At a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa Friday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann used a question about teen bullying as an opportunity to call to abolish the Department of Education.
"I think that is an issue that needs to be handled at the local level," the Minnesota congresswoman explained. "I don't like to have the federal government involved in telling the local schools what to do. For one thing, there was no federal Department of Education until the late 1970s. So, I don't want the federal government involved. I actually want to end the federal Department of Education."
"No one thinks that bullying is a good thing," Bachmann continued. "Bullying is a bad thing. If you've ever been bullied, you know what it's like. It's awful. But I think it's up to the parents to insist with the local school districts that while their child is in the care of the local school, that the school stand up and stand against this. And kids need to be punished accordingly."
"You don't reward kids for doing bad things, you punish them. And the kids who are good kids, who are getting bullied through no fault of their own, somebody needs to stand up for them. Because sometimes when it is bullying, it isn't just one kid, it's a whole band of kids and that's where the schools have to step in."
She added: "It's $1.8 billion and I want to send that money -- I want to make sure that money goes back to the schools so that the schools can handle these issues."
