Well, I guess having control over the Executive, Judicial, Legislative Branches and the press isn’t enough. Being the paranoid always-a-victim bunch that they are I guess the Right felt it was high time they started getting their message out in yet another area of our life: the education system.
It seems that conservatives see bias in the school systems in our country and have decided to get their message into the classrooms. We all know that college campuses have seen many a battle go back and forth regarding alternating viewpoints.
But now K-12 is being targeted by the Right…..that’s correct folks….I am not making this up: K-12!!! A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses how they are stopping this liberal indoctrination process.
Currently there are 14 states that have bills under consideration that would allow students to file grievances if they perceive political bias in the classroom. This is an important battle, according to proponents, because younger students are more impressionable. They are concerned about multicultural studies, particularly those that deal with the Muslim faith.
The article goes on to detail how some right thinking students would like to offer an opposing viewpoint when their instructor says that the Iraq War is about empire building and oil. Another student would like to be able to share his web site, which shows beheadings, with his school to prove that the Muslim faith is evil. The article ends with a vision of the future of schools: liberally leaning schools and conservative leaning schools that each teaches their own version of history.
Each time I write one of these I always think I have seen it all. I guess I never will see it all because there is no end in sight to the extreme level of bullshit that the right is heaping on people. It makes the manure scene in the Back to the Future movies look like a sudsy bath. Isn’t a 7 year old supposed to be learning the basics of Math and English? Does s/he really have to hear that Democrats hate America and freedom in general?
They are questioning the WRONG people. They are basically saying that we shouldn’t question our leaders but question the people that are providing us with an education thus removing any sense of intelligence from our culture leaving only autonomatons who blindly listen and never question our government.
Does anyone else out there see where we are heading? Sure the folks on the right will say that they will FINALLY get their say now. But are they really getting their say or just disseminating propaganda? We live in an age now where nothing can be questioned without being accused of being a criminal, a communist, a pedophile, a spy, or an anti-American hater of democracy.
And yet all vestiges of our democracy are being slowly removed from us and no one seems to care. Actually, many of them are cheering for it! I guess when I send my daughter to kindergarten this September I better make sure she is carrying all the appropriate literature with her. You know, the magazines and newspapers that tell say that all is well with US in the world.
15 comments:
So True! I'm so tired and frustrated with this whole damn Bush administration and his cronies that want to take over every aspect of our lives. The nazi mentality is even working it's way down to the state level too, with the likes of butt kissing Pawlenty and Coleman.
When will people get there priorities right and understand that education and social reform are the highest priorities. The dumb ass righties argue that we're already spending an "outrageous" 10 thousand a year per student. But no amount of money is to much to spend on our future, is it?
And it is very clear that elitist capitalists are running the country today and ruining the social greatness of true visionary leaders like FDR and JFK. Dumb ass righties squeeze money tight talking about who "deserves" money when in fact ALL Americans deserve to have money, health care, and a secure job. Those who are fortunate should be giving there fair share.
Schools shouldn't be teacing the party line. They actually should be teaching anything but the party line and encouraging students to think on there own. Especially against a regime like Bush who we know is a crook and murderer.
Lets get our people out of Iraq and Afghanistan and stop occupying land that isn't ours. Lets start taking money from the greedy bastards who profit from oil and medicine and start giving it to the many unfortunates who don't have anything. Maybe people will start understanding that 9/11 was only a matter of time because of the evil that we do around the world, and the only way to avoid more conflicts is to once again become a society that works to help the good of mankind.
It's comical to me that you would characterize the right as the "always-a-victim" bunch. Your very posting is proof that, if true, the right portrays a victimized state only through years of learning from the best.
Woo Woo! Here comes the Clue train! Last stop is….FIREBUSH.
If you statement “Bush=Hitler” was true, you wouldn’t be able to make the statement in the first place.
So you want Bush to spend more money on education…..show me anywhere in the constitution where the federal government has ANY responsibility for education. Perhaps if parents would teach respect of adult authority at home and self discipline it would hopefully carryover to the classroom. Education is run by states to some extent, but in large by local government. Want to screw it up worse? Just let the federal government run it in full. Then there will be zero accountability to a community since the local school board president will be replaced by a Washington Bureaucrat….and we know how responsive they are to problems.
This was my favorite one though…..”Lets get our people out of Iraq and Afghanistan and stop occupying land that isn't ours. Lets start taking money from the greedy bastards who profit from oil and medicine and start giving it to the many unfortunates who don't have anything”.
So your rationale for leaving those countries is that the land isn’t ours then in the next sentence you actually advocate taking money from someone else and giving it to someone who hasn’t done a thing to earn it. Well guess what slapnuts, just like that “land” that isn’t yours, neither is my paycheck.
I'm not sure what PL is saying at all...something about victims and how it is okay if some people act like victims because others do...what kind of logic is that? Two wrongs really do make a right? I must be slipping, the tenents of logic are out of whack, I must have spent too much time in Bush's America.
