Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works by Rick Santorum Read Free Book Online Page B

opportunities for American workers. A generation ago a hardworking college or trade school graduate would find opportunities to earn good wages in exchange for hard work. This usually meant making things—manufacturing. Our automobile, steel, and textile industries were the biggest, but they have suffered from global economic forces and bad leadership. It is not about reviving these industries and bringing these jobs back; it’s about getting the lion’s share of the manufacturing of tomorrow’s products. All of this will be fueled by what could be the biggest energy boom this country or any country has ever seen if President Obama isn’t allowed to destroy it.
    Taxing and spending: To preserve our safety net and create better jobs, our leaders need to reform the entitlement programs that are driving us into bankruptcy and reform the tax code to encourage hard work. We have to stop kidding ourselves about the weaknesses in the social safety net and stop kicking the can down the road for our kids to deal with. And we have to deal with a dysfunctional tax code that stymies growth and costs billions in compliance and enforcement.
    Message: Words matter. Leadership matters. We need our leaders to stand up and inspire us. They need to believe our best days are yet to come before we can believe that. It’s really important, and we are failing at it.
    So let’s begin. Where do we go from here?

CHAPTER EIGHT
    INNOVATING AND PERSONALIZING EDUCATION
    J ames and Susan Harrison’s son Jason is sixteen, and his brother, Thomas, is fourteen. Both have grown up going to the local public schools, playing Little League baseball, and participating in community service and camping trips with their church youth group. The boys could be described as fairly typical kids for this part of the country. They follow the Cleveland Indians, play their music too loud, and spend a lot of time playing Madden, NBA 2K, and other video games. Jason and Thomas are bright kids and have done reasonably well in school, but so far they have not gotten thehigh grades or test scores that would allow them to rely on scholarships to pay for college. Their parents think the boys haven’t been pushed or challenged much by their teachers.
    The performance of the local school has declined over the years, and the administration has turned over repeatedly, but the Harrisons have tried to stay involved. They’ve made sure Jason, who has an interest in computers and electronics, is a member of the computer club and enrolled in computer science courses, and they’ve tried to supplement his education by buying computer programming books. They regularly meet with Thomas’s teachers to see if there is a way they can help improve his scores. The Harrisons don’t feel they know the current principal very well, and it’s hard to find time to talk to the teachers. But they try, and still they wonder if this is the best they can do for their boys.
    Without the income they once had, they can’t afford the local Catholic high school at $11,500 per year for each child. They would qualify for some aid, but even with that it’s a stretch. The Harrisons worry about the quality of the education their kids are getting but also about some of the things they are exposed to in the school. It’s not only the problems other kids bring from home, but the politically correct values that permeate the school. Let’s put it this way, the boys aren’t learning the history and citizenship lessons that James and Susan were taught when they were in school. Now they keep hearing about something called the Common Core standards,which seem to be pushed by the same people who made the public schools so mediocre in the first place. They can’t help being suspicious.
    With Jason in the middle of his junior year, the Harrisons’ anxiety has grown over what will come next for him. Neither James nor Susan went on to college. But they know that the path to financial security for their kids now