No Tennesee Williams for you!!!!

[Miller]

@Liberal

As a child, dirt poor. We’re talking outhouse, wood stove, and water from a nearby spring here. Large extended family in a four-room shack, the whole nine yards. Conditions extreme enough that my detractors will think I’ve made it up. But lest you think I am complaining, I did not learn that I was poor until we moved to relatively better accomodations when my father found cabinetry work in the flatlands. There, I met kids who thought that an afternoon without television was an eternity in hell.

Hell, I was raised in a warehouse, although we weren’t exactly poor. That wasn’t what I was talking about.

Pretty much the same thing here, except they didn’t so much read to me, as I would see them read and wonder what all the fuss was about. A couple of my aunts lived with us, and I used to copy the letters out of a book one of them had called Madame Bovary. I would then take my scribbles to her and ask her to read them. It seemed to delight her, and delighting her delighted me. But I fail to see what advantage our circumstances would have given either of us if we had not had the basic ganas — the desire to learn. The dumbest stump in my high school was the son of a local mill tycoon whose parents afforded him every opportunity and even a friggin’ nanny.

This is what I’m talking about. What if you’d been raised in a family where no one read? What if you’d taken your scribbles to your aunt, and instead of being “delighted,” she’d given you a smack upside your head for bothering her? Do you think you still would have grown up with your current passion for learning?

Obviously, there’s no way to answer a question like that, but my gut tells me “No.”

Gotta give you props for that. Seldom is a man willing to retract his own argument and admit to its fallacies.

That was not a retraction of my argument, and I still stand by it. The numbers I gave were for the purpose of illustration, and were not intended as hard data. I apologize if I gave that impression.

Gotta call bullshit on that one. Meaningless? If 90% of privately schooled students are basically competent (which means such things as the earth revolving around the sun), then it is evidence for my premise that the 75% figure you brought up might be skewed by them.

No, it’s not, because you gave no evidence for how many privately schooled kids there are, as relative to the number of publically schooled kids.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of private schooling. It includes home schooling, for one.

I was not aware that you were including home schooling as private education. Is this a standard definition? Not that it really matters, I’m more than willing to accept it as a parameter for the debate.

And it isn’t all Eaton and Ivy. There are scholarships, just like in college. There are grants.

Speaking from genuine ignorance here: how does one qualify for a grant to a private elementary school? I presume there is some manner of ability testing, just as there is for college scholarships. How does a student qualify himself for one of these scholarships when he has received nothing but apathy in regards to his education from both his family and his government?

There are parents who are willing to devote their lives and their resources to their kids.

And there are parents who don’t give a shit about what their kids are doing, so long as they’re out of sight and out of mind. What happens to those kids?

With respect to making public schools into copies of private schools, that just ain’t gonna happen. And the reason is that public schools are structured to accomodate the lowest common denominator. If they required the levels of excellence that private schools require, then the riff-raff about which you’re so concerned would fall out and fail. But you won’t allow that because you think it’s somehow unfair to them, and so here we are — a public school system that is out of sight and out of mind of the public at large.

Not my argument. Everyone should get the same opportunity. If they fail to take advantage of that opportunity, too bad. We always need someone to scrub the toilets, and they just volunteered. What concerns me is that, if we abolished public education, we’d have people scrubbing toilets who should be studying neurosurgery.

And I’ve attended both public and private schools. The private school had just as many fuck-ups as the public one. When mom and dad are plunking down thirty grand plus a year for their kids education, it becomes markedly more difficult to fail students who are not meeting academic standards.

Less than half the parents of assigned public school kids are “very satisfied” with the schools their kids attend.

Great! It should be easy to reform the system, then, if so many people are discontented with it.

What happens when there’s an involuntary public dole is that people believe they have contributed enough (their taxes) and that the education of kids is someone else’s problem (the schools).

I absolutely reject this proposition.

You must establish rigorous expectations, or else you must prepare yourself for mediocrity.

And there’s no reason at all we can’t have rigorous expectations in public schools.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not mean to say that public school teachers are worthless, nor even the administrators and parents. I too had public school teachers whom I adored. It is the system itself that is sick — the system of “here’s the money, now get outta my hair”. Trying to fix that with more money is like trying to help an alcoholic by giving him more liquor.

Just because “more money” isn’t necessarily the answer, it doesn’t follow that “less money” is automatically the better solution.