I find it short sighted and more than a little sad that there are those out there that believe that the government of one of the wealthiest nations on earth has no fiscal responsibility to the young people we are raising in this country. Because the Constitution does not explicitly state something doesn't mean that it isn't smart or wise to invest in the future of this nation. Other nations are investing in education, making it a priority, and oddly enough, these other nations are the ones that now own this countries debt. While we bicker and waste precious time and money on whether evolution is a valid theory, other nations have accepted that it is and have moved on. Their young people are, and will be, the innovators of new technologies that will propel their countries to positions where they can continue to pay our debts. Continue to own us. Crabmaster scratch, you seem like a proud American...how does that make you feel?
So, while there are those that feel that economically it is not the province of our great nation to supply funds for education, these are the same people that might want to start putting their paycheck into Mason jars under their mattresses because when the impending economic crisis does come, they might be able to use it as toilet paper I guess.
Very quickly, the societal structure of this country is coming down to those that have money and those that don't. By any measure, that divide is getting wider. When it gets wide enough, history tells us that those that don't have it come looking for those who do and it is almost always bloody. What keeps this from happening in this country is the hope that you too can get a piece of the pie if you are educated and work hard. Take that away and you will have a revolution on your hands. It is already seething in places where most people who 'blog' don't go.
So hold on to that paycheck...horde it away for all the good it will do you.
No one is proposing that the government directly control education. Where the not-so-brilliant "Every Child Left Behind" is concerned, it has been an unmitigated failure. This little Bush gem has led to underfunded programs, state-level fudging of standards and is in general, bad policy. You don't have to look far for states and cities that have refused the deal.
Iraq. Afghanistan. Please explain to me why we are "fixing" these other countries when ours is in dire need of the same kind of money and effort? We can afford billions for these other people, but not our own? The answer is....what? Could it be that we are investing in the future? Is this be the same mentality that advocates for funding of non-partisan education in this country?
SHOCKING!
PL was just being funny. He’s poking fun at the fact that the left does not see people as individuals, rather members of a group and those “groups” on the left are usually victims of powerful external forces like racism, capitalism and so on. IMO.
The only thing this country, or any country, owes it’s young people is the opportunity to better themselves. Equality of opportunity exists in this country, the differences lie in equality of outcome ie whether or not young people take advantage of the opportunities this country affords.
Education today is all about making sure all students feel good about themselves at the expense of the bright kids and making sure everyone has a great sense of self-esteem. Sounds charming. We're graduating kids that are ignorant and proud of it. Why are the disruptive, less intelligent students slowing the others down? Because to exclude them would make them 'feel' inferior to the smarter ones.
Wealth will preserve wealth as those with the financial ability will educate their children to an internationally competitive level. The rest of the country will get the "dumb them all down" school education that the liberal "no child should experience failure, or losing" mentality has brought us to.
It's time to leave the dumb-ass kids behind and focus our resources on the ones who will actually have decent jobs and be paying the bulk of taxes in 20 to 30 years time. It ain’t PC, but it’s cool.
Almost every other nation is SELECTIVE about who gets educated- the rest don't. The US educates EVERYONE so the mean scores on standardized tests come out lower. If China dragged every kid off the farms and out of the slums (of which there are plenty) and threw them in a classroom their results would be far worse on standardized tests. Even in Europe they don't often send everyone on to high school. They funnel lower scoring students into trade-school and work-study programs. America also offers something educationally speaking unavailable anywhere on earth: A second chance. In ALL other countries if you don't get an education early in life, and follow a certain path there's no going back to high school or college.
The Teacher Unions hate no child left behind because it imposes a teaching standard on their members. We won’t know the results of the program for many years. Then you use the term “underfunded”, a term I hear every election cycle from you lefties. Why don’t you tell us what “properly funded” entails? You won’t because when you do, and some Republican calls your bluff and meets your funding goals, then you have no more issue.
We are “fixing” Iraq and Afghanistan because free people who have the opportunity to better themselves don’t spend all day thinking about who to bomb, who to blame and who to lash out at. We are also “fixing” them in order to remove a few nutjob dictators who get off on bombing their neighboring countries. Are Bush’s buddies making a lot of profit in the process? Yes, and I don’t care. Both political parties are filled with millionaires whose only interest are keeping themselves in office and keeping their own stocks/privately held corporations (and friends' stocks and corporations) doing well financially. Let’s not leave out fulfilling whatever special interest groups pay them the most in contributions.
PL was just being funny (sort of). I'm not sure how you read a condemnation of a statement as approval of the behavior as a whole. Just reading what you want to read, I guess. No harm, no foul.
What was funny to me was the waste time and money on whether evolution is a valid theory statement. Not a resounding endorsement of the scientific method if one views it as a waste of time and money. Sounds awfully "Bushian" to just accept it and move on. Of course, as was probably intended, the people railing against teaching evolution have no interest in the scientific method to begin with. But unlike with other ideologies, in the world of science, there's room for every theory that stands up to scrutiny. Evolution is no more a fact than is "1+1=2", and the true innovators here and abroad understand that.
The left does not see people as individuals, only as groups of victims being oppressed by external forces like racism and capitalism...What?!? It is amazing that you can groups so many people into one gross generalization. This whole left/right dichotomy is sick. It was no doubt manufactured by people with short attention spans and who are mentally lazy.
