I work in a school district with very poor kids

[senseandsensibility]

At least eighty percent of their parents are working, and it used to be more before the recession. Many are still working two jobs if they can get them.

Just a reality check, for anyone who thinks Newtie may have a point. He doesn't, but he does have an agenda.

I truly hope he is the nominee, but I don't think we'll be that lucky.

[MichiganVote]

1. We're crumbling. The rats always climb on top of the poor or middle class.

[Fumesucker]

2. Thank you for what you do...

:yourock:

[senseandsensibility]

14. No thanks necessary! But

nevertheless, that's nice to hear.:hi:

[HockeyMom]

3. Anyone who thinks a CHILD should clean school

floors and bathrooms of human body secretions is cruel and out of their minds. That is all I will say.

[gkhouston]

11. Hell, even if the bathrooms weren't crufty, who wants kids handling cleaning solutions? n/t

[OffWithTheirHeads]

16. Hey dude! I bet if we mix bleach and Ammonia it'll clean better!

[Ilsa]

20. I posted that possibility in another thread, and how

with the reductions of student populations, the GOP would be consolidating schools and shutting some down. Kids, even young teens, have no business using chemicals to clean up blood and body fluids and other human waste in schools.

[whathehell]

37. Yes, he wants to overturn century old child labor laws..Perhaps

we could bring back debtors prisons too.:eyes:

[enough]

4. It's this year's version of the Republicans' eternal trump card: hate the poor.

And then hate them some more.

[KT2000]

5. He is playing to their delusions.

Expect it will get worse too.
He feels free to make up things that fit the GOP fantasy that they are just better than everyone else.

[sad sally]

23. Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich is delusional.

from a 1996 John Hopkins magazine:

In dismantling the orphanage system, Progressive reformers laid the groundwork for modern welfare--the same welfare system that some reformers today want to fix (you guessed it!) by bringing back the orphanage.
Last year, when Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested solving some of the country's welfare problems by taking dependent children from their parents and putting them in orphanages, political science professor Matthew Crenson found himself thinking, Do these people know what they're talking about?

Crenson knew what they were talking about. He had spent the last eight years researching orphanages. He estimates that in 1900 there were close to 1,000 of these institutions throughout the country, housing perhaps 100,000 kids. There were county orphanages, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish orphanages, non-sectarian children's homes run by private charities. With the movie Boys Town, orphanages--or at least a Hollywood image of them--became part of American mythology.

What startled Crenson was the idea of orphanages as a remedy for welfare. After traveling to four states to examine thousands of records, transcripts, articles, books, letters, and government documents to research a book, he had reached this conclusion: that public and political reaction to the orphanages of the 19th century had spawned the modern welfare state. Here was Gingrich, who sees welfare as a problem, proposing as an alternative the very institution that had inspired welfare's creation.

http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/496web/orphange.html?du

[lunasun]

25. I already feel like its Dickens revisited lately, but this guy is really pushin it!!

[Tsiyu]

6. Gingrich is an idiot

His rhetoric flew during the Clinton years because people were making decent wages.

Today? Increasing numbers of voters are identifying with the poverty-ridden because, due to efforts like his "Contract on America" they ARE the poverty-ridden!

There are only the 1%, and maybe 20% of the backwash voters (who also watch FOX and believe it was sent down from Jeebus to save them) who can identify with his class warfarish statements.

He's a fool, and I too hope he's the nominee. Any of the tools running as a Repuke will be easily defeated, but it will be singularly satisfying to see Newtie fall from grace......again.

[w8liftinglady]

7. my partner teaches in a Title 1 school

Working low-income families...like I said-it's pathetic,but we bought gloves and hats for all the kids and are making gift bags.This is reality.And Texas is talking about doing away with free breakfast.Always on the back of the poorest.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
[link:www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html|Click
here] to review the message board rules.

[w8liftinglady]

9. LOL...go back to FR like a good child,now.

There but for the grace of God go I.

[SwampG8r]

32. i am on a streak

ascii moderater deletions galore
its like the buzzards returning to stuebenville
i have bookmarked 2 today and this gives me a hat trick

[ellisonz]

10. Liar Liar Pants on Fire.

;-)

[gkhouston]

12. Some people don't need to played to be fools. n/t

[senseandsensibility]

13. LOL Thanks for lightening the mood.

Definitely not worth engaging seriously.

[MissB]

15. Welcome to DU!

Enjoy your stay.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. Pepperoni?

[Bozita]

19. Free pizza for the newbie?

[WildNovember]

33. I posted an Op the other day that said that up to 40% of TX teachers

came from for-profit certification programs. I couldn't believe things had gotten that far there.

