Barack Obama appeared on Hardball last night as part of their college tour series and spent an hour promising everyone everything.  Why would he appear on a college campus?  Because he got softball questions from people who are knee-deep in the indoctrination process of liberal academia so are less likely to ask anything difficult.  With Chris Matthews as host, presumably with “thrills running up his leg,” he could be reasonably sure this would be nothing more than a pep-rally, and it was. The last question of the night was about education, inner city eduction, to be exact, but his answer was straight out of the European socialist playbook where the state controls everything in your life, from birth to death.  ( LISTEN TO HIS ANSWER BY CLICKING HERE) Obama’s solution to the eduction problem is the state, the state needs to fund pre-k, make sure everyone is eating a healthy diet, though he doesn’t say how that’s possible but you can bet he wants school breakfasts and lunches paid for by us, along with after school programs and summer programs.  Essentially, he’s calling for parents to birth children and collect them from the state when they reach the age of 18, unless they go to college, then they can pick them up later. One of the most disturbing parts of what Obama says is that in the 9th or 10th grade he wants to find out what kids are good at or interested in and put them on a path that will lead them to that end.  If by 10th grade you aren’t good at academics, he’s willing to put you in an apprentice program for a manual labor job.  Who knew what they wanted to do with their life when they were in 9th or 10th grade?  Would you want to have your life determined by the person you were then?  Yes, many kids will not go on to a 4 year college after high school, but many will eventually go to college, just not right after high school.  In Obama’s America, you won’t have that option. His calls for more paying teachers more is a clear pander to the teachers unions, but Democrats always mean that because they have to buy them off.  We spent $600 BILLION on education in 2006, or $8,700 per student.  How much do we have to spend to make it right?  We don’t need to spend more on education, we need to spend better on eduction.  We need to cut the fat in the form of administrators and bloated bureaucracy, then you can pay teachers more with some of the money saved.  The problem is that won’t improve education.  A teacher is either a good teacher or a bad teacher.  Their unions make no distinction between the two, you can’t reward a good teacher with anything other than a certificate as “teacher of the year,” or some such nonsense, and you can’t punish bad teachers, either by firing them or not giving them a raise.  This is the system as Obama likes it, or at least the way the Democrats demand it be because there’s money in it for them. It’s a corrupt bargain that is harming this country more than anyone can measure.  While teachers unions complain about not being paid enough, test scores drop.  They then decry standardized tests, claiming they’re forced to “teach to the test.”  Well, those tests test the basics, the information every person in the country should know, so they damn well should teach to the test!  How can a math or English teacher complain about having to teach basic math or English?  When they have a union backing them up and tenure to protect them, that’s how. Teachers unions don’t give a damn about students, they exist to protect the jobs of teachers for the sole purpose of collecting their dues.  Democrats need to shed the shackles of the teachers unions, rid themselves of the slave mentality to their wallet and wise up.  There is no connection between more money and smarter students.  There is, however, a significant connection between better teachers and better students, and parents who are interested in their kids lives and better students.  Thanks to the Democrats, we can’t get better teachers and we can’t judge and put social pressure on bad parents, so they propose the government taking over the role.  Let’s hope the American people wise up in time, though with most of us having come out of those public schools don’t expect the answer to be the right one. Less