You can say what you will about what I posted earlier, but one thing that you can't say is that it was hypocritical. I believe firmly in education supported by whatever means works, whether it is local or federal or a combination of both. As I stated I think it is in every Americans practical best interest to do so. Crabby, you on the other hand say that the government doesn't owe anyone any education and then come back and say that the government owes us opportunity. That is ridiculous. Either the government owes us something or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways and not be a hypocrit.
As for Crabmaster's statements about education in this country, they are just plain offensive. Did you just decide that all education is about making students feel good about themselves or is there some kind of quantitative evidence to support this? I come from a family of teachers, I know teachers at all levels from preschool to doctors and I am a college professor and I can tell you that you are way off the mark on this comment. We (me and those that I know) have the privilege of giving students the tools they need to make their way in this world with understanding, compassion and acceptance. Your gross oversimplification is simply not adequate and for a person as articulate as yourself, you do yourself a dishonor by saying it. Are there problems in classrooms and school systems throughout the country, yes. Of course there are, and one of the problems is there is an increasing number of individuals suffering from a variety of ills that include mental,physical and emotional problems, some of which are their own fault, some are the faults of their parents, and some are the fault of the entire system. Your issue with inclusion of these kids in the classroom seems to be that they are disruptive. That is true, but here is the rub, what do you do with those kids if you don't put them in the classroom? Lets think about that for a minute. Either you have a separate facility for dealing with these kids or you turn them loose on the street. If you are going to have facilities for them you have issues with supervision, with the physical buildings and then there is the funding issues. You are basically creating a non-penal, penal system. Where is the money for that going to come from. My guess, based on your other responses Crabby is that the parents should pay for it. What if they can't? Then the state or the federal government have to. In other words, us. Now, if you turn those kids loose on the streets, what do you think they are going to do? These are kids that have violence problems and sexual violence/promiscuity problems, some have brain damage/lack of development. These kids are the ones who are going to roam the streets looking for their next victims, you, me, my kids, your kids, etc. That is a no win situation. So, while you may complain about the current system, you provide no alternative to it, and whichever way you go, it is going to be diving into your precious paycheck.
This doesn't even begin to deal with the other student detritus that you mentioned, the ones that are the "dumb-asses." First of all, who decides what a dumb ass is? When is that decision made? What standards will we use given that we know people develop at different rates and at different times? What do you propose to do with these "dumbasses"? This country is not existing in the 19th century anymore, there are not near enough manual labor and unskilled labor jobs to take care of all of these human beings that you would simply write off. Even if you have no compassion for these people, surely you must recognize the fiscal problems with dealing with people who can't support themselves on minimum wage jobs. Even if they can make it by working 2 jobs, what is going on with their children while they are at work? Or do you propose to sterilize people below the poverty line to keep them from making lots of potential criminals? Does the system work now, yes, kind of. But in light of the alternatives, it works preatty damn well. What you have proposed is not only non-PC, it is just poorly thought out.
I don't have much of an issue with what you said about other countries other than I wasn't talking about test scores in my earlier post. Test scores should be used as indicators of potential, not potential realized. Thank God people allowed me to develop after I turned in some weak scores. We have tried to simplify education in this country to test scores because it is cost effective. After my short time on this planet I have found that not everything boils down to a cost-benefit analysis.
Your shot at the Teacher's Union was also a little clumsy. Teachers hate NCLB because it doesn't work. It encourages poor states to change their standards so that they can receive the funds they need to make their school systems work. This isn't merely a potential, it is already happening, and that is why states and cities with money are defying the law. Teachers also hate it because standardized scores say very little about the individual and the individual's potential over their lifetime. There are legitimate questions about who sets those standards and what they mean in reality as opposed to a 400 page document. They also hate it because the money that the Bush Administration promised has never been provided in its entirety. This is what I mean by underfunded. It was awfully presumptuous of you Crabby to think that I was reaching for some pie-in-the sky number that would make everything better. You were off the mark there. I am simply stating that the administration has not ponied up the dough to implement their own piece of shit law.
I love your explanation of why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan except for the fact that we haven't succeeded in any of it. We found no WMD's (to speak of), violence around the world and Iraq is on the rise (London, Madrid, everyday in Iraq), there are now more "terrorists" then there were before we occupied Iraq and we have given the bad guys the perfect training ground for perfecting their skills. Thanks to bad post-invasion planning, terrorists have looted ammunition dumps to supply themselves for the next decade. Where did you get the bit about nutjob dictators bombing neighbors...when did this happen? Are you talking about Kuwait? This sounds like the sort of thing that people who have backed the wrong horse might say. It is 60 second spun rhetoric that had very little real application even when it was partially true.
And let me get this straight...you are okay with the expenditure of American lives when there is any chance that a select group of private individuals and companies in this country are profitting by it in any way? That is shameful.
Sometimes I get the feeling that Crabmaster is discontent with the way things are, yet I am at a lost to understand why he/she continues to support the status quo. Whatever turns your crank I guess.
