As I was trying to stay awake listening to Admmiral McCombover, he said something that made me listen: he said:
"Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained."
That's the GOP's next target: public education.
They've been filling the proverbial education bath tub for years and now they must have all their sleeper cells ready and waiting for orders to do to public education what they tried and failed to do to Social Security: privatize it.
Mark my words, if another GOP administration is installed in the next 20 years, we will lose public education just like we lost New Orleans.
Education choice
I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed.
Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch.
My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away.
We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities.
For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.
Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained.
But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them.
Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.
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Arizona Senator John McCain's acceptance speech, September 4, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7599422.stm">excerpt BBC