Rick Santorum's Ironic Views on Education

During every national election, there is some debate over the education problems in this country.  However, unlike healthcare or immigration debates, the two candidates tend to have largely similar views on what needs to be done to fix this country’s education problem.  The candidates often push for tougher standards, more charter schools, new ways to hold teachers accountable, and more funding.

This time around, it looks like Rick Santorum is going to break the norms and change the narrative on public education in America.  The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Santorum went so far as to refer to public schools as ‘factories’ and say that federal or state support for education is an ‘anachronism.’” When you look at Santorum’s website, you get the impression that he views schools in the same way that an economist views a business; he seems to view parents as consumers who can pick their children’s education from a long list of options.  

Santorum has homeschooled his children, so you would think that he is speaking from the heart when he talks about how bad public schools are.  However, this is a man who has received degrees from Penn State (public, state run), the University of Pittsburgh (receives funding from the state and gives discounts to Pennsylvania residents), and the Dickinson School of Law (at Penn State, thus public). 

Now Rick Santorum may have been under pressure from his parents to go to Penn State undergrad for financial reasons, so we’ll give him a pass on that one.  But that means that he had two more opportunities to choose where he wanted to study and he chose public schools both times.  After looking at this evidence, I think it’s safe to say that Rick Santorum is an anachronistic product of the factories that he hates so much.

Rick Santorum's "factory"