PL - still not sure what you are saying, I guess I am annoyed with anyone crying victimhood at this point, especially considering the state of the House, the Senate, the Judiciary and the White House. Let me clarify my statement on Evolution. The scientific method has been applied and re-applied to evolution for over 150 years. Evolution works on the scales that we can observe and measure right now. There is a really outstanding chance that we can extend it back to the beginning of life. It is one of the few theories that most scientists actually agree on. I worship at the alter of science every day, all day and I am saddened by the fact that less than 50% of the people in this country accept evolution. That is pathetic when you consider countries like Poland that have majority Catholic populations have a 75% acceptance rate. In Japan it is something like 95%. These people have seen past the age of their religions have come to accept that religion and science are two different things, but that can work together to enrich a persons life.
I believe that we owe ourselves education that works, that teaches our children all of the views and gives them the tools to choose for themselves what fits their lives. What about Creationism? I say that based on historical precedent (I mean deep precedent, like the fact that humans have been worshipping something in one form or another since we intellectually became modern humans) it isn't neccessary to teach creationism in the classroom. However, if it makes everyone happy, what the heck, teach a unit on it in school.
I noticed that Crabmaster failed to respond to my query about how he/she felt about being owned by the Saudi's and the Chinese and several others. Well, how about it Crabmaster?
J, I'm not claiming victimhood...that's the very essence of what I was saying. That's the very essence of my original criticism (albeit brief and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) of the original posting. It's oozing with "we're victims", while at the same time criticizing "the right" for claiming to be victims. That's all.
Re: the evolution discussion, you and I are on the same page about evolution itself and science in general. I would humbly add that I don't believe schools should teach "evolution is right" as much as they should teach "evolution is the prevailing scientific theory...here's why...here are other theories....he's why the scientific community discounts them". Creationism is a belief of a large portion of this world's population and, as such, deserves discussion in the classroom. The examination of theory is true science. That is true critical thinking. Not the acceptance of a theory simply because the most textbooks publish it, or because the teacher says it's right.
I don't have near the background in education that you do, which is why I tend to keep quiet on the issue of education funding. My beliefs tend to wander toward Mr. Scratch's....I personally was frustrated when the dumbasses held me back in school, and I suspect the situation is worse in schools that weren't as well-to-do as mine. But I don't have the convictions in this area that he does. My only recent experience is with high schoolers that I know (nephews, etc.) that are coming out of school not able to think their way out of a wet paper bag, and that's just wrong. Like you, I believe that needs to be fixed (whether or not we're obligated to is a fairly moot point), but I also believe that throwing money at it isn't necessarily the right thing. Until somebody can prove to me that $$$ will fix the problem, you can't have mine.
I have two comments the way certain people want to control the way people think: 1984 and Brave New World.
I doubt Orwell and Huxley intended these to be instruction manuals, but certain elements of the Republican party have apparently perceived them as such.
From dumbing down this nation with pap like "Intelligent Design", to opposing energy-efficient cars and stem-cell research, to the perpetual war on terror, the Bush administration and its minions have set us on a course that will surely lead this nation into an economic, ethical, moral, social and technological decline.
High-paying technical and engineering jobs are fleeing overseas, which is to be expected because Americans aren't interested in these fields anyway. Look at any college engineering classroom and you'll see a high percentage of non-American students. Those students used to stay in the US and become Americans. More and more they're going back home to China and India.
American students are more interested in being movie stars, high-paid lawyers or football players than scientists, programmers or astronauts.
The only reason America is able to project military power is through technology. We are rapidly losing that infrastructure.
People are our most important resource. We are chasing away motivated, intelligent immigrants, while discouraging our own children from careers that actually produce something.
Even intelligent men like Thomas Friedman have bought into this idea. But it's hopelessly flawed: America will be great at marketing junk food, filing lawsuits and coming up with complex accounting scams.
But will we be able to put a car that gets 60 miles per gallon on the road, or produce medical therapies based on stem cells that actually cure diseases like diabetes?
Production capacity and technology are what made the United States the bulwark of democracy in the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War.
We've given up on that. We've become a country of marketeers, shysters and corporate deal-makers. At the end of the day, we'll be left with nothing.
And it's because of what and how we're teaching our kids.
It certainly isn’t hypocritical to hold the views you do. It would be hypocritical to proclaim “I’m not sending my son/daughter to school with a bunch of (fill in blank)” while denying others that very privilege.
“By whatever means works”…As you yourself asked with regards to dumbass kids “Who decides”? Who decides what works? I also believe in supporting education by whatever means works, I’m just saying that I don’t think what’s happening right now is “working”. Why is it that private schools, who don’t get near the amount of funding that public schools get and don’t “spend” nearly the amount per student as public schools do, have parents on waiting lists to get their kids in and have higher test scores? Why is it that more and more parents are homeschooling their kids? With regards to what I said about the government being/not being responsible for education, I’m all about local control and school choice. When I say the government owes its people the opportunity to better themselves, an opportunity is not something that can be put in an envelope. When I say opportunity, that usually means getting the government out of the way.
There is plenty of evidence that education is all about making students feel better about themselves. I’m referring to grade schools doing away with keeping score at sporting events. I’m referring to schools doing away with failing grades (which some have). I’m referring to things like, instead of a grade of C, D,….now a student can receive a grade of L…..which means Learning (instead of an F). I have no quantitative evidence supporting my opinion, just going from what I see and hear. I don’t put much stock in all this diagnosis of mental and emotional problems by school psychologists anymore. Somehow, our country managed to get by for a few hundred years before Ritalin came along.
