It seems that William Ayers, President-elect Barack Obama’s associate and a former Weather Underground terrorist, awakened from his Owellian nightmare [1] to give us a vision for public education he called “social justice.”
In an appearance at the
Ayers said that public school infrastructure should also be incorporated in the much bandied about new New Deal [4] that the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress may enact.
“There’s a lot being said right now about the green, the green New Deal,” Ayers said. “The kind of idea is let’s put people together and get them to work around greening the economy. I’m all for that. Let’s put schools into that. The inner-city schools, the rural schools need to be rebuilt as physical places and let’s invest in that.”
According to Ayers, all this government spending is the key to luring higher quality teachers to the public education system.
“And then let’s invest in teachers,” he said. “I want for my kids a thoughtful, caring, smart, capable, hard-working person. We can’t do that if we don’t pay people well.”
Albert Einstein once said [5] insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That’s fine with Ayers. He cited the Hoover Institute’s Chester Finn [6], who is skeptical of the government pouring money into public education and told the audience that was a wrongheaded approach.
“So, when I see educational researchers like Chester Finn claiming that things like class size and money don’t matter, or saying things like, ‘Don’t throw money at the problem,’ I want to say, ‘Throw money at the problem!’” Ayers said.
Ayers avoided the media spotlight throughout the presidential campaign after he became what he said was an “unwitting and unwilling person thrust onto the stage” for his prior associations with Obama and his participation in a radical anti-war group, the Weather Underground.
However, days after the election, Ayers broke his silence appearing on ABC’s Nov. 14 “Good Morning America.” [7]