My public school teacher parents and all of my public school teacher aunts and uncles are happily not here to see this happen. One thing Santorum is right about. His America that he foresees is not the traditional America of the Founding Fathers or of my ancestors.... This is very disturbing. At the very least we are seeing an incredibly provincial dufus of a man. His manner seems well meaning but are we looking at something darker here that is coming out in the heat of the moment? Is this what happened in Canada with your Prime Minister?
REH February 18, 2012 Santorum Questions Education System; Criticizes Obama By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/richard_a_jr_o ppel/index.html?inline=nyt-per> RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. COLUMBUS, Ohio - With his candidacy surging, <http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/rick-santorum?inline =nyt-per> Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned the legitimacy of state-run public education systems and suggested that <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/i ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> President Obama's agenda sprang from a "phony theology." At one appearance here, he said the idea of schools run by the federal government or by state governments was "anachronistic." Mr. Santorum did not say public schools were a bad idea, and he said that there was a role for government help in education. But it was the latest in a series of comments by the former Pennsylvania senator - who is tied in polls in the critical Ohio and Michigan primary contests - suggesting that he takes a dim view of public schooling. He and his wife home-schooled their children. http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/rick-santorums-school-scandal For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. "Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it's their responsibility to educate their children." "Yes the government can help," Mr. Santorum added. "But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not." Historically, state and local governments have been responsible for public schooling. According to the <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/educati on_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Department of Education, the federal government contributes almost 11 percent of the cost of elementary and secondary education, financing intended to compel districts to enforce standards to help disadvantaged children and ensure students with disabilities receive equal education. This year, Republican candidates have called for a cutback in this formula, which has had bipartisan support for decades, saying they would give block grants to states and local districts while repealing federal requirements. A spokesman for Mr. Obama's re-election campaign, Ben LaBolt, said that while the administration "has fought to strengthen our public schools and expand access to higher education, the Republican candidates are set on gutting education financing, and even, in Senator Santorum's case, threatening to dismantle them outright." At another stop in Ohio on Saturday, Mr. Santorum waded into what he called the "phony theology" of Mr. Obama's agenda. "It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology," he said. "But no less a theology." In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are "a lot of different stripes" of Christianity, he believes that "if the president says he's a Christian, he's a Christian." "I'm just saying he's imposing his values on the church, and I think that's wrong," he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. But the Obama campaign called the comments "the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness and searing pessimism and negativity." Assertions that Mr. Obama is not a Christian, or that he is not an American, were rampant in the 2008 campaign. It got so bad at one point - in the opinion of the Republican nominee, John McCain - that Mr. McCain took back the microphone from a woman at one of his rallies who asserted that Mr. Obama was "an Arab." Mr. McCain then corrected the woman. This year, Mr. Santorum has passed up similar opportunities to correct misstatements about the president's background. Last month, a woman at one of Mr. Santorum's campaign stops in Florida declared during a question-and-answer session that Mr. Obama was Muslim. According to an account by CNN, Mr. Santorum did not correct the woman's statement, and he later said it was not his job to correct such statements.
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