COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich's words at Harvard's Kennedy School reads like something perhaps akin to a silver-lined redevelopment of Sinclair Lewis' The Jungle, but those words came from the lips of the current Republican frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president. Extolling the value of learning a good work ethic at a young age, Gingrich stated that unionization and bureaucratization slanted "against children" were at the core of younger people not learning to work at a younger age, and that such restraints were also hurting the public education system. In fact, as was reported by Politico, Gingrich said that the income equality gap was fostered more by liberal protectionist policies than anything else, that child labor laws were "stupid," and that the public school system should replace union janitors with poor schoolchildren so that they could begin "the process of rising."
"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid," Gingrich told the Harvard gathering. The former Speaker of the House also noted that all the "really successful in one generation" had " their first job between nine and 14 years of age." He also pointed out that liberal policies toward unions kept the poorest in a cycle of attending failing public schools.
"You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I've tried for years to have a very simple model," the former Speaker said. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."
Since the GOP has a tradition of not funding public education and has been the party behind not funding No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration revamping of the education system into a quasi-meritocratic system of performance-based funding, it should be apparent that many of the reasons poor schoolchildren in poor neighborhoods go to poor and failing educational institutions is partially due to lack of funding for better facilities and the hiring of better, more qualified teachers. Giving a couple of schoolchildren a job after school cleaning the halls will not start the "the process of rising," as Gingrich so euphemistically states.
What such a policy would do is bust unions, which is undoubtedly Gingrich's true focus, forcing down the standard of living by both eliminating the higher paid jobs of unionized janitors and replacing them with non-union, lesser paid schoolchildren. Another thing Gingrich's education system fix would do is ensure that the income inequality gap broadens, not decreases. Such a policy would also do damage to child protective labor laws put in place to ensure that children (remember: Gingrich suggests that to be a success, one should begin working at the ages of 9-14) are not placed at a disadvantage or forced into slave labor conditions by unscrupulous employers. Relaxing child labor laws in order for schoolchildren to be janitors also provides the slippery slope for children to be allowed to work in other industries, which would ultimately affect the health, well-being, and development of children on a national level -- and not all in a "successful" manner.
And how does this plan of replacing union janitors with young school kids in any way help turn around failing schools? Through pride in mopping floors and cleaning up other people's trash? Because the school kid janitor has a little money in his pocket from cleaning windows and emptying trash cans? And what about on an expanded national level? How exactly does a nine-year-old with a job alter the public school system in a positive manner simply on pride in his own work ethic? How does that same nine-year-old do anything other than become exploited along with his millions of co-workers throughout a nation where they are engaged in this "process of rising" vision foreseen by Gingrich?
Gingrich does not enter into his argument that many successful people -- apparently ones that he does not talk to -- were also not employed before they reached 16 years of age. Nor did the former Speaker mention that many of those that began work at such early ages were forced to by impoverishment and/or familial necessity and conditions forced upon them by a social system ill-equipped to handle economic hardship. Some got jobs -- as do many still, something else Gingrich does not mention -- because of voluntary initiative (car washes, newspaper routes, lawn work, etc.). Unfortunately, many also did so at the expense of their education. What Gingrich suggests is trading union jobs and workers who are of the age of providing for dependents for cheap child labor that will do absolutely nothing to decrease the income inequality gap, raise the standard of living for the poorest neighborhoods or the educational standard in failing schools, or provide better opportunities for "the process of rising."
No, what Gingrich's plan does is provide cheap labor at the expense of the poor and the "stupid" legal protections of America's child labor laws. It does something else as well: busting unions, altering the labor laws, and allowing school kids to clean their own schools helps provide all the non-janitorial schoolchildren targets for their wisecracks, insinuations, and bullying. Because every person that has ever been to school has had the utmost respect for the janitors that clean up after them, so imagine the disdain for the child janitors...
A few months ago, the presidential hopeful said he worried that his grandchildren would have to live in a secular atheist America ruled by Muslims. But the former Georgia representative has a way out of that contradictory and statistically ludicrous future for his grandchildren -- a union-free America where the work ethic is instilled at an early age in a public education system unfettered by liberal protections and run on pride alone (because no Republican seems to be willing to pass up government spending cuts on education while at the same time providing for measures sponsoring charter schools). But, then, Newt Gingrich's grandchildren -- and his great-grandchildren -- do not have to worry about either future, considering that they would never see the inside of an educational institution that was not a charter school or a private facility, an opportunity afforded by that income inequality gap that grandfather Newt sits at the upper end of and has struggled to -- and continues to promote -- with his "process of rising" ideations of a better America.
battlefield 3 release battle field 3 battle field 3 dana wilkey dana wilkey chuck liddell chuck liddell
No comments:
Post a Comment