The USA is no place to raise a child.

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by TimeTraveler, May 2, 2009.

  1. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    For most of the underprivileged kids who drop out, or for the kids who hate school, it's true. A lot of kids would be better off being home schooled. Those two columbine kids should have been home schooled. The kid who committed suicide after being bullied should have been home schooled. Probably all of the kids diagnosed with ADHD should be home schooled. And if your school has metal detectors, you are better off being home schooled.

    Public school is not for every kid. It might have benefited you to go to public school but its not benefiting the majority of kids when the amount of kids graduating from high school is hovering around 50% and the amount of kids who go to college is around 20-30% and the amount who graduate in 6 years is even less than that.

    Also if you want to teach your kids values, theres church.

    This is why I advocate that we bring back guilds. The teacher should be a life long mentor. When you say education is not highly valued thats because those people are not highly valued by society, so they don't value what society offers them. The only way to change this is to change the equation because right now education = debt, rather than education = success. Right now our society is all about making money, quality, pride, honor, none of these things matter anymore.
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2009
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  3. Aerika Registered Senior Member

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    Both of your assumptions are wrong. I grew up in a community that is a bit diverse but it's largely made up of middle to lower-upper class. The public school system in that community has four high schools which are fairly well funded. Most of the students in my high school were middle class or upper middle class.

    Interesting enough you have validated a couple of my points in this thread.


    You have painted a picture of a school that is extremely bad. Are you suggesting that there were no text books or no library in the school? And it's very difficult for me to believe that every single teacher you were assigned in a public school taught you nothing.

    But even if I concede the point that your school and teachers were that bad. It hasn't proven anything about the American school system or the ability to get an education in America. At most, it's proven you went to a horrid school. Because despite your poor school, you admitted your were able to educate yourself in America using libraries and the Internet. You went on to say, "I went to college".

    But more to the point, anecdotal evidence isn't considered credible. I cannot verify or challenge the claims about your school. And I know there are schools in this country underfunded but you've painted a picture that suggests your school did nothing.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence


    I'd love to see a survey that shows the percentage of students that graduate from college broken down by social class but I cannot find one, perhaps you can provide some links.

    But if I concede the point that only 5 percent of students from lower class are able to graduate college, it begs the question, what made them succeed?


     
    Last edited: May 5, 2009
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  5. Oniw17 ascetic, sage, diogenes, bum? Valued Senior Member

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    I know three prime contractors who do splicing for cable tv and make that much, and they claim just about every thing they buy(personal or for work) on their taxes, so they have more disposable income than a lawyer who makes just as much. And I know someone who used to make that much making floors with crazy designs using different types of wood until some stuff happened and that fell through.
    Kids go to school for 7 hours a day. You only need to work 8 hours a day(actually you don't need to work at all) if you don't want every stupid little luxury that's out there. You can get paid to live in the projects depending on how much you make, and in certain states(like PA for example), there's organizations that will pay half of your utility bills for you between them. If you have kids you don't even need to pay utilities, you can just have some doctor say your child needs the electricity or gas or water due to some medical condition. You can get enough food for at least 3 individuals just by frequenting food drives where I live. You can even get food stamps if you really want to. Also, you don't need any of these things if you go do whatever you need to do to get a job that isn't horrible(which anyone who's expecting a child should start on immediately). There are all kinds of internet jobs that pay pretty well. It takes like 1 month to after scheduling a test date to get a GED and like $60, then there's all kinds of trade schools that you can go to and be making more than enough to support a small family in a pretty short amount of time. If all else fails, there's drug dealers all around, you can always become one or go kick in one of their doors and have enough money to sustain yourself and those close to you at least. There's no reason people can't teach their own kids.
    It's a problem because once you're that damn anti-social, you never really get comfortable around peopl. Plus you lose sleep and don't exercise. Oh yeah, and you play video games all day(which is horrible in itself).

    Not every student has a chance at quallity education. I have a friend who went through high school and even gradated early and never learned how to read. Now he can't even join the military(because he can't read the entry exam) and has to have someone read the AIDs paper to him if he even wants to go donate plasma. Maybe it's his fault that he's too stubborn to have or let someone teach him to read, but I don't think it's his fault that the schools never taught him in the first place
    50 %? What happened to 75? Are you saying that everyone who goes to a private school graduates?
     
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  7. Aerika Registered Senior Member

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    Don't you think his parents enabled the situation? And he certainly has to share some of the blame. How did he pass his exams or do his homework illiterate?

    But regardless, his failure doesn't mean he didn't have the opportunity.
     
