Joe Biden encouraged parents to play records for their children to give them a leg up in school, during Thursday night’s Democratic primary debate.
Discussing his policies on the legacy of segregation throughout his decades of public service, the former vice president laid out his plan for dealing with its impact on education, which included giving every public school teacher at poor schools a raise to $60,000 per year. He also stressed the importance of dealing with problems in the home, proposing that the government bring social workers into the home to help parents expose young children to as many words as possible to give them an advantage at school.
Seemingly confusing the most popular listening device used this decade, however, Biden said, “Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the phone — make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.”
Biden campaign manager Greg Schultz tweeted shortly afterwards, “Just so everyone knows – record players are really popular (we have one at home!)”
Just so everyone knows – record players are really popular (we have one at home!) https://t.co/ky9ZajXLlF
— Greg Schultz (@schultzohio) September 13, 2019
The former vice president has historically experienced confusion of both place and time throughout the 2020 campaign trail, including thinking he was in Vermont when he was in New Hampshire, and thinking the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took place “in the late 1970s.”