I think we have gone from thought to thoughtless stupor. In the past century, mass entertainment has pretty much defined our culture. With the rise of television, radio, cinema, phonographs, and, more recently, CDs and the Internet, we passed from a culture of the written word to a culture of the visual and aural electronic image. The shift has been subtle but devastating IMO. We no longer rely on written texts to transmit ideas, but on pictures and sounds. As an unavoidable result, we have become conditioned to the use of sensory images rather than reasoned, verbal discourse. We base our opinions and value judgments not on reason, but on sensory impressions and the emotions they trigger and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.
You and I both see problems, I mentioned some of the problems I see as did you. But it seems that every paragraph you typed ended up being about “lack of funding” and I think the problems with education nowadays go deeper than the bottom line. Seems like when educators can’t win with regards to results/processes they focus on funding. I don’t have all the answers but I didn’t see anything in your post that I could really latch onto.
Why don't these tax increases ever come with an expiration date like the tax cuts do? All these entitlement programs that are designed to "solve"(barf) some problem... why don’t they go away after they've "solved" the problem?
I don’t advocate throwing kids on the street, when I said that we give our students a second chance, I think that’s good. The “separate facility” you mentioned is the way to go. No, I haven’t thought it all out with regards to “dumbass” standards, costs per student, costs of facilities, etc.
Before you advocate overthrowing the House of Bush, it might be helpful to figure out ways to clean up your own backyard. College tuition is going up at a rate that only rich people will be able to afford to send their kids to college in the near future.
Understandable that you don’t trust the “dumbass” standard I will set, I don’t trust those who decide what “underfunded” is. I’ve worked at a paper company here in Minneapolis and we sold product to local school districts. Any sales rep will tell you when “budget” time is, when schools in this area placed ungodly large orders for supplies in order to spend tap out their budget.
The transition to an inevitable global economy will be painful. Politicians are not going to tell you what you do not want to hear: that the days of getting paid $30/hr turning a bolt on an assembly line are over. No political party or teachers union can stop that.
We all know Teacher's Unions hate no child left behind. It imposes a teaching standard on their members and their memberships are held accountable for incompetence within their own ranks, and that directly benefits the child. But then again, I forget the Democratic Party is owned lock stock and barrel by unions.
Poverty doesn't cause vices and crime; vices and crime cause poverty.
With regards to reproducing while making minimum wage, having a child is now the single best predictor that someone will end up in financial collapse. Nowadays, married couples with children are more than twice as likely to file for bankruptcy as their childless counterparts. A divorced woman raising a youngster is nearly three times more likely to file for bankruptcy than her single friend who never had children.
The problem with the two-income family is that it doesn't plan its financial commitments geared to a single income by saving the extra income. Millions of two-income families use that second income to purchase opportunities for their children – a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools, a comprehensive health insurance policy, two reliable cars, preschool, and college tuition. They made long-term commitments to ongoing expenses - and they counted on both incomes to make ends meet.
The only way to forge policy is the old fashion way: research issues, lay down criteria, then form legislation that will address a problem and not create a new problem to replace the old: a great case in point is healthcare which some want socialized medicine in this country which would increase base care but would hamper the individual medical miracle and put decisions about YOUR health in the hands of bureaucrats and if you think an HMO is bad news just wait till a Washington drone has control over your health. Moreover, the cost of such a scheme would make this current deficit appear as a tip on a dinner bill at a high-end bistro. So choices have to be made, and because something feels good does not mean it is achievable.
The world used to be built around adults. Children were to be seen, not heard, and the whole purpose for having children was that one day they would be responsible mature adults. Now the world is no longer built for adults, the world is centered around children. There is no longer any incentive for growing up and maturing because we reward those that stay 12 years old forever. America has raised a generation of arrogant little pricks that still think the world revolves around them. Why? Because when they were children, their mommy and daddy made the world revolve around them. We all have free will and because some kids nowadays CHOOSE to play Xbox for 12 hours a day instead of informing themselves on the issues of the day and CHOOSE to make gangsta rap a guide for their life doesn’t mean I have to answer the question “What do you do about it all?”
Speaking of the status quo, it’s what you’re defending with regards to the issue of Education….the status quo. What happened? Used to be the Republicans were thought of as the party of status quo, while Democrats billed themselves as "progressives," actively promoting solutions to the ills of society. But it's Republicans out there now with different ideas, with Democrats sticking their heads in the sand, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that some things aren't working and need to be fixed. When did this change occur?
