Posted on 11/19/2011 9:32:20 AM PST by BarnacleCenturion
Newt Gingrich tonight said at an address at Harvard that child work laws "entrap" poor children into poverty - and suggested that a better way to handle failing schools is to fire the janitors, hire the local students and let them get paid for upkeep.
"This is something that no liberal wants to deal with," Gingrich said. "Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.
(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
My first 7 years went to Our Lady of the Mountains Academy, Paintsville KY. It was primarily a boarding school at that time. No janitors. Every kid had a daily chore, five days a week, including KP duty. I remember if we finished our homework in study hall, we were allowed to go outside and rake leaves, then play football, basketball or roast marshmallows as we burned the leaves (1950s).
The place was spotless, the nuns human, and the education superior (if I say so myself). When we moved we went to catholic school in soCal and we were 6 months ahead in reading and math.
Here in Japan the kids clean the school every day . They have to and don’t get paid .
My first point was that a janitor’s job is usually filled by a man with a family to feed. I believe he would need the money more than a child would.
My other point is that why whittle the least salary rather than the highest salaries? The teachers and principals should be able to take a pay cut. MIllions of others have had to.
See ny postt 103.
ALexis de Tocqueville was very impressed with the near universal literacy of the United States. Letters from Civil War soldiers show a very high rate of literacy among even the most lowly of soldiers.
You make an excellent point, but the American people will never accept their children being “slave labor.” And they really would consider cleaning the classroom a form of servitude.
The American people only hold “baggage” against certain politicians, and the Clintoons and Obama are not among those held liable.
You didn’t mention the useless “central office” personnel that could be dropped without any notice to the American people.
While you're at it, fire the lunch room staff and hire the kids to cook the gruel and clean out the wooden bowls.
Newton was absent the day they were supposed to teach “pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
If you mean Administration, those people could take a pay cut as well, no question about it. Especially the Supervisors.
Actually, my son needed a job to pay for his college so he would not be in NY with the dummies whinning about his big fat student debt.
Teens need jobs not only for the experience and sense of responsibility but also because they have to pay for college and other expenses. Although we could have paid the way for our sons in life, we chose to make them responsible for part of their existence.
All ages from teens on need to work to support themselves to some degree or another. Most people can’t even afford to retire anymore. We have too many illegals taking low end jobs that used to be done by teens.
Let’s see. Teens can walk dogs. they can clean garages or houses, or yards or cars, and the pens at the humane society. They can mow lawns, paint fences or whatever, There are scads of things teens can do. An enterprising teenager can make good money if he/she stays off their butts and Ipads.
But let’s not tke jobs away from husbands and fathers.
You should be the planned economy czar!
And politically, now at least, I agree it is a non-starter. Before I die, I expect to see opposition to "the twelve-year sentence" reach critical mass, if for no other reason than neither the states nor the nation can afford it any more.
If the political implications of government schools are bad, the economic harm done to the country is far, far worse, from ever-rising taxes to the way the funds are unwisely spent and squandered. You might as well flush much of that money down the toilet for all the benefit most kids and their parents get from it.
As for a candidate with the guts to say the Emperor has no clothes, so to speak, there have been a few at the state and local level (who, once known, are immediately targeted by the NEA and their offspring organizations for censure and electoral defeat) and just one that I know of nationally.
Can you guess who? (Right column, second page)
Of course, education is not a federal issue and should not be made so except for the purpose of undoing the laws and regulations that locals have to comply with in order to get funding from Uncle Sugar.
As with many other areas of life, the fedgov needs to simply butt out. That must happen before any radical reforms can be achieved at the state level.
*
John Taylor Gatto’s writings are a great recommendation!
My father was born in 1909. He left school to work in the sixth grade.
He managed to provide a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle until he was let go from his job as a foreman around 1960 in an factory that did defense work. They let him go and hired a college graduate even though he scored as well on the new test they gave.
Of course, it will never happen.
But it DID happen before - I am only 50, and as a teen I took time out of school during harvest, and on numerous occasions, the old man pulled me out of school because he needed help in the shop fixing a tractor or something... Of course, it went without saying that these times would not be allowed to effect my grades - if I didn't pull good grades my freedom went away, harvest work or not.
Fundamentally, Newt and many of the posters to this thread fail to see that the underlying problem, not only with the academic failure, but with the unionization of the janitors, is **socialism**! Government K-12 schooling is the very definition of a single-payer, compulsory use, **socialist** entitlement!
If Japan wants to **force** its children into prison-like schools and then **force** them to clean these prison-like structures that is their business, but is this what we want to teach American children? Should we teach them to be submissive slave labor to the state?
There is a solution: Begin the privatization of all K-12 schooling. We need complete separation of school and state. Let these “clean up” up matters be settled** privately*** between the parents, teachers, and principals in the **private** setting of a **private** institution.
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