Early in his campaign, Mitt Romney told supporters, "I don't care about the very poor." Now the politician is taking his crusade for "relatability" to the schools of Philadelphia, where he attempted to relate to poor working families who depend on the public school system. News One contributor Michael Arceneaux isn't impressed, and argues why you shouldn't be, either.
Romney doesn't understand what it is like to rely solely on public education to get ahead, which is why his emphasis on charter schools and two-parent households is problematic.
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A two-parent household may be advocated as the ideal in raising a child, but two parents don't make for better funded public schools with more resources, smaller class sizes, and a greater focus on critical thinking versus test taking.
In fact, Romney cited a survey stressing that smaller class sizes don't really matter. Tell that to someone like me who can remember being stuffed in a tiny classroom with more than 30 students. As for this charter school argument, choice is one thing, but that's a surface level solution to a systematic problem with education.
Read Michael Arceneaux's entire piece at News One.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.
Michael Arceneaux hails from Houston, lives in Harlem and praises Beyoncé’s name wherever he goes. Follow him on Twitter.
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