Philadelphia is a city with a glorious history. It was pre-revolutionary America's largest single city, with about 40,000 inhabitants in 1775. It was the cradle of American democracy, the place where the Continental Congress met. It was also the cradle of American mass literacy -- the home of Benjamin Franklin and his printing press.
Today, though, Philadelphia is an icon of another kind: the barbarism and savagery of plutocratic looting. The 0.1% have destroyed Philadelphia's industrial base and have been wrecking public services for forty years.
Today, the birthplace of American literacy has a public school system with 224 schools and 134,000 students. Now guess how many full-time librarians work at those schools.
A couple hundred, surely? Nope. Maybe fifty or sixty?
Not a chance.
Eight.
That's right, only eight full-time employees serve 134,000 students. (Hat tip to Diane Ravitch for the link).
Why? Because those students aren't the children of the 0.1%. So they don't get librarians, or books, or teachers.
Plutocracy is a war on children.
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