[Liberal]

@JonG

Liberal, do you have another not quite so biased source, someplace that might be more even handed in reporting the facts of the U.S. Department of Education’s report. Is there a link to the report it’s self that I can then use to further my evil plans of world domination. Don’t get me wrong here. I like what you are saying, but i don’t want to be spoon fed by the Council for American Private Education.

You are to be commended for your skepticism. The site provides copious citations for its claims. For example, it references the Findings from the Condition of Education 2002 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Your work has already been done for you. You don’t need me.

[Liberal]

@Miller

Hell, I was raised in a warehouse, although we weren’t exactly poor. That wasn’t what I was talking about.

Sorry. There must have been static in our psychic connection.

This is what I’m talking about. What if you’d been raised in a family where no one read? What if you’d taken your scribbles to your aunt, and instead of being “delighted,” she’d given you a smack upside your head for bothering her? Do you think you still would have grown up with your current passion for learning?

Obviously, there’s no way to answer a question like that, but my gut tells me “No.”

But I did answer it already. You are reading carelessly. Barring some other influence, kids from families like that are going to fail in any but the most mediocre system. It is possible that a child from such a desolate household might find in himself the desire to learn, but I agree with you that it isn’t likely. But that is not an issue of education. It is an issue of parenting.

That was not a retraction of my argument, and I still stand by it. The numbers I gave were for the purpose of illustration, and were not intended as hard data. I apologize if I gave that impression.

No problem, but I’m afraid that such an argument is ad logicam. Making up numbers does not a sound argument make. I might argue thus: if 1 + 1 = 2, then public schools should be eliminated. Meh.

No, it’s not, because you gave no evidence for how many privately schooled kids there are, as relative to the number of publically schooled kids.

Because you are an educated man, I’m sure you’re just testing me to see whether I know how to formulate the numbers. I would advise to proceed this way:

Let X = the number of private school students
Let Y = the number of public school students

X = Y * (7.5 / 100)

Find the value of Y, and solve for X.

I was not aware that you were including home schooling as private education. Is this a standard definition? Not that it really matters, I’m more than willing to accept it as a parameter for the debate.

In this context, I am using private to mean “not public”.

Speaking from genuine ignorance here: how does one qualify for a grant to a private elementary school? I presume there is some manner of ability testing, just as there is for college scholarships.

Visit the cite I gave you. It covers such matters in quite some detail.

How does a student qualify himself for one of these scholarships when he has received nothing but apathy in regards to his education from both his family and his government?

Oy. If only the government were apathetic. That way, it wouldn’t be meddling in the affairs of people 3,000 miles away. But I’m afraid that this question brings us back around to my question of you: what, for all its trillions, does government have to show in education but mediocrity? I submit that those who have succeeded have done so, in my opinion, in spite of onerous and arbitrary government interference. As I already said, plunking a body into a desk does not constitute an education; it constitutes a diploma mill.

And there are parents who don’t give a shit about what their kids are doing, so long as they’re out of sight and out of mind. What happens to those kids?

The same thing that happens to them now. If you would like to debate parenting and its responsibilities, I am willing. But for a man who dismisses his opponents arguments with quips like, “Meaningless for purposes of this discussion,” you are quite brazen in your digressions.

Not my argument. Everyone should get the same opportunity. If they fail to take advantage of that opportunity, too bad. We always need someone to scrub the toilets, and they just volunteered. What concerns me is that, if we abolished public education, we’d have people scrubbing toilets who should be studying neurosurgery.

What evidence do you have for your concern? Speaking for myself, I don’t want a neurosurgeon who was pushed through a system that grades on a curve and is battered by conflicting interests from all sides. Quite frankly, many brilliant people are already scrubbing toilets or working at Wal-Mart despite their degrees. In fact, there was a recent Pit thread lamenting exactly that.

And I’ve attended both public and private schools. The private school had just as many fuck-ups as the public one. When mom and dad are plunking down thirty grand plus a year for their kids education, it becomes markedly more difficult to fail students who are not meeting academic standards.

Although I’ve not demanded any cites until now for some of your more dramatic claims, I’m going to have to demand one here, seeing as how private school waitlists are legendary.

Great! It should be easy to reform the system, then, if so many people are discontented with it.

