Fire janitors so that school kids can learn the joy of a worthwhile job? Wow, the guy’s a one-man, walking thinktank!

Who doesn’t love Newt Gingrich’s idea to fire school janitors and replace them with actual school children? I mean, besides janitors and school children.

If the world had listened to Newt Gingrich 30 years ago, there would be no Freddy Krueger! Countless Scooby Doo villains would be forced pull off their masks in in private, with less drama.

Newt argues that union policies and child labor laws – the only things standing between our schools and a “Newsies”-style takeover of our schools – are “crippling” children, apparently unaware that prior to the implementation of child labor laws, many children were crippled by their laboring.

I think my favorite insight, though, is his deduction that it’s in “the poorest neighborhoods” where we see the truly “tragic” results of not allowing kids to get jobs, because they then miss out on “the whole process of making work worthwhile”. This seems not to be a problem in the non-poorest neighborhoods – mostly because everyone works for their dad.

Lauding the ethic that working for a living instills, Gingrich told his audience at Harvard (who, presumably, already know that “work is worthwhile” – even though they were sitting in a political lecture on a weekday afternoon) that it was important for them to “[g]et any job that teaches you to show up on Monday”, and “Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you’re having a fight with your girlfriend.” Like, say, Speaker of the House.

Source.

Categories: Economic Exploitation, Labor, Workers Struggle