[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Milum *
Come back Sampiro*, the Alabama Educational Stystem is not finished with you. You say “crap” too often and you sound childishly inaticulate when you say everything “sucks”.**
I’ve been published in at last count about 15 peer reviewed periodicals, I’ve authored two textbooks, received several research grants, had two theses accepted without need for revision, and am currently deciding whether to present my latest paper in at an academic forum in Prague or Bangkok- I’ve been asked to attend both and they’re during the same week. I attribute none of this to being a graduate of the Alabama school system but as something to be proud of because I accomplished it in spite of this fact.
Believe it or not I didn’t use the word “crap” or “sucks” in any of my professional writings because somewhere along the line I learned that message boards really aren’t the place for formal authority. But I suppose if they were the only place I could be assured of being published, I might feel differently.
Lord knows we tried. We increased the number of school teachers by 43% during the last 30 years while the number of students attending school dropped 17%.
And why did it drop? Did Alabamians start cornering the market on IUDs or drink from the waters that sterilized the women of Gilead in HANDMAID’S TALE? No- it’s because everybody who can afford to, black or white and rich or poor, sends their kids to private school so that they’ll have a halfway decent shot at a diploma that’s not laughed at should they ever wish to live outside the county of their birth. One of my closest friends is currently working 7 days per week at three jobs so that his sons can go to an Episcopal school in Montgomery, where there are several schools in racially mixed districts that are 100% black solely because the only people who go there are the children of black people to poor to afford an alternative. (Though there is a sizeable and very active black middle-class and upper-class, the monetary divide between black and white Montgomerians remains incredible.)
What’s a body to do? During this time the average test scores dropped 18 points.
Which might be a good incentive to look at who you’re hiring and how qualified they are to teach. I had teachers in the Alabama public schools who taught that women have less ribs than men because of Adam & Eve, that the sun revolves around the Earth, that Turkey was a Catholic country, World War II caused Russia to become Communist, and AIDS was God’s wrath against fags. I also saw a Jewish kid’s head held down by a teacher as he was forced to participate in a prayer to Christ at an FFA meeting. I’ve certainly known good teachers in Alabama, but they’re the acute minority and they don’t last long- they either get out of the game altogether or they go to Georgia.
** the largest tax increase ever proposed in Alabama’s history comes to vote in a few weeks**
And only a few decades too late. My brother, a self-made millionaire, is one of the few people I know who’s in favor of it even though it would affect him greatly, but he sees the need. The “Vote No” signs are more frequently seen, however, as luckily for the state politicians most of the voters in Alabama attended the public schools.
** Maybe the good people of Alabama will see fit to impose these draconian taxes **
Draconian? I spoke to my mother earlier today. Her house is appraised at just over $90,000. Her property taxes: $230 per year. Her property taxes will hardly rise at all if the vote passes because its greatest affects are for those who make more than $60k per year.
Montgomery will take the money [and] transform Alabama into California and make you proud.
I’d settle for Mississippi, something I didn’t think an Alabamian would ever say. (“Thank God for Mississippi” has been the Allah Akhbar of Alabama politicians for far longer than I’ve been alive.) At this stage I doubt even a well run lottery would greatly help.
But back to Chief Justice Roy Moore. Big deal! Its in the rotunda
Which every visitor to the courthouse must pass.
** not in the courtroom for goodness sake.**
Unlike his last 10 Commandments plaque. And why wouldn’t he allow Alvin Holmes to place the marker to MLK or the Alabama Atheists to place their monument there? Would you say “so what?” if it was an Islamic prayer rug, statue of Buddha, or a Catholic shrine to St. Martin of Torres?
** Damnation, can’t the feds take a joke?**
Moore is joking? Was his indictment of the lesbian mother a joke? Perhaps he should hit the comedy circuit then and let somebody less inclined to levity have the Chief Justice’s chair.
** So what if Judge Moore is a little excessive in his religious persuits. Don’t they have anything else to do other than meddle in the affairs of Alabamians?**
I speak for most dissenters here when I say that I don’t give a tinker’s dam if Moore dresses like a Buddhist nun and handles water moccasins caught fresh in the Coosa that morning in his private views, but he took an oath to support the laws of the land, not the laws of his religion or even his own conscience.
**After all, Judge Moore isn’t going to jail anybody just because they forgot to remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy. **
Then why have the monument there if you’re not going to enforce it? And again, why enter passages from Leviticus into the court record on the lesbian mother (who was made to swear that she had not had gay sex while in Alabama awaiting appeal)?
I’d argue further, but I’m guessing you’re a graduate of the Alabama public school system and I’ve loaned my “Vocabulary Words for 5th Graders” to an Elmore County lawyer.