Wars are never managed well, or they would be national transitions rather than wars. Yes, we haven’t succeeded yet, but declaring failure over and over again plays right into Al Queda’s propaganda machine. So is the mission a failure because it didn’t happen on your personal timetable? I've read that in the world of manufacturing, you can have only two of the following three qualities when developing a product - cheap, fast or good. You can produce something cheap and fast, but it won't be good; good and fast, but it won't be cheap; good and cheap, but it won't be fast. In this case, we want the result to be good and we want it at the lowest cost in human lives. Given this set of conditions, one can expect this war is to take a while, and rightfully so. I told Markadelphia and PL this same thing not too long ago - creating a democracy in Iraq not only will require a change in the political system, but the economic system as well. Similar socio-economic changes have taken place in countries like Chile, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and other countries with oppressive Socialist dictatorships. History shows that it took seven to ten years to move those countries to where they are now. There are many lessons to be learned from these transformations, the most important of which is that change doesn't come easily, even without an insurgency going on. Maybe the experts should take a look at all of the work that has gone into stabilizing Bosnia-Herzegovina over the last 10 years. We are just at the 2.5 year mark in Iraq, a place far more oppressive than Bosnia ever was. If previous examples are any comparison, there will be no quick solutions here, but that should be no surprise to anyone who has done his or her homework.
I didn’t say that profit was any kind of a rationale for going to war, I’m just looking to hear something else other than “Halliburton’s making money!” that I have heard too often already. Some may think that we are owned by the Saudi’s and/or China. I don’t accept that as proven fact. Define “owned” please.
The sky isn't falling.
I must be ill....Bruce and I actually agree on something. Well, mostly agree on something. That's a start. Brings back fond memories of the single day on which Charlie and I actually agreed on something. Goes to show that you just never know.
This country goes a long way toward improving if we can regain a position where our kids - hell, our adults as well - are inspired to learn and explore. Seems quite clear that we don't have that environment anymore. I suspect Bruce and I would grossly disagree on causes of that decline, but that disagreement isn't necessarily relevant to finding a solution.
I don't agree that GWB agreeing to provide add'l federal funding for stem cell research is even a step in the right direction, and I think it's pathetic that people waste time debating such polarizing political issues when they really have nothing to do with the problem. The bottom line is that little Johnny 'Hood isn't suddenly going to be inspired to do his homework, get good grades, and go on to college if scientists use stem cells to find a cure for diabetes. Not when he's influenced 24/7 by the notion that the more tail he gets the better man he is and that if he doesn't have something, complaining loudly and often enough will fulfill his sense of entitlement. Can you blame him for wanting to be a movie star, lawyer, or athlete when the entire culture around him, oftentimes even his own parents (if they deign to spend time with him), encourages it?
Personally, I think some posters are fighting the wrong enemy in this battle. The very person/administration upon whom they heap so much of the blame is the same person who, at a personal conviction level, could help create some positive influences that would be steps in the right direction. Like Scratch said, the Dems would serve themselves well to again become the true progressive party and offer solutions to what we all agree needs fixing. Seems to me that the Bush hatred just perpetuates the problem.
Crabmaster Scratch, your just a typical follower of Bush who doesn't have compassion for the average person who isn't rich. Because I don't want american soldiers to be dying in foreign countries in stupid wars doesn't make me clueless. It makes me compassionate. Bush and his followers like you might try some compassion to understand why it is that people in other countries hate the US and want to bomb us. If we spent more time being better people ourselves we could expect better things from those around us. It's a simple concept, but I guess the loyal Bush followers are too blinded by their so-called patriotism to understand!
Your money and your oil won't do you any good on your judgement day!
Crabmaster, the problem is that some people do not want to listen or understand what it will take to fix certain problems in our education system. Those that think that there can be a "neutral" education are ignorent to the fact that humans are biased by nature and that you can not eliminate politics from the classroom any more than you can make people stop being who they are. It is idiotic to propose such laws that would try to eliminate subjectivity in the classroom because that is what a lot of education is. Even if it wasn't idiotic, who would enforce what was biased and what was not? Are we talking about swamping the judicial system with hordes of litigation to decide what is biased and what is not? Enforcement of social legislation has always been shakey at best. It is poorly conceived and executed thinking.
As for what it takes to fix things...are you sure you want to hear what that is? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you want the best educational system you have to reduce the class size to no more than 15 - 20 children. The days of mass/assembly line education are over, there are too many children, the curriculum is too complicated and the technology is moving too fast for educators to use the mass approach and have outstanding results. The truth is that contrary to your post, there are sick kids out there. The school psychologist is not the issue. I have worked with these kids, I have a parent who for 10 years has worked in the Milwaukee County system and these kids are not "faking" it, nor are they simply "bad" kids. These are kids whose parents were crack addicts, alchoholics, or just plain abandoned their children. Some of these kids are just brain damaged and they can not help themselves. Furthermore, many of them are never going to get better. You seem to think that if their parents had scolded them more or beat them more, somehow they would be better. This is not the case and your ignorence and lack of experience is showing when you write things like "you don't put much stock in school psychologists anymore." Where is your in-depth research and solution that we are all supposed to use to form better laws and fix situations? You need to practice what you preach if you want others to believe in what you say and respect your opinion.