[HockeyMom]

36. Teachers and staff bring in clothes,

winter jackets, hats, gloves, etc., of their own kids outgrown clothes. This is in Florida and when the weather does get cold many of these kids simply's don't have the warm weather because their parents cannot afford to buy clothes that their children won't be using all year. Yes, this is a Title 1 school. We have had these poor kids come to school in shorts and a tshirt when the temps have gone into the 40s. Leave them dressed like that?

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Me too

And our kids come from working families. Hard working families.

[femmocrat]

21. Same here -- small rural district.

We have a very high percentage of free and reduced lunch students. We use our Friday blue jeans money to buy Christmas presents and warm clothing for children who need help. We also do "angel trees" and collect monetary donations for families in need. Our secondary buildings have free clothing closets and toiletry items, as well.

Plus, during the year we do various school-wide fund-raisers, collections for the food bank, soldiers, libraries, volunteer fire companies, even the animal shelter. No one can say that teachers don't give back to the communities where they teach.

[Booster]

22. The only way I'd say it's ok for students to clean any part of the

school is if it's a college and the student gets free tuition for their work. Even then I may not agree, but kids under 18 absolutely not.

[EFerrari]

24. What is this in response to?

[senseandsensibility]

28. Newt's latest rant that very poor children need to learn about

work (by laboring as janitors at their school) because they don't know anyone who works or can be anywhere on time or....sorry, I'm just getting so depressed repeating it. But that's the gist.:-(

[EFerrari]

30. Thank you.

[Ilsa]

26. I spent four months last school year as a substitute nurse in several

schools with very poor financial demographics. The majority of kids had at least one parent working. What was sad was that most of them would lose wages if they needed to leave work to pick up a sick child.

I grew up on the edge of poverty. But thankfully, college was cheap, and I was motivated to better myself and excel. I have degrees in two fields. I think my work ethic was pretty damn good even though we weren't even middle class.

[MedleyMisty]

27. What does work ethic have to do with being middle class?

Also, what do college degrees have to do with bettering yourself? But if college was cheap, I assume this was before the corporate takeover of the country and so before college degrees were just proof that you'd been through four years of corporate obedience training and that you now have a ton of debt?

I was born in 1980. I only made it through one semester of a four year school, as did my husband. Because we don't have student debt, we were able to buy a house a few years ago. And I feel quite well educated from having read intensively all my life. I was tested as reading at college level and above in fifth grade, and I took the SAT in 7th grade and scored high enough on the verbal section to go to Duke's TIP program in the summers. But college, and the resulting debt, just wasn't for me.

My mother never went to college until after NAFTA destroyed my hometown and she lost her job and went to the local community college. I'd say she's upper working class. She's worked hard all her life, from picking cotton when she was little to now working in third world conditions at Goodwill. Is working hard all her life not considered a good work ethic because she never made enough money to be considered middle class?

How much money you have has nothing to do with who you are as a person, except that I do feel okay with saying that if you're in the 400 wealthiest families in the US you are most likely a psychopathic world destroying asshole.

[Ilsa]

34. I'm in my fifties. Yes, I graduated before the corporate takeover and

when getting a degree meant a young woman with zero connections could better her life with a better paying job. So yes, I call bullshit on your response.

I still have respect for degrees, especially when the person getting one has to work their way thru. It takes patience and determination. I want college to be available and affordable to anyone who wishes to learn. College grads still make more money On Average than persons who did not graduate.

I'm not rich. We hope to save enough that we don't die of starvation when we are too old to work. We don't expect to ever be able to retire, thanks to the corporate overlords.

[Ilsa]

35. I guess you missed the part about Newt's comments about poor people

not having a work ethic that started this discussion. That was the context of my first post.

[immoderate]

29. Does Newt think these kids can work unsupervised?

Does the adult who monitors them work for free?

What will a couple of nine year olds do if they can get their hands on some weapons grade janitor tools?

When I was a middle school teacher, we had an annual day trip for our seniors to a dude ranch which ended in our "prom."

When we arrived the students debarked the buses, and after a quick orientation, were dismissed to go to activities, i.e. swimming pool, pool table, horse shoes, horse riding, volley ball, lounging around, etc.

When I was "making rounds" the desk told me that a group of student had checked out archery equipment and gone out to the range. I ran out and when I got to the range they had chosen sides and were having a "bow and arrow fight." For one of the very few times in many years of teaching, I blew my whistle!

Anyway, what Newt (he was a teacher?) forgets, is the application of Murphy's Law to education. He would farm out nine year olds to work in nuclear plants. What could go wrong? :shrug:

--imm

[gkhouston]

31. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna trust 4th graders with bolt cutters and lopping shears.

Look, Ma, no fingers!