I’m afraid that discontent does not constitute competence. In all its long tenure, the Department of Education has not educated even one student. The fact that it has made little progress in the past twenty-five years (e.g., with access for handicapped students) does not bode well for its future. Frankly, as much as you seem to be concerned over issues of what neglect and incompetence can do to children, it is astonishing that you support the continuing interference of these Keystone cops. We might as well have our education policies established by Larry, Moe, and Curly.

I absolutely reject this proposition.

Well, you’re entitled to do that. But a thoughtful rebuttal would be nice.

And there’s no reason at all we can’t have rigorous expectations in public schools.

Sure there is. You’re forgetting that politics is all about political expediency, and that government is infested from bow to stern with politicians. Thier concern is re-election and re-appointment. You can rest assured that the mediocrity they implement is rewarded by votes. If it weren’t so… well, you can do the modus tollens. It is remarkable that you discern a problem with failing students of parents who pay, but are blind to the problem with failing students of parents who vote.

Just because “more money” isn’t necessarily the answer, it doesn’t follow that “less money” is automatically the better solution.

I do not advocate less money. What I advocate is that you stop seizing it by force from peaceful honest people and shoving it down a black hole.

[dd222]

@Liberal

Bright? No. I can only hope that with diligence and hard work, I might one day rise to see the toenails of your intellectual sophistication.

Oh god. You’re another of “those” people who must always force feed their “intelligence” to as many people as possible. Always right. Believing the sophistication of all 10 posts a day. Anwering posts to which they can google a rebuttal while ignoring the most compelling and intriguing. Truly smart people don’t have to keep telling other people (i.e. post counts); the other people will know. Anyone can adopt an opinion from some Googled website.

Anyway, it’s the universities who are training the physician who will save your life one day, rectifying your occluded artery caused by sitting at your computer posting to message boards all day.

Before you go Googleing for your opinion that physicians didn’t have formal education X years ago, consider the greatly expanded life expectancy. Heck, M.D.'s are being sued for incompetencies enough; and you want to get rid of universities. Nice. I stand corrected. You ARE bright.

[Guinastasia]

Wait…I thought this thread was about bigots wanting to censor material available in schools?

[dd222]

Ahhhh. College drop-out. Much clearer now…are things.

[dd222]

Look, I kid, of course. I hope that was obvious.

But denying a system, in which you tried to succeed…and failed, to everyone else, because it is something for which you do not wish to pay, is more than a little dubious. And by attending and dropping out, you did try and fail. * I* am not saying that you are saying that you are hateful and bitter only because you couldn’t solve a system which you consider mediocre at best. But why try? Why cut off your hand to confirm it hurts. If you didn’t know the system was “fucked-up” from your 12 years (I assume) of forced education; what was it in particular and in general that gave you the revelation? You don’t like paying for something that benefits others? I don’t like paying, in part,for your social security retirement. Let us not destroy the system as a whole. Let us be a little more constructive and creative. Let those who choose to attend, do so on their own penny.

[dd222]

Anyway, this train has been way hijacked. I’m getting off at the next stop. You need to start a new thread opining how you dislike paying for thousands of unachieving individuals to sloth their way through college.

[John_Carter_of_Mars]

By Miller

=John Carter of Mars
I have been posting here for over three years. Doggy Knees, you get the first FUCK YOU I’ve ever posted. Be thee not proud.

=By Miller: Dude… you’ve been posting her for over three years, and that’s the first time you’ve seen anyone make a blanket generalization about the moral probity/intelletual prowess of the citizens of Alabama? Where the hell have you been hiding?

Of course I have seen other threads dissin’ Alabama. Sometimes I comment in them and sometimes fighting ignorance and bigotry just doesn’t seem worth the hassle.

I do try to have a personal policy of not saying anything to someone online that I wouldn’t say to their face. That seems cowardly to me, and since my days of inviting someone outside for fisticuffs are long past I’ve never posted a “Fuck You!” before.

I let Diogenes get under my skin, and that makes me angry at myself.

[cheddarsnax]

@Liberal

Speaking from experience, it ain’t all that hard. And frankly, you’ve got quite a few in your so-called public school system who can barely manage to read this message board.

You can stop putting “so-called” in front of “public school system.” It is, in fact, called the public school system and I think that we’re all smart enough to realize that without you pointing it out to us.

