Education Fatties Won't Diet

The government education monopoly eats about $500 billion a year for K-12 education.  Check usgovernmentspending.com for the details.  And literacy hasn’t budged in 150 years.

So Newt Gingrich went on TV to tell folks to do something about it, reports Henry Payne.  Detroit seems to be as bad as anywhere.  So Newt burned in like a laser:

“The Detroit Public School system currently graduates 22 percent of its entering freshman. If you’re an African-American male, you have 73-percent unemployment in your 20s if you drop out of school.”

It may be worst in Detroit but it’s the same all over.  I talked to a twentysomething Canadian this weekend.  His mother said that she had been taught in school by nuns in India, and boy, were they strict.  “I was taught by morons,” he asserted.

As Randi Weingarten, New York teachers’ union leader puts it:  There are people out there who “just don’t care about kids.”  She means evil people who won’t vote more money for schools.

Henry Payne points to another possibility where Detroit is concerned. 

Trouble is, the locals don’t care. And no amount of bold national solutions will matter until they do.

Ignoring the staggering statistics Gingrich cited, Detroit leaders instantly manned the ramparts to shoot the messenger. Detroit Federation of Teachers President Virginia Cantrell said Gingrich should “leave Detroit alone.”

Hum.  It’s easy to take the Leninist strategy: The worse the better. 

But we are conservatives, and even liberal kids deserve better.