Watch — Betsy DeVos: Conservatives Have Been ‘Complacent’ on Education, ‘Cannot Be Ignored Any Longer’

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told Breitbart News that many in the conservative movement have ignored education for decades, only to recently rediscover the “failings of the system.”

“I think by and large, a lot of those in the conservative movement have been rather complacent to what has been actually going on,” she told a roundtable of reporters.

“There have been many of us who have been involved for three decades — more than three decades — in trying to change policy around education, been very focused on education,” she said. “COVID laid bare the failings of the system, but those failings were there long before COVID hit.”

“They revealed to families across the country what was actually happening in schools that many families thought we’re doing just fine for kids,” she continued. “Whether it was, you know, extended lockdowns, mask mandates, you know, woke and [critical race theory] curriculum, hyper-sexualized, age-inappropriate curriculum, or just an outright lack of robust academic quality — any or all of those things were really laid bare to families.”

DeVos said she is “pleased” that many conservatives have begun to pay attention to education as an issue that affects them, saying, “this is an issue that cannot be ignored any longer.”

“There’s a demand across the country to put parents in charge and to give freedom to our kids in their K-12 years to find the right education fit,” she said.

She called out the education “industry” as well, saying it is the “least disrupted industry in our country: least changed, least innovative, least creative. And it’s because it’s been beholden to a system that has kept kids — held them hostage — and it’s time that they are hostages no more.”

The term “hostages” is a reference to her book, Hostages No More, which is titled in allusion to 19th century Whig Rep. Horace Mann of Massachusetts — in many ways the architect of America’s public education system — who once said of the system that “we who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.”

DeVos was participating in a roundtable with reporters at the Young America’s Foundation’s 44th annual National Conservative Student Conference in Washington, DC.

Watch the full roundtable here:

Matt Perdie / Breitbart News

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.