Skip to main content

Mobile Navigation

  • National
    • Policy
      • High Expectations
      • Quality Choices
      • Personalized Pathways
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Gadfly Newsletter
      • Flypaper Blog
    • Events
    • Scholars Program
  • Ohio
    • Policy
      • Priorities
      • Media & Testimony
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
      • Ohio Gadfly Daily
  • Charter Authorizing
    • Application
    • Sponsored Schools
    • Resources
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board
    • Staff
    • Career
Home
Home
Advancing Educational Excellence

Main Navigation

  • National
  • Ohio
  • Charter Authorizing
  • About

National Menu

  • Topics
    • Accountability & Testing
    • Advanced Education
    • Career & Technical Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Curriculum & Instruction
    • ESSA
    • Evidence-Based Learning
    • Facilities
    • Governance
    • Personalized Learning
    • Private School Choice
    • School Finance
    • Standards
    • Teachers & School Leaders
    • Think Again
  • Research
  • Commentary
    • Gadfly Newsletter
    • Flypaper Blog
    • Gadfly Podcast
  • Events
  • Scholars Program
Flypaper

No man, child, or desk left behind

9.4.2008

All the talk is about Sarah Palin. But this is (largely) an education-related blog, and the Republican who spoke last night most fervently about education was Mike Huckabee (scroll forward to 10:20 in the video), who elocuted about a teacher in Little Rock who, on the first day of school, removed from her classroom all the desks and then made her students guess why. "You get a desk in my classroom," Huckabee said the teacher said, "when you tell me how you earn it." (Umm, our parents pay taxes?) By day's end, news cameras were arranged outside and no student had yet correctly picked out how they could retrieve their classroom furniture. Then... through the door walked 20 veterans, each carrying a desk which he quietly restored to its original position. "You don't have to earn your desk," the teacher reportedly??told her students, "'cus these guys--they already did."??As??his four-minute story drew to a close, Huckabee??solemnly said,??"John McCain helped me have a schooldesk."

So, there. And some of you thought the Ed in '08 campaign was wasting millions of dollars. (By the way, didn't Mike once endorse Huckabee for U.S. Secretary of Education???Might the Arkansan try to take this??Ozark deskectomy reform nationwide?)

Tags: Arkansas John McCain Mike Huckabee Republican Party
Fordham Logo

© 2026 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Privacy Policy
Usage Agreement

National

P.O. Box 110
Burke, VA 22009

202.223.5452

[email protected]

Ohio

P.O. Box 82291
Columbus, OH 43202

614.223.1580

[email protected]

Sponsorship

130 West Second Street, Suite 410
Dayton, Ohio 45402

937.227.3368

[email protected]