Only two weeks ago, Newt Gingrich excitedly told an audience at Harvard that, “Most of these [failing] schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Well you’ll be glad to hear that Newt Gingrich really does believe that cash-strapped school districts should fire their janitorial staff and hire young children in their place. Speaking to workers at an insurance company in Iowa yesterday, Gingrich earnestly maintained this position:

Gingrich said he received letters after his comments in Massachusetts complaining that janitorial work was hard and dangerous.

“Fine,” he said in Iowa’s capital city during a two-day swing of the state, “So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom and you pay them?”

I’m sure that making poor students clean up the shit of their wealthier classmates is the type of radical education reform that our country so desperately needs. This must be his ”City Upon a Hill” brand of American Exceptionalism that so vastly differs from anti-American and liberal child labor laws.

Anyways, it seems like these reforms wouldn’t prevent children from wasting their hard earned cash on pointless electronics. According to that same article on MSNBC.com, Gingrich boasted that his 12 year old granddaughter bought an iPad with money she saved up over an eight month period. The article doesn’t mention whether she worked for it.