Bush Brings Education ‘Passion’ to 45-Minute Sacramento Forum

If there are two things that George W. Bush knows well and loves to talk about, they are baseball and education.

Tonight in Houston, Bush will indulge one of those passions when he presides over the Astros’ home opener at Enron Field, the team’s new ballpark.

On Thursday, at Charles E. Mack Elementary School in Sacramento, he indulged the other, presiding over a discussion with local educators who batted about pedagogic principles and advanced learning theories with all the gusto of infielders playing a game of pepper.

For 45 minutes, Bush leaned into the conversation, his arms folded and brow furrowed, as the talk ranged over “diagnostic assessments,” “disaggregated” results and the virtues of phonics as a teaching method.

“Education is a passion of mine,” said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “It should be a passion for America.”

Education has become something of a cross-party calling card for Bush. Traditionally, the issue has been associated with Democrats. But the Texas governor has undertaken significant reforms in his state and touts that record as a way of suggesting to centrist voters that he is a different, more moderate breed of Republican.

Opening a two-day California swing that took him from Sacramento to another elementary school visit in Martinez, Bush told reporters that he will “spend a lot of time talking about education” as a way of contesting the state in November. This morning, Bush plans to attend a breakfast in Los Angeles hosted by the National Hispanic Woman’s Conference before heading home to Texas.

On Thursday, at Mack Elementary School, Bush was surrounded by a handpicked, racially balanced group of half a dozen teachers and education advocates, arrayed around a horseshoe-shaped table in the gymnasium.

The event was about as apolitical as a political event can be. Bush talked about the value of mentors and the importance of parental love. When Michelle Theophilus suggested that “it takes a whole community to educate a child,” Bush nodded politely. Never mind that her formulation sounded suspiciously like Hillary Rodham Clinton’s takes-a-village prescription for child raising.

Afterward Theophilus, a fourth-grade teacher at nearby Sierra Enterprise Elementary School, insisted that no political message was intended. “We had it printed on stickers we give to parents,” she said of her observation. “It’s what I really believe.”

About the closest Bush came to courting controversy was a remark that parents should turn off their TV sets to encourage their children to read.

He wasn’t blaming the boob tube expressly for the dumbing down of America, he said afterward at a news conference. But, he added, “I do know it’s hard to practice reading when you’re watching television.”

He confessed, however, “I’m occasionally guilty of watching television as well. . . . I happen to like baseball. ‘Baseball Tonight’ is one of my favorite programs.”