Better education means smaller class sizes, more teachers, better facilities. Guess what that means...MORE MONEY. We are not making it right now and before you hop on the "I don't want to hear the underfunded statement again" You had better get a grip on what is really going on in the school systems around this country. I have two school children and I go to a number of schools throughout the year as part of my own public outreach program. I live in a relatively wealthy, high-tax town and I can tell you our schools are in rough shape. They are overcrowded and there is no money to create new schools. The teachers are doing their best and working long hours outside of the class room to make ends meet. Why are private schools doing better you asked? Because they have smaller class sizes and can afford to charge wealthy people whatever they want to get their kids educated. Before you say that is great and the way it should be, you better consider that alot of the innovators of this century and the last were not from wealthy families and heaven knows how many more there were that ended up as ditch diggers or mid-level managers because they never had the chance to become educated. So, given that most states are spending more than they are recieving, that school systems are not getting the fees they need to keep building maintenance up, new schools are not getting built and the population is rising due to increased birth rates and increased immigration, what do you suppose the problem is? Could it be that the system is underfunded? Could it mean that maybe we shouldn't have had tax cuts? Does it mean that all of the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq could have been used for supporting a better education plan? These are the questions I am asking myself and all of you in electronic land. Can you answer them with real answers, not highly subjective, lightly supported opinion? If you don't trust those who say that things are underfunded, maybe we have different ideas of what "underfunded" means.
To me, underfunded means there is not enough money. There is no magic bullet number of dollars that will fix everything. Here is the long and short of it. If a law says that you have to comply with it and sets out a structure with which to comply, yet does not provide money to pay for the compliance mechanism (buildings for the people who will monitor the compliance, people to do the monitoring, etc), it is technically "underfunded." It really is that simple. No Child Left Behind is "underfunded." Stop hiding behind rhetoric that blames the Teachers Unions and just admit that you don't want to invest in the future of this country when it comes to educating children. It's honest and to the point. If you have a better, more cost effective way to educate kids, put it up for scrutiny. All of the other crap you wrote about bad parents and how it is the Teacher Union's reluctance to be evaluated is just regurgetated OP/ED pieces from who-knows-where. Do you honestly believe that all reasonable parents don't want the best for their children and the nation that they will grow up in? If you don't believe that than A) you don't have children, or B) you have bought into the divisive mentality that is used to segregate the people of this country into diametrically opposed factions so that nothing ever gets done except that the wealthy get wealthier because while we slug it out, they use their influence to pass legislation that allows them to do as they please. Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book.
What do I mean by other countries owning this one. I mean that when our government spends more money than it takes in, it relies on (among other thins) foreign invested dollars to pay the bills. That means, just like if you have a mortgage, someone else owns your property (in my case, the bank). That is what I mean by own. The Chinese, the Saudis and Kuwaities are heavily invested in this countries economy through various means, but on a non-conspiratorial level, through the Federal Reserve, principally the New York Federal Reserve that has gold from these countries. Should they decide they would like their money/gold back, the economy in this country would collapse.
No the sky is not falling, but you better look up because it is not the same sky it was 8 years ago. There is no surplus, only more debt and no signs of it getting better (please don't bother with the tired "the unemployment rate is down" tag line. We all know that that is only one of about five indicators of prosperity.) Nice broadside on college education though, except us lowly profs don't set tuition rates, that is the result of state level budgets and the governor. I will tell you that college professors of my type get paid about what a first year accountant makes (they take 4 years of school to make what I make after 10 years of school).
Compassion, understanding and a denouncement of greed is what is going to save this country. Short of that, we are on a long walk off a short pier.
Since nobody else apparently wants to take a crack....
So, given that most states are spending more than they are recieving, that school systems are not getting the fees they need to keep building maintenance up, new schools are not getting built and the population is rising due to increased birth rates and increased immigration, what do you suppose the problem is?
One possible problem is lack of money. Another possible problem is that existing money is being wasted. Another possible problem is that society is being reactionary to increased birth rates and immigration instead of taking proactive steps such as stronger immigration controls and better abstinence/birth control options. Or some combination thereof. The point being that it is not necessarily an issue of not having enough money.
Having much more experience in the area than I, it's quite possible that you can state for a fact that every single $$ being spent in schools today is being spent wisely, thus making the problem one strictly of lack of cash. Color me skeptical, but I don't believe that. According to the Center for Education Reform (2003 stats) of the $411b spent by public schools, $13.8b was on "Food Services", $10.1b was on "Interest on School Debt", and $6b was in a bucket called "Other Current Expenditures". Is there no room for improvement there? What about the $47.1b spent on Capital Outlay? Can't we come up with more cost-effective ways of doing the same thing? Why do schools need to own equipment and land when lease-and-replace options provide both lower year-to-year cost and access to more timely upgrades? Not to mention the fact that it provides for a more atractive relationship between the business community and the school community.
And what about the fact that there are unquestionably underachieving educators/schools out there that are wasting money across the board? Is it not valid to bring to light those inadequacies and ask for some accountability? To many of us, the perceived failing of the Teachers Union is not merely rhetoric....it is a valid critical examination of an organization that, like many other unions today, causes as much harm as it professes to remedy.
Could it be that the system is underfunded?
Yep. Could be.
Could it mean that maybe we shouldn't have had tax cuts?
Seems to be specious reasoning at best, when half of the economic literati identify a correlation between increased spending power of the upper 1% and economic prosperity of the community as a whole. The more prosperous the community, the more tax revenue can be generated from the community as a whole.
Does it mean that all of the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq could have been used for supporting a better education plan?
