Obama's Hoodlums

The Obama Administration has been cynically waging a war against discipline in the very schools that need it most. Thomas Sowell reports:

What makes this playing politics with school discipline so unconscionable is that a lack of discipline is one of the crushing handicaps in many ghetto schools. If 10 percent of the students in a classroom are disruptive, disrespectful and violent, the chances of teaching the other 90 percent effectively are very low.

Like the New York Times, Attorney General Holder has made this an issue of "The Civil Rights of Children." More important, the implied threat of federal lawsuits based on racial body count among students who have been disciplined means that hoodlums in the classroom seem to have a friend in Washington. [minor format edits]

Sowell reminds us that Obama is also fighting to make sure that such "schools" are the only option for the poor. In both cases, Obama is sacrificing education to leftist ritual, with the practical result that there will remain downtrodden individuals in search of a savior. Some strong souls will survive, but the President is deliberately making it much harder for them to do so.

This story reminds me of a column suggesting that Hugo Chavez, by allowing unabated lawlessness in Venezuela's cities, had "outsource[d] the dirty work of socialism to criminals". Another blogger had called the column "eerily prescient", but I didn't see why: Perhaps there was recent news from Venezuela that I'd missed. Nevertheless, I think I am beginning to understand.

-- CAV