(paghat) wrote in message ...
In Not to worry, more & more American conglomerants are moving production to
third-world countries just so they can take advantage of the system as
you'd have it! (Great troll job by the way).

-paghat
What do you mean, great troll job?

The principle has given my husband the funds to develop a biotechnology
learning

Solo -- Great story and all, but it's "principal" (although in PRINCIPLE you
are on the right track).

James

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:54:36 -0600, "B & J"
wrote:

"Polar" wrote in message
.. .
On 27 Mar 2003 05:04:50 GMT, (Anonymo421) wrote:


School properly taught would be a delight to children, not a chore.

But of course we don't even have pennies to spend on our children's
schools; gotta spent those billions to kill other people's children.


Hah! We spend more on education than we ever have--the problem is that
the NEA
is a corrupt organization more concerned with political correctness and
protection of incompetant teachers than with meeting the ostensible end
of a
public education system. Things would improve if we spent more time on
rigorous academic exercise and less on failed social engineering (this is
why
so many foreign kids who have far less funding put into their educational
systems come over here and run circles around so many of our students).

Part of what you said is true, though I don't necessarily buy into
your blanket condemnation of teachers' unions. You want to go back to
the days when teachers could be fired if they refused to have sex with
the principal, or if their religion or politics didn't meet certain
criteria? Unions arose to serve a need.

You partially answered the reason for unions, but it was mainly a matter of
economics. At one time it was almost impossible for a married man with
children to survive on a teacher's salary. I had a great biology teacher who
worked a second job as a bar tender to make ends meet. Most of my teachers
used to be single women or women whose husbands had a job and lived in the
town where they taught. BTW, most new teachers today last three years, and
then go on to more lucrative and less stressful jobs. Another fact that is
not often considered is that teacher salaries are paid out of taxes, and the
public has been stingy. Why would the best and brightest of college students
consider education as a career when salaries are so dismal? It's interesting
how the politicos beat up schools and teachers before every election. They
promise to improve schools through testing and promise students will not
pass unless they pass these tests. If you are a teacher and liked teaching,
you're forced to teach for the test. That reminds me of the German
situation.....

The "social engineering" accusation is accurate, however. Pushing
kids through school via "social promotion" to avoid wounding their
tender egos has resulted in a literacy/numeracy *disaster*!

This "social engineering" has more to do with parents than teachers. Parents
demanded the right to say whether Johnny passed or failed, and school boards
and officials gave parents the final say. It was more parent egos than kid
egos. Guess whose kid is too intelligent to fail!

However, the greatest danger threatening our educational system at
present is the Administrations' drive to replace secular public
education with religious schools, under guise of the "voucher" program
-- a scam of unparalleled viciousness and danger that has roots going
back before even the first Bush administration.

I couldn't agree more with you on that one. The voucher plan expounded by
the Bush administration is nothing more than welfare for the wealthy. If you
want to send your child to a private/religious school - fine! I don't want
to pay for it. I am willing to pay for public education.

We need to sleep with our eyes open, and lean on the cowardly, corrupt
Congress, lest the Bill of Rights be trashed --prime objective of our
theocrat-in-chief, Attorney General, the Ayatollah Ashcroft.
--
Polar

The religious agenda of the Bush administration is the scariest part. The
people of this country didn't realize how good we had it until 9/11 began
chipping away at civil rights with freedom of speech a target. My greatest
fear is that Bush will have the opportunity to load the Supreme Court with
Ashcroft types.

Yeah (weary sigh) I remember beating on the Supreme Court nomination
drum during the last presidential campaign, but to my sorrow, most
voters just do not connect the president with his power to nominate
Justices who sit for a lifetime, and influence the lives of us, our
children, and our grandchildren.

Right now, we need to sleep with our eyes open, lest Roe v Wade be
overturned. Back to the coat hanger!!! Congress just passed a ban on
late term abortions, no matter what the danger to the mother; no
matter if the poor deformed fetus has no chance of survival.
The radical religious Right waited 12 years to bring this up again;
this time they have a bunch of sympathetic theocrats in their corner.


--
Polar

Oh yes. Look at lot of kids today. For all the money that has been
spent on aducating them they know ****. If would be far better for
them to learn about the real world and get them working.
Some people say every child deserves a decent start in life and a good
education.
TO which I say crap!

Come on Pete -- you're just being cynical. The vast majority of children,
even in today's society, benefit greatly from school. They come out
literate and capable of functioning at levels that even 50 years ago were
reserved for a small percentage of the population.

Everyone needs SOME measure of formal education -- be it via a
public/private school or home schooling that is overseen by authorities.
This is necessary to function at the most mundane levels in our society.
Remember -- we're a society based largely on technology, not agriculture.

Perhaps a better angle to consider is who should be educated for how long
and in what manner. Many people believe that education is a right not a
privilege -- this likely stems from a few generations back (and prior) when
literacy and education WERE for only the privileged. Unfortunately, this
attitude is so pervasive that is even applied to post secondary education,
which IMHO is insane.

Another angle to consider is discipline -- children are no longer raised at
home in the way they were in the 50's and prior. It is my experience that
most families lack a parent figure for a large part of the waking hours.
This is typically due to parents working, single parent homes, etc..
Between parents to young to be parents, and parents too busy to be
parents... well, I think you can see where this argument is going. That
lack of home discipline & involvement makes public education difficult for
teaching professionals.

And that's another important factor to consider -- teaching professionals.
I've only been out of secondary school for about 16 years but many of my
teachers bordered on incompetent. Prime example -- my senior year of high
school was spent with an English instructor who sat at the head of the
classroom spitting phlegm into a cup and telling us how she was a member of
MENSA.

It is increasingly difficult to make the choice of joining the educational
system today. Low pay, little respect, not much room for career
advancement, unruly children, long hours...gee, sounds like a great job to
me! Under these conditions we get one of two types -- truly devoted,
wonderful teachers and incompetents. IMHO, the system is not very good at
weeding out incompetents for a variety of reasons.

To make an already long post a little less verbose, the point I'm trying to
make here is that it's much more than "we're wasting our money on these
punks". It's important to see this situation for what is -- a large,
consuming problem brought about by a variety of concomitant issues. We keep
trying because to not do so would be to take the plunge into societal
regression.

James

"Iris Cohen" wrote in message
...
Why children be forced to go to school. At one time children would be
out working at 7, or even younger.
Why not?

Are you serious?

Of course an OT remark like that is serious as a heart attack Iris! And I
couldn't agree more, I went through several dozen children, all under the
age of 8 in just a very few years. If the kid couldn't hold down a job and
bring home a paycheck I just sold it back and got another one. That's why
it's so important to keep the reciepts from those black market child
brokers, otherwise you'd never get your money back!!



Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)