probably don't still study what every scholar used to call the ad hominem fallacy. They have more important fish to fry, such as making sure they teach teachers about the importance of using the Thanksgiving holiday in the primary grades as a Festival of Multicultural Diversity, for example. Back in the old days, though, before the experts thoroughly contaminated so much of modern education, every half-educated person learned about what the logicians call the ad hominem (Latin for "at the man") fallacy.

Simply stated, when you can't attack your opponent's argument, set out to attack your opponent personally so as to discredit him. This is the classic ad hominem attack, and over at the Farm Bureau meeting this past Sunday afternoon, I was on the receiving end of one at the hands of Missouri's commissioner of education. As reported here in Sunday's column, I was asked to appear before the Farm Bureau resolutions committee to make delegates aware that there is another side to Missouri's much ballyhooed education "reforms" that you don't hear from Dr. Bob Bartman or his state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In a rare appearance that actually subjected him to questions, Dr. Bartman was present and followed my presentation.

Calmly and in a deliberately understated, low-key presentation, I took to the podium, made my case and showed my transparencies. I demonstrated how the Senate Bill 380 that is Gov. Mel Carnahan's proudest achievement pounds the final nails into the coffin of local control of our schools, transferring all power over every meaningful decision from locally elected school boards to a distant bureaucracy in Jefferson City. Using DESE's own documents from 1992 and 1993, including those with Bartman's name and picture on them, I demonstrated the state board of education's strong commitment to outcome-based education as it is represented in SB 380, since 1993 the law of our state. I contrasted these with Bartman's repeated statements these days that what they're doing isn't OBE. I took some questions and sat down.

Next, because he had demanded to go last, it was Bartman's turn. Almost immediately, it was ad hominem time. "Sen. Kinder claims he is a friend of the public schools," Dr. Bartman intoned, "but many of his positions tell a different story: He opposed Senate Bill 380 and voted against it. He is a major supporter of school vouchers for private and parochial schools. He supported the controversial Hancock II proposal last year. And today he is supporting a candidate for governor who is a home-schooler." The rest of the commissioner's remarks tended in the same direction, with a mention of yours truly in just about every other sentence.

This list adds up, in the Bartman calculus, to full-scale demonization. There was, however, one major problem: I didn't favor Hancock II, but rather after carefully weighing both sides, I flatly opposed it.

When Dr. Bartman finished, I stood, demanding a correction of his factual misrepresentation. "Not only did I not support Hancock II," I told the group, "but I published a column opposing it, with my name on it four days before the November 1994 election. I would appreciate a retraction and an immediate apology, and I might add that this misrepresentation calls into question your accuracy on any other disputed point." At this, Dr. Bartman leaned into the microphone and, in a voice dripping with scorn, said, "Send it to me."

The next morning a copy of my Nov. 4, 1994, column was hand-delivered to him, along with more copies to every member of the Farm Bureau resolutions committee who had heard the commissioner misrepresent my position and then refuse to apologize for having done so. Next to receive copies will be members of the state school board to whom Dr. Bartman supposedly answers. Seventy-two hours after the misstatement, there has been no apology.

NEXT: After hearing both sides, Farm Bureau members debate and adopt resolutions on education.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.