Gingrich and the Value of Work

I’d almost forgotten about what a sanctimonious jackass Newt Gingrich can be.  Memories of his statement about women being prone to infections, in an attempt to defend his views on not allowing women to serve in combat, were starting to fade.  That was nearly 20 years ago, after all.  I had only vague recollections of his comments regarding reinstituting orphanages for children of teen mothers on welfare.  Now that he is back in the forefront, these memories are coming back to me and I am dismayed; dismayed that a large percentage of our citizens are voting for this man to become our president.  While I doubt he will win the Republican nomination, I still shake my head in disbelief at just how many people are won over by this man.

Somehow, his comment regarding bilingual education as supporting the, “Language of the Ghetto” passed stealthily under my radar in April of 2007 but thankfully the ‘liberal’ media has brought that back into the limelight.  Now Mr. Gingrich is suggesting that kids in poorer areas should be offered jobs at their schools so they can learn the value of work.  What?!?  I understand what he’s grasping at – he’s concerned about the welfare 'culture' and that kids are learning that they can survive without a job.  But he claims he is an intellectual – a deep thinker.  I don’t think so.  I don’t think he really thought this through.  If I’m charitable, give him the benefit of the doubt, and figure he’s purely thinking of teaching the value of work (attempting to put aside the racial slant to it), his idea sounds good for a millisecond and then if you think about it for just a millisecond longer it would be laughable - if it weren’t so sad.

Maybe, just maybe, if this program were to be made available in every school, regardless of the demographics of the neighborhood, I could accept it a little better. I just shudder at the thought of poor kids scrubbing toilets at their schools, while kids with more advantaged backgrounds (who apparently already know the value of work?) don’t have that ‘opportunity’ presented to them. I struggle with Mr. Gingrich’s assertion that kids in very poor neighborhoods don’t understand the value of work.  I am curious where he gets this information. 

 In the Educational Leadership journal, Paul Gorski wrote an article entitled, The Myth of the Culture of Poverty. He states that the term 'Culture of Poverty' was coined in 1961 by Oscar Lewis, someone who studied a few small, poor, Mexican communities, and then extrapolated his findings to make generalizations that were, quite likely, unfounded.  Paul Gorski also cites the statistic that 83% of children from low-income families have at least one employed parent.  Perhaps Mr. Gingrich is referring to children in 17% of those families, but I suspect he is erroneous in his thinking that poor children do not know the value of work.  He is making generalizations based on stereotypes.

At my daughter's school, the students are expected to help clean up the cafeteria at the end of their lunch.  They are not only expected to clean up after themselves, but entire tables and sections of the floor. There was a major outcry when parents learned that their children were not wearing gloves when performing these tasks.  What about communicable diseases?!?  They must not do this task!  If they  do, we must provide them with gloves!  I admit, I agreed that gloves were a good idea, but if we are going to hear this amount of grief from parents regarding cleaning the lunchroom, imagine what we will hear if they are expected to take on the bathrooms?  We might even hear more grief from parents in affluent neighborhoods than we would from parents in the 'Ghetto' neighborhoods. Now just who is it that needs to learn the value of work?