The billions being spent in Iraq absolutely could have been spent on a better education plan. It also could have been spent on thousands of other competing priorities. Which of those other priorities would you deny money if we stopped spending money in Iraq? Obviously you would rank education spending as a higher priority than the space program (just to choose one example). But tell that to the thousands of people working for the space program who are clamoring for more money every year. Tell that to the thousands of businesses that support the space program that would be able to grow if the program had more funding. And forget about the thousands of inventions that come about because of the space program that will never be invented because there's no more money for the space program.
And the very question itself is assuming that the billions being spent in Iraq will bear no fruit for this world in the long run, an issue that is still very much in doubt as the Crabmaster has so adeptly noted.
Those are my answers. (Not really answers, I guess. Just observations.)
Lastly, I think you are being a little too hard on greed with your closing remarks. Remember that greed is the ugly step-brother of ambition. It is ambition that founded this country, and it is ambition that continues to make this country great. I think perhaps that, as with anything else, too much greed is the problem.
I wasn’t going to take a stab at another reply because again, it all came down to the almighty dollar, or the lack thereof. Hell, just feel lucky that Air America isn’t headquartered in your city. heehee
I think there can be a neutral education system. Just tell the teachers to say “Here is theory A, here is theory B” and leave it at that. Sure the teacher has opinions of their own but those personal biases should have no place in the classroom. I had an economics teacher at Western Illinois University who challenged us on the first day of class to figure out what side of the political spectrum he fell on. At the end of the semester, no one could agree as to which side he fell on. I don’t remember proposing a law eliminating bias from the classroom anyway.
With regards to private schools, again, the data exists that shows that they don’t spend nearly the amount per student that public schools do….bottom line funding and tuition costs nonwithstanding. I know you might have a coronary on this one, but maybe schools have to tighten their belts just like every other business out there right now. I know it’s all “for the children” and anyone going against funding for such a noble cause is seen as heartless. Maybe we need to use our Yankee Ingenuity to build a better mousetrap.
I never said crack-addicted parents beating their kids would solve anything and I could care less if anyone “respects” my opinion or not. Michael Moore is a smart individual and I don’t respect him one bit. There are no laws we could pass that could remedy the problems you mentioned about the kids from bad homes. I haven’t done any research but you and I have apparently reached the same conclusion – many of them are not going to get better. Perhaps it’s just a reality we are all going to have to deal with as it is out of our locus of control.
Equality of opportunity does exist in the school system nowadays, equality of outcome does not and that is a fact of life. We all possess free will and some kids will take responsibility and others will not. Even though it is not the norm, there are numerous examples of children rising up from nothing to accomplish great things. Condi Rice was born into a modest family in segregated Birmingham, Alabama. She remembers the 1963 white segregationist firebombing of a Baptist church in her hometown just two weeks after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream” speech because she knew two of the four girls who were killed. She’s done quite well for herself.
You mentioned immigration. The left does have pretty open immigration policies don’t they? Then again, so does GWB but at least GWB isn’t proposing the blanket amnesties of the past.
The Chinese and the Saudis aren’t going to ask for their money back, strictly for the sake of greed. Where else are they going to invest their money? Europe? While much of Europe enjoys criticizing the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, they timidly defend their social welfare systems. They would rather discuss reducing their 35-hour workweek or their dental coverage, or their 6 weeks of paid vacation…or listen to their TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists. To understand and forgive". Taxation in Europe is out of sight, government bog-down is unbelievable, transportation and the "free press" are heavily paid for by the government and let's face it, you can't be competitive in the global economy with 6 weeks of paid vacation and short work weeks. Sure our budget deficit is enormous, but it pales in comparison to the pension crisis awaiting the EU, which has a declining birthrate ("family-friendly" policies notwithstanding) and an aging population. Heck German unemployment is over 10% and rising and all those Muslim immigrants aren’t exactly generating tax revenue.
Indeed you have much more of a background in education than I do. The problem that I see sometimes with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. They’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable. Usually I am tenacious enough to dissect their argument, and resilient enough to endure the thinly veiled intellectual abuse they dish out during debate (e.g. “…if their parents had scolded them or beat them more” or “You’re ignorance and inexperience is showing” or Charlie telling Mark “Sounds like Klan talk to me/you sound like a Nazi”), they’re never forced to question their ability to defend bad ideas. But if their obsessiveness about being right is strong enough, they’ll reject people like me before they question their own biases.
Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals, we oxygen wasters are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in. The more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas that the group will openly consider.
Your ideas as well as mine, however bold or original, are at the mercy of the diversity of thought within the groups surrounding the powers that be in the education lobby. If that group, as a collective, is only capable of focusing on “more funding”, it doesn’t matter how many other ideas anyone else brings up. I think our education “experts” are a bland team consisting of people with same backgrounds, outlooks, and experiences who will only feel comfortable discussing the safe ideas that fit into their pre-conceived constraints; hence they will never consider school choice.
If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, philosophies, and unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use (i.e.: spend more money). No amount of intelligence, education or experience can help an individual who is diligently working at the wrong level of the problem. Sometimes it takes someone like PL to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Um, hey. The hole you’re digging is very nice, and it is the right size. But you’re in the wrong yard”.
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