Unqual­i­fied hack and Com­mis­sion­er of Edu­ca­tion Bob Corkins stepped beyond his com­fort zone of north­east Kansas yes­ter­day, and vis­it­ed a Wichi­ta high school:

State Edu­ca­tion Com­mis­sion­er Bob Corkins walked away from North High School on Thurs­day impressed with what he saw and promis­ing to return to Wichita.

“I was most impressed with the vari­ety of pro­grams offered,” Corkins said. “Hav­ing that expo­sure broad­ens stu­dents’ horizons.”

Corkins made his first vis­it to a Wichi­ta school since tak­ing office in Octo­ber. He was invit­ed to North by biol­o­gy teacher David Den­nis, who was on Corkins’ tran­si­tion team.

…

“With edu­ca­tion some­times, I feel like I’m learn­ing a new lan­guage,” he said.

Let’s run with that anal­o­gy. Bob Corkins has years of expe­ri­ence as a con­ser­v­a­tive activist and lob­by­ist. For the sake of argu­ment, call that Span­ish. And let’s call the field of edu­ca­tion Eng­lish, just for the analogy.

The Board of Edu­ca­tion, fig­ur­ing that Eng­lish is a Romance lan­guage and so is Span­ish, hires Corkins. He spends his first year in office deal­ing with an immer­sion in a new lan­guage, grad­u­al­ly fig­ur­ing out that all those sto­ries about Eng­lish being the lan­guage of geese are false. By then, he’s let oppor­tu­ni­ties go by, has put things on a course that nev­er made sense, except for some­one expe­ri­enced only in ide­ol­o­gy, and has set back the system.

Elect a new Board.