Tuesday, April 5, 2011

What planet does sec. of education Alonso Lujambio live on? Crime a "moral" issue

Alonso Lujambio, Calderón's secretary of education, who wants badly to be president but in his job has utterly failed to challenge the choke hold the SNTE teachers' "union" is having on Mexico's education levels, manage to serve this gold grain of wisdom on crime:

"I categorically reject the hypothesis that poverty leads social groups to associate with illegal activities. Those who do opt for this option, do it freely."

Despite that the relationship between crime, inequality, and poverty is among the most solid and well documented in the social science literature, Lujambio wants to let Mexicans know that poverty has nothing to do with Mexico's crime levels; rather, it is a "moral choice," an elección moral.

It is not about ideology, but simply empirical reality. And to think that this Neanderthal is nominally in charge of Mexico's education: that, rather, is a moral choice, and a poor one at that.

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