Whack of the Week: Santorum

My whack of the week is Rick Santorum for his view on higher education.  Recently on the campaign trail, Santorum blasted Obama for wanting people to go to school and suggested that higher education, because he considers all of it "liberal" should not be supported by the government.  http://bit.ly/xFcDwk.  Is he serious?  How can we compete in this world with just plumbers and janitors and personal trainers (although I love and respect plumbers and janitors and I am a personal trainer ;-)  How out of touch can he be to suggest that higher education is a liberal plot to remake Americans in Obama's image???  Our higher education system is one of the best in the world, and having been through a whole line of them (fortunately for my knowledge and unfortunately for my debt) I know that they teach knowledge not some propaganda.  And if liberal is another word for educated... that means that conservative means uneducated and closed minded.  I do not believe that, of course, but drawing the connection between education and liberal values is ridiculous! 

The other issue he has brought up is that our public school system eats 11% of our budget (as opposed to over 40% spent on military) and he thinks it is too little, because we still have problems with it. So he wants to eliminate Department of Education.  It seems like Santorum is deciding to wage the War on Education, in the same way that Regan started the War on Drugs.  Now, our public school system IS broken (though I certainly received good education from it.)  But it is not because we spend too much money on it.  It is because we spend the WRONG money on it.  In this century of globalization our public schools are still funded by property taxes in most communities.  This might have made sense in 1800s but it hardly makes sense today.  Because of this, poor neighborhoods have poor schools and rich neighborhoods have good schools, perpetuating and widening the educational divide between have and have nots.  Our strategy should be to nationalize the financing of schools, where every school gets the same funding, but localize what is taught in the schools, so that teachers can do their job and parents have a chance to adjust the curriculum.  Every other developed nation has public schools funded like this and that is why American public education is falling behind. 

What say you, Bill?