Newt: Fire the Janitors, Hire Kids to Clean Schools

[Reginald Hudlin]

RSN:

Newt: Fire the Janitors, Hire Kids to Clean Schools
By Maggie Haberman, Politico

19 November 11

 

ia POLITICO's Reid Epstein, 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.

The comment came in response to an undergrad's question about income equality during his talk at Harvard's Kennedy School.

"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.

"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," he 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."

He added, "You go out and talk to people, as I do, you go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age. They all were either selling newspapers, going door to door, they were doing something, they were washing cars."

"They all learned how to make money at a very early age," he said. "What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don't do it. Remember all that stuff about don't get a hamburger flipping job? The worst possible advice you could give to poor children. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you are in a fight with your girlfriend. The whole process of making work worthwhile is central."

The former House Speaker acknowledged that it was an unconventional pitch, saying, "You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly."

[Hypestyle]

...various schools have employment components now, necessary before graduation.. but as far as what Mr. Grinch is proposing.. during the school-year, when would they have time for homework, if they're having to buff hallways..

[Battle]

Men In Black has been in heavy rotation for months now on pay TV, and the movie was right...

Mr. Grinch really is an alien!

[Reginald Hudlin]

RAW STORY:

Krugman: ‘Only fools and clowns’ believe Republican ideology
By David Edwards
Sunday, November 20, 2011

 New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that Newt Gingrich is just the latest of the “fools and clowns” in the Republican presidential race to become a frontrunner.

“I have a structural hypothesis here,” Krugman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday. “You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. And that’s the Republican problem.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan spoke up in Gingrich’s defense.


“We need a little on the pro-Newt side balance,” she remarked. “The base of the Republican Party knows that the establishment of the Republican Party doesn’t like Newt. That’s a big plus.”

“It was his time,” Krugman explained. “The Republican base does not want Romney and they keep on looking for an alternative. And Newt, although — somebody said, ‘He’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.’ But he is more plausible than the other guys they’ve been pushing up.”

[jefferson L.O.B. sergeant]

I have a few "Radical" proposals about overcoming poverty in America.

1. Working Wage- If all work has value then certaintly no one who works should be in abject poverty.

2. Education equality- Instead of having Leroy and Lanisha buffing floors in lieu of studying and preparing themselves for the secondary job market, DEMAND that all schools receive equal funding. Second, NO PUBLIC FUNDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS! The idiot mentioned "Failing schools" of course he left out that Charters are the LEAST successful education model in America.

3. FREE COLLEGE- Every time Obama, Bloomberg, Duncan, Gingrich or some other fraud mentions America falling behind countries like China, someone needs to ask them the following. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GO TO COLLEGE IN CHINA? The answer, not one damn yen! College is free in China and in several other countries that are outperforming the U.S. in science and Math.

That animal Gingrich will never promote any of the aforementioned changes because it would produce actual substantive change.

[BmoreAkuma]

I have a few "Radical" proposals about overcoming poverty in America.

1. Working Wage- If all work has value then certaintly no one who works should be in abject poverty.

2. Education equality- Instead of having Leroy and Lanisha buffing floors in lieu of studying and preparing themselves for the secondary job market, DEMAND that all schools receive equal funding. Second, NO PUBLIC FUNDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS! The idiot mentioned "Failing schools" of course he left out that Charters are the LEAST successful education model in America.

3. FREE COLLEGE- Every time Obama, Bloomberg, Duncan, Gingrich or some other fraud mentions America falling behind countries like China, someone needs to ask them the following. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GO TO COLLEGE IN CHINA? The answer, not one damn yen! College is free in China and in several other countries that are outperforming the U.S. in science and Math.

That animal Gingrich will never promote any of the aforementioned changes because it would produce actual substantive change.

Agreed about the school part partially. Help me out. How can college in the 70s cost no more than maybe a 1k to attend but it is over 15k a sememster. Help me out. Even if you consider inflation from the 70s to now it is still more expensive to attend college now.

[Battle]

[Curtis Metcalf]

2. Education equality- Instead of having Leroy and Lanisha buffing floors in lieu of studying and preparing themselves for the secondary job market, DEMAND that all schools receive equal funding. Second, NO PUBLIC FUNDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS! The idiot mentioned "Failing schools" of course he left out that Charters are the LEAST successful education model in America.

I'm for equal funding as far as that goes.
Your second point (aka your personal bugaboo) is off-target in my view. The charter school system is not an educational model, it is a mechanism for funding alternative education models. Your suggestion is akin to banning venture capital because some start-ups fail.

[jefferson L.O.B. sergeant]

2. Education equality- Instead of having Leroy and Lanisha buffing floors in lieu of studying and preparing themselves for the secondary job market, DEMAND that all schools receive equal funding. Second, NO PUBLIC FUNDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS! The idiot mentioned "Failing schools" of course he left out that Charters are the LEAST successful education model in America.

I'm for equal funding as far as that goes.
Your second point (aka your personal bugaboo) is off-target in my view. The charter school system is not an educational model, it is a mechanism for funding alternative education models. Your suggestion is akin to banning venture capital because some start-ups fail.

Charter Schools certaintly are an education model to the millionaires and billionaires who actively exploit it to their own benefit. In addition, when one takes a look at people like Eli Broad and Bill Gates who are actively buying up school boards around the country to change curriculum and laws, you can see that it is true.

Texas is the model for what these ed-deformers want to achieve in American education. They bought out all the school boards and we now see them employing not only the destruction of public schools, but also the revising of American history through textbooks.

[Curtis Metcalf]

2. Education equality- Instead of having Leroy and Lanisha buffing floors in lieu of studying and preparing themselves for the secondary job market, DEMAND that all schools receive equal funding. Second, NO PUBLIC FUNDS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS! The idiot mentioned "Failing schools" of course he left out that Charters are the LEAST successful education model in America.

I'm for equal funding as far as that goes.
Your second point (aka your personal bugaboo) is off-target in my view. The charter school system is not an educational model, it is a mechanism for funding alternative education models. Your suggestion is akin to banning venture capital because some start-ups fail.

Charter Schools certaintly are an education model to the millionaires and billionaires who actively exploit it to their own benefit. In addition, when one takes a look at people like Eli Broad and Bill Gates who are actively buying up school boards around the country to change curriculum and laws, you can see that it is true.

Texas is the model for what these ed-deformers want to achieve in American education. They bought out all the school boards and we now see them employing not only the destruction of public schools, but also the revising of American history through textbooks.

I accept your concern about some of the private educational management companies using the charter school system to essentially privatize schools. (New Orleans actually has the highest percentage of students in independent chartered schools.) I am not contesting your claims about specific chartered schools in New York and elsewhere. However, I believe that your railing against all charter schools as if they are the same is misguided; an instance of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

As I have said (repeatedly), I believe charter schools have a useful role in serving as R&D labs to develop and test new educational approaches and models. I fully expect that some will succeed and others will not which is what the data seems to indicate. The trick is to propagate practices that work into mainstream schools. A secondary role for charters is to serve niche populations that don't fit the mainstream model, e.g. at-risk youth.

Please don't construe this as some kind of blanket defense of all chartered schools everywhere. My point is that they are all different; in fact, the purpose of charters is precisely to allow them to be different. I support public education. It just needs to be good public education by which I mean effective in preparing students for life-long education, productive careers, and as informed citizens. By most any reckoning, the patchwork quilt of local districts making up our "school system" has significant shortcomings to address in order to meet that standard.