Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, who has mounted the bully pulpit with gusto and confronted fellow educators, policymakers, politicians, and journalists over numerous issues, is about to encounter perhaps his toughest audience to date.
Beginning next Tuesday, Aug. 27, in Shreveport, La., Mr. Bennett plans to teach classes in seven schools, in an effort “to dramatize and praise success stories in education,” according to his spokesman, Loye W. Miller.
Mr. Bennett will visit three high schools, where he will teach the Federalist Papers. According to a tentative schedule, he plans to visit high schools in Washington, D.C. (Sept. 3), San Jose, Calif. (Sept. 6), and Concord, N.H. (Sept. 11), where he will stand in for the “teachernaut,” Sharon Christa McAuliffe.
Mr. Bennett will teach in middle schools in Shreveport and in Osburn, Idaho (Sept. 5).
According to Mr. Miller, the Secretary is most “nervous” about teaching elementary-school students in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., the week of Sept. 18 and at a paro8chial school in St. Louis Sept. 4.
The Secretary, a former college philosophy professor, has had to decline many invitations since he first disclosed his school-visitation plan earlier this summer, according to Mr. Miller.