Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich defended on Thursday his controversial plan to have schoolchildren from poor neighborhoods serve as janitors.

"A very poor neighborhood. You have kids that who are under law required to go to school. They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit in the clerical office, and greet people when they came in?" he said. "What if you paid them to work as an assistant librarian?"

He then discussed his proposal for having poor students serve as janitors. "Let me get down to the janitor thing, and these letters are written that janitorial work is really hard and really dangerous and this and that," he said. "Fine. So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom. And you pay them."

Gingrich went on to compare his plan to a project paying children to read books in Georgia.

(Video above via ThinkProgress.)

Last month, at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Gingrich called child labor laws "stupid." "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school," he said. He repeated the idea on the campaign trail, saying it would be "dramatically less expensive."'

Gingrich said Thursday that his previous comments were "spun out of control" by "the left."

Janitorial work is hardly easy -- the Labor Department notes that janitors may "spend most of their time on their feet, sometimes lifting or pushing heavy furniture or equipment. Many tasks, such as dusting or sweeping, require constant bending, stooping, and stretching."

IS that technically called slavery?

Dakota.

I like the idea of paying children to read books, or in a way... paying children to pay attention in school, as crazy as that sounds.

Slavery with payment and education, the perfect disguise.

Jeez, there've been like 7 topics in the past month about the stupidity of America. Is this some kind of trend now or is it just really coindidental?

Ideally, the government should allot funds to these schools to pay for the supplies that students can't afford. Obviously that may not be entirely possible given the current US budget, but there has to be a better solution than child labor.

schools falling apart (my high school was supposed to last 5-10 years, it is now 45 years old), and so forth.

We actually had a "class" in high school that you were an assistant to a teacher.

I don't believe it was referring to college?

Which makes me wonder if Znath even read... Clearly he says that child labour laws are stupid and that the poor students work alongside with the janitors instead of, I don't know... Getting an education? This has nothing to do with your mommy or daddy paying for your college...