https://left.mn/2026/09/no-tears-for-lisa/ with a right sidebar of links to earlier posting at left.mn related to this item.
Of interest, Timmer writes -
It is also a serious misapprehension of the role of a public education, which is not to merely to create worker bees, but to make thinking citizens. It apparently made a thinking citizen out of Lisa Démuth’s daughter. Thank goodness.
The Minnesota Constitution does not require that the state build roads or protect public safety, or do anything else, other than this:
The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.
That’s Article XIII, Section 1 of the Minnesota Constitution. “Republican” here, by the way, is derived from res publica, or “of the people.”
In other words, the state must educate people to be active participants in their democratic republic. It is our Constitution’s Prime Directive.
That worker bees vs thinking citizens (the activists - active educated participants - in the representative government Minnesota functions under, even if their only activism is filling out a ballot after informing themselves of the issues and people on the ballot). AND - for the context of that above quote, Timmer earlier mentioned facts about Demuth -
In a recent presser, Démuth said she wanted to trim the state’s free school meal plan to means-test it but adopt a voucher and private school aid plan. She said well-off kids shouldn’t get free lunches. She apparently wants to return to the thrilling days of yesteryear when poor kids got a special funny-colored lunch ticket and got a peanut butter sandwich instead of what everybody else was eating. And their parents got dunned for a deficit in the school lunch account. It was an early lesson in second class citizenship, a concept that Lisa apparently champions.
In spite of her hard scrabble childhood.
Her means-tested sorting inevitably leads to ostracizing the poor kids. I know this from observation sixty-five years ago.
On the other hand, voucher and private school subsidies go mostly to students and parents who already send their kids to private schools. Rich kids. Not benefiting public schools, but harming them.
This transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the wealthy dwarfs the transfer of wealth from the school lunch program, but it’s great optics for the Lisas and Ryans of the world. It is also a great diversion.
In the same presser, Démuth remarks:
Demuth’s plan also includes changes to the state’s teacher licensing board to ensure the board is working to “prepare the next generation of workers and not the next generation of activists,” referring to conservative assertions that the schools are being used to indoctrinate Minnesota students in progressive politics.
This echoes an often misunderstood reason there is public education, which is to uniformly prepare youth for citizenship participation beyond rote nonsense. It is not to condition youth for an adult life punching a time clock, showing up, doing the job, and obeying the boss. That they learn from their parents or the real world in entering it, and shitty jobs like that are prevalent but often come with a health plan and living wage, (often not).
It is as if the Demuth mind is "Education" is to condition maleable clay into show up every day, do the job (including homework), and obey the boss (a/k/a teacher) in the Demuth model.
That's psychological conditioning not learning, a human equivalent to Pavlov's dogs hearing a bell while being fed, and often enough, they are conditioned to salivate when the bell rings, food or not.
Demuth, in whatever family business she's in, would like the worker bees to be diligent and timid about seeking a raise or organizing into a union, or it seems that may be the case. It is not the ends public education is Constitutionally thought to serve best. It is to encourage skeptical regard for authoritarian figures who might wrongly represent themselves and have ideas of power in their hands which might threaten liberties the founders valued in the electorate choosing leadership people. The ability to spot misdirection and bad policy, in favor of cleaner direction and sounder policy. And to participate rather than ignore how they are governed.
The misunderstanding is common among those who may have been Pavloved during their grade school years and later, by bad educator personnel. Or at home by misunderstanding parents, early in life before any schooling at all.
In a trenchent description, worker bees and thinking citizens being at issue, Timmer sums it all up very tightly, exposing a faulty premise underlying Demuth's misunderstanding of aims.
She touts being on a school board, while thinking as she does, and there is danger there.
Musically, this.
