Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is currently working to shut down the Department of Education at the behest of President Donald Trump, leaving her plenty of time to talk on panels about the future of schools—or lack of a future, as it were. McMahon’s appearance at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego this week included a rather amusing mix-up. McMahon repeatedly referred to AI by the name “A1.” Yes, just like the steak sauce.
The video of the conference was livestreamed on YouTube, where you can hear it for yourself.
“I heard, I think it was a letter or a report that I heard this morning, I wish I could remember the source, but that there is a school system that’s going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-k’s have A1 teaching every year, starting that far down in the grades,” McMahon said.
And just in case it seemed like McMahon had misspoken once, she said A1 again, all while calling kids “sponges.”
“And that’s just a wonderful thing. Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything,” McMahon continued. “So it wasn’t all that long ago that we’re going to have internet in our schools. Now, okay, let’s see A1 and how can that be helpful? How can it be helpful in one-on-one instruction? How can it be helpful in absorbing more information for those fast learners? It can be more one-on-one directed. And those are the kinds of things and innovations that I want to see continue to develop.”
The most confusing part about her mistake is that McMahon, who’s 76 years old, refers to AI other times, including just before you can hear her repeatedly say A1. Does Secretary McMahon know about some kind of special AI technology that goes by the name A1? It’s entirely possible, but Gizmodo was unable to get an answer from the Department of Education via email.
McMahon has a net worth of roughly $3.2 billion and took the job of Education Secretary with the explicit goal of destroying the department. McMahon was asked about why she was dismantling the agency, and her response was that the country didn’t always have a Department of Education and that Americans need to get more “innovative” and “creative” when it comes to educating kids.
The power to properly eliminate the department actually rests with Congress, so Trump and McMahon have obliterated it only as far as they can. Republicans in the Senate have introduced a bill to formally close the agency, but it’s still not clear how that legislation will fare. Hopefully, they figure out the difference between AI and A1 while they work to erase public education in the United States.
