So, Did Jesse Jackson Jr. Really Call for Giving Every Kid in America an iPad? | techPresident

No.

But why would anyone think that's what he's up to? Let's back up. Early this week, the Illinois Democrat took to the floor of the House of Representatives to make a pitch for H.J. Res. 29, a resolution that would add to the U.S. Constitution an amendment that reads, "all persons shall enjoy the right to a public education of equal high quality." You can read the full text of the very short bill for yourself here. Jackson put his amendment in the content of the current unemployment crisis in the United States at the moment; how many jobs, he asked, would be derived from the creation of all those iPods (yeah, it was iPods, not iPads, in the original) and laptops that a top-drawer 21st century education would presumably entail?

That's all it took. Jackson's remarks got picked up on right-leaning blogs like Glenn Beck's the Blaze and Michelle Malkin's Hot Air, the latter of which ran a selectively-edited minute-and-a-half version of Jackson's talk under the headline, "Jesse Jackson Jr. Says Way Out of the Employment Crisis is to Change the Constitution So Every Ghetto Kid Gets an iPod and a Laptop." The DC publication of the Hill followed up with an article last night by Josiah Ryan that reported that Jackson affirmed the spirit of his speech, running under the off-the-mark headline, "Congressman Stands by his Proposal: An iPad for Every Student."

Except, that's not what Jackson's doing here. Missing from the edited clip on Hot Air and elsewhere is the context for Jackson's floor speech; all you get is an errant "he." Jackson was riffing off of Frankline Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address, which you can listen to for yourself here. This is the speech famous for FDR's call for a "Second Bill of Rights," part of American leaders' duty to "begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known." Among the rights detailed by FDR are "the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation" and, foreshadowing Jackson's call, "the right to a good education."

Boil it down, and Jesse Jackson Jr. is, echoing FDR from sixty years ago, calling enshrining into law the right for American kids to access a high-quality education. At this moment in history, that kind of education would include using digital technologies like laptops and tablets and videocameras and all the rest -- and that the resulting demand could create jobs.

Whether or not you think what Jackson's calling for is good public policy is one thing. (For one thing, a lot of modern tech is made in China.) But what he's describing is something different than the federal government standing on the corner and handing iPads out like TicTacs.

via techpresident.com

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