  8. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sure there are better and many worse places to raise children everywhere in the world.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The quality of our K-12 school systems can be attributed to the quality of parenting. There's only so much teachers can do with the material they're given to work with.
    That's because hardly anyone needs to any more. I learned to write in the 1950s when we actually all had to write routinely and my handwriting was decent enough. But in the forty years since I've been working, the need to write anything by hand has diminished almost to the point of disappearance. Due to lack of practice my handwriting is now terrible. Fortunately I have to do it so rarely that I just block print.

    Even in my high school days they urged everyone to learn to type, so throughout college I typed all my papers and as an adult I typed all my correspondence. Today I do it all on my computer keyboard. Even my grocery shopping list is an Excel printout.

    Find something important to complain about, Sam. You're in the First World now and the day is soon approaching when nobody will need to know cursive writing.

    To continue, the reason there are so many people in our universities who don't belong there is precisely that they don't belong there! It's ridiculous to expect fifteen or twenty percent of the population to be able to complete a university degree, and the programs have to be dumbed down to permit them to graduate.
    How about just not starting them?
    Sammy, I've asked you this before: If you don't like it here, why do you stay? Do you just enjoy complaining?
    "American genetic stock"??? We probably have the most homogenized gene pool in the world!

    None of you seem to understand that "America" is a dynamic entity that is constantly being reinvigorated by immigration. The people who come here add their own culture, experiences and attitudes to ours. To the extent that there is friction between newcomers and the mainstream population, that's one of the primary forces in our evolution.

    America's national food is pizza. Salsa music was invented in New York City. Our breweries all have German names. We all celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, and these days probably half of us celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Do you understand what that says about our country?
    Plumbers do very well. Go to any smaller town that isn't home to a corporate headquarters with a parking lot full of Bentleys, and you'll often find that the richest man who didn't inherit his wealth, or migrate from the city after making it through speculation, is the plumber. It's still an occupation that is a long way from being automated.

    Whenever I meet someone who says his kids just don't seem to have the aptitude for academic learning, I urge him to apprentice them to a plumber. They're the only professionals I know who get to charge you for their driving time!
     
  10. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I disagree with that parents of children with ADHD can barely get them to do stuff around the house. I know from personal experience my whole family trying to teach my younger brother at home, all of the fighting and the refusal, it just left everyone in a horrible mood plus he'd forget almost everything the next day so we had to do it all over again. If a parent is invested in their kids' lives then someone like my brother needed to be enrolled in a program with people who were trained to help kids like him. His grades got better, he gained more confidence, and he still gets to be in a normal classroom with a teacher and all of his friends.

    It's the attitude Americans have toward schooling, it's too nonchalant, which is why the school system just fester like an open wound and no one does anything to change them.

    And by different values, I meant different perspectives on life. At church you'd be surrounded by like minded people (who are most likely from the same class and probably most are the same race). I learned so much for the different teachers that I had who had opinions and values nothing like my parents or family members. Students with different religions and ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds exposed me to ideas my parents didn't even know existed. I think the social aspects of school are just as important as the academics. Of course academics comes first, but most people do both.
     
  11. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I just read that even though the dropout rates are decreasing (which is really sad how awful were things 30 years ago?) Only about 75% of students graduate on time. From all of the foreign students who transferred to my high school all of them were a year or two older than us, they all said it was because they started school at a later age. Maybe Americans start school too soon. Maybe the pressure of the junior year in high school is too much for a 16 year old and they could handle it much better if they were 18? Most dropouts go back a few years later and college students in their 20s are much more serious about their education than 18 year olds, but that might all be related to experience and not exclusively maturity. Just an idea.
     
  12. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    Okay.

    Just because I'm an exceptional person it does not mean we should expect the majority to ever be that way. The majority of upper-middle class people aren't exceptional and they get a free pass. What I'm against is promoting the mediocre people ANYWHERE. If they are a sub par individual it shouldn't matter their class. And in the real world if I have to choose who to help, I know it's better to help the exceptional individuals, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone to be that.
    Actually some of my schools didn't have text books, or a library. I didn't depend on the school library, I went to the public library. The school without textbooks did have textbooks, but there were not enough for every student so we werent allowed to take them home. So when doing homework or studying we had to do it all in class, and it's no surprise that I failed in those classes.

    Not every school and not every teacher or class was bad. The majority of my experiences however were bad and so I don't blame kids who drop out of school after having similar experiences. I know why kids drop out, and I know why kids hate school, and I know why kids shoot up their schools.
    Some of the schools I went to, seemed to be preparing students to be failures. Meaning they weren't preparing us to go to college, and in most cases the teachers weren't assuming we'd go, we were being prepared for the GED or the HS Diploma and thats it. Yes I have been to some good schools, but those schools were usually private, charter or pilot schools, not the traditional public schools.