Unless, of course, you actually take issue with the term “public school system.” Which would be pretty ridiculous, considering that we are referring to a system of schools which are publicly funded.

[Liberal]

@dd222

[blah blah blah]

You have confused me with someone who wants to eliminate universities. Do try to keep up.

[Liberal]

@cheddarsnax

You can stop putting “so-called” in front of “public school system.” It is, in fact, called the public school system and I think that we’re all smart enough to realize that without you pointing it out to us.

Unless, of course, you actually take issue with the term “public school system.” Which would be pretty ridiculous, considering that we are referring to a system of schools which are publicly funded.

Right, and closed door meetings in Congress are public gatherings.

[dd222]

@Liberal

You have confused me with someone who wants to eliminate universities. Do try to keep up.

So, you take the education out of the Universities and they function how?

Let me interpret your post. Oh, you must mean primary public education. You must have confused me with someone who doesn’t think that post was ambiguous.

[cheddarsnax]

I wonder if Liberal plans to respond to my post.

[cheddarsnax]

Oh, wait! There it is, Lib, your so-called response! I can’t imagine how I missed it, although it may have something to do with the fact that your so-called response did not, in fact, respond to my post in any way. Come back when you can write a reply without resorting to:
[ol]
[li]An attempt to steer the thread towards discussion of your personal political beliefs, no matter how unrelated they may be to the thread’s original subject[/li][li]Mindless Liber[al/tarian] snark[/li][/ol] And then maybe we can talk.

[Neurotik]

@Liberal

Right, and closed door meetings in Congress are public gatherings.

I realize that making strawman arguments is pretty much your strong (and only) suit, but Congressional hearings and votes are all public. You can generally walk right in. All transcripts are available online.

Besides that, most of the funding comes from local sources - since you’re so informed on the subject, I would have thought you’d realize that.

For example, even the lowest spending states average about $5-6,000 per pupil. The discretionary budget for the Department of Education is about $57 billion. There are 53 million children of mandatory school age in the United States. Not all of the DoE discretionary spending is going to this age, so let’s just knock of $4 billion to make the calculations easy.

So, the federal government is spending about $1,000 per pupil, or about 20% of the cost. The rest is coming from state and local resources.

So, in summary, once again Liberal’s post is reduced to the empty, rhetorical bluster that it is.

[dd222]

@cheddarsnax

Oh, wait! There it is, Lib, your so-called response! I can’t imagine how I missed it, although it may have something to do with the fact that your so-called response did not, in fact, respond to my post in any way. Come back when you can write a reply without resorting to:
[ol]
[li]An attempt to steer the thread towards discussion of your personal political beliefs, no matter how unrelated they may be to the thread’s original subject[/li][li]Mindless Liber[al/tarian] snark[/li][/ol] And then maybe we can talk.

Forget about it. Debating with this guy is like punching yourself in the face, except less productive.

[Liberal]

@Neurotik

I realize that making strawman arguments is pretty much your strong (and only) suit, but Congressional hearings and votes are all public. You can generally walk right in. All transcripts are available online.

Nonsense. Even members of Congress (those from the minority party) are routinely excluded from secret closed-door meetings — let alone Joe Blow and the man on the street — and this has been the case for quite some time. (Cite, Cite, Cite).

Besides that, most of the funding comes from local sources - since you’re so informed on the subject, I would have thought you’d realize that.
For example, even the lowest spending states average about $5-6,000 per pupil. The discretionary budget for the Department of Education is about $57 billion. There are 53 million children of mandatory school age in the United States. Not all of the DoE discretionary spending is going to this age, so let’s just knock of $4 billion to make the calculations easy.

So, the federal government is spending about $1,000 per pupil, or about 20% of the cost. The rest is coming from state and local resources.

Local government can be the most oppressive of all. Tyranny at any level is still tyranny. But if the federal government is, as you report, sucking up so much money and keeping such a huge cut to pay its own salaries and building maintenance that it doles out such a pittance to localities, why the hell do you defend it?

So, in summary, once again Liberal’s post is reduced to the empty, rhetorical bluster that it is.

Try again. This time, bring reason.

[Liberal]

@dd222

Forget about it. Debating with this guy is like punching yourself in the face, except less productive.

Your apparent familiarity with me despite your dearth of experience here smells like stinky footwear. You are who again?

[tomndebb]

You are who again?

Obviously, USS Bulmer.