It’s hard to believe this was once the highest-ranking education official in the United States: Obama’s former Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is urging kids to boycott public schools until the Second Amendment is violated.
Duncan responded to a former Department of Education employee on Twitter, who had suggested that parents should pull their students out of school—and not send them back until draconian gun laws were passed.
Duncan replied that his family “is in.”
“This is brilliant, and tragically necessary,” Duncan added, via Twitter. “What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe? My family is all in if we can do this at scale. Parents, will you please join us?”
In an interview on Saturday, however, Duncan told the media that he would not, in fact, jeopardize his kids’ education in the name of gun control—saying that he would only pull his kids out of school if the idea were to “gain traction.”
“It’s wildly impractical and difficult,” Duncan said. “But I think it’s wildly impractical and difficult that kids are shot when they are sent to school.”
Duncan’s comments came after a shooting left 10 dead at Santa Fe High School in rural Texas–but came as part of a broader conversation about the Second Amendment, first sparked by the February 14 shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Lakeland, Florida.
Duncan served two terms as Obama’s Secretary of Education, from 2998 until December 2015.
