Welcome to Bernie’s ‘Brave New World,’ where parents and achievement no longer exist

Together, we will make sure that no child in Nevada goes hungry. Hundreds of thousands of Nevada school children are in need of school lunches. Instead of saddling families with debt and stigma, we will fund universal school meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Yes, an op-ed in the morning paper by Bernie Sanders advocates providing children three hots a day, so why not a cot, too? Children can’t learn if they don’t sleep well, and parents are so unreliable about providing such necessities, aren’t they?

He goes on to call for raising teacher starting pay to $60,000 a year and providing grants for out-of-pocket expenses.

As for achievement standards, Sanders dismisses those out of hand:

Instead of forcing teachers to “teach to the test,” we will respect their professional expertise in setting standards of student evaluation. We will not condition school funding on testing outcomes. In Nevada, the “high stakes” aspect of standardized tests means some underperforming schools will be converted into charters, which are less accountable. That is a perversion of what testing and evaluation is all about, and it is undermining public education.

Just give everyone a participation trophy, I mean diploma.

Sanders concludes, “You are a critical part of the political revolution that is needed to transform our country. When we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”

Accomplish?

From Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World“:

There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, ‘Once upon a time,’ the Director began, ‘while Our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.’ The Director interrupted himself. ‘You know what Polish is, I suppose?’

‘A dead language.’

‘Like French and German,’ added another student, officiously showing off his learning.

‘And “parent?”?’ questioned the D.H.C.

There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.

‘Human beings used to be…’ he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. ‘Well, they used to be viviparous.’

‘Quite right.’ The Director nodded approvingly.

‘And when the babies were decanted…’

‘”Born”,’ came the correction.

‘Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.’ The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.

‘In brief,’ the Director summed up, ‘the parents were the father and the mother.’ The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys’ eye-avoiding silence. ‘Mother,’ he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair, ‘These,’ he said gravely, ‘are unpleasant facts; I know it. But, then, most historical facts are unpleasant.’

He returned to Little Reuben–to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned on.

(‘For you must remember that in those days of gross viviparous reproduction, children were always brought up by their parents and not in State Conditioning Centres.’)

Those are the Alphas and Betas, not the the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, who are bred to be workers in Huxley’s world. What will become of Bernie’s Epsilons?