Given that this is our annual “Back to School” issue, we looked around for a quote that would dramatize both the parlous state of American education and the apparent inability of politicians to grasp the fact. And the winner is . . . “Do you realize that there are two hundred languages spoken in the Chicago school system? That’s an asset, not a liability. Let’s pair up the kids. You get Sally to speak Cambodian, and Sally gets you to speak English. If they succeed, we give each of them a thousand dollars. We’d have kids practicing languages seven days a week.”
Who said this? Bill Clinton? The Rev. Jesse Jackson? No. The correct answer, alas, is Speaker Newt Gingrich, talking to Joe Klein of The New Yorker.
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