    \
    What made them successful is a mixture of traits and good luck. You cannot teach a strong will, or discipline. Someone either has it or they dont. And most people from any class don't have the will power or the strength to ignore the bad influences, they dont have the self esteem to believe in themselves when nobody else does, and so when other people tell them they aren't worth anything to society the majority internalize it. This low self esteem probably affects all social classes, and a majority of people when told consistently that they are shit, and worthless, and stupid, etc, subliminally or directly, do not have the strength of will to put their faith in themselves no matter what.

    Most people behave like sheep, they get told what to think, and how to feel, and the media as well as some bad teachers, and experts, can convince a person to not even bother going to college. They have to believe in their own capabilities and talents, and that cannot be taught. This is why you have rich kids with no self esteem who resort to self destructive behavior.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2009
  13. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    I had ADHD growing up. I don't think it's a disease unless it keeps a child from functioning. I didn't like to do stuff around the house either, and we shouldn't assume that its normal for children to act like little adults. Children are not emotionally mature.

    You cannot blame ADHD on your childs lack of education. Its your job to work with the strengths and weaknesses of your child.

    And by different values, I meant different perspectives on life. At church you'd be surrounded by like minded people (who are most likely from the same class and probably most are the same race).

    Go to a better church. That church sounds like a crappy church to me. If where you live so segregated that the only way kids can learn about other races and mindsets is at school, thats part of the problem you have to solve. Send them off to camp during the summer, let them learn those experiences at camp. Let them go online and talk to kids in other countries.
     
  14. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle Rocker the Mexican plumber is much cheaper.
     
  15. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    Ok sure. I know some millionaires too, whats your point?


    If you live in the projects you can forget about sending your kids to college, they'll be going to prison. And there are no good schools near the projects so you'd be better off living in a tent in the woods somewhere or living in a mobile home than in the projects. In the projects your kid is more likely to join a gang, get shot, or go to prison than to go to college or even finish highschool.

    I'm sure the Octomom is living like this but thats no way to raise a successful child.


    If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it.

    I don't play video games all day. Maybe I did growing up. Being comfortable around the wrong people wont really help you academically, so if you live in the projects and you are comfortable around people, you'll probably be one of the first people arrested in the raid, sent to prison etc.


    If the school is worth the money, thats what you are paying them for.
     
  16. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Love it! I'm lovin it

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  17. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    Alright, you obviously don't see the social benefit in being around other people like I do. I went to high school with the a lot of kids who were home schooled through grade school. They all had social problems, they were weird, all of them and their interactions with others were awkward. They got better as school went on, but not much better. I don't want that to be my kid if there is anything I can do about it. They'll have the same early school experiences as the rest of their class.
     
  18. superstring01 Moderator

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    Actually, not really.

    In order to be legally licensed in most states, you have to apprentice for a period of time. During that time there's a great deal of training and... dare I say "indoctrinating"... that goes on. While I would never be so crass as to lump "Mexican" and "Puerto Rican" into the same boat, the fact is that where I live there is a HUGE population of poor, migrant and immigrant PRican workers, many of them with amazing skills that they cannot use because of missing local licenses and equipment. When finally being able to aquire them the involved costs inevitably drive them to charge the same prices as their local counterparts.

    ~String
     
  19. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I think he means illegal immigrants who get hired by a plumbing company for less than minimum wage and no benefits of any kind. Anyone who is here legally or a citizen can actually go to the authorities and complain about the horrid conditions. Illegal people have to keep quiet since they aren't supposed to be working anyway, so they take their $3.00 an hour with a smile (probably a bitter one, but nonetheless...)
     
  20. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    Thats because I've been around more kinds people than you have. Adults such as yourself forced me to be around lots of people, as a result I've found out that most people are shallow, materialist, selfish, and cruel. It's people with attitudes such as yours that caused me to dislike human nature, mainly because I've seen so much of it. How are all these people you spend your time with useful? Why do you care to spend your life with useless people?

    The problem with forcing people to be around each other is there is no filter. The worst and best of people play together as kids, the only thing the best people learn is to hate or avoid the worst people, and the worst people learn to hate themselves and everyone else. Nobody really benefits. And we aren't the borg, not all of us have a desire to fit in, and I despise that about society. Some kids are better off being homeschooled, and it should be up to the kid not up to adults who dont understand the nature of the kid.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2009
  21. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I don't know what makes you so certain you've been around more people than I have, but you're quite the jilted character. The only way you could protect yourself from such horrid people is to lock yourself in your house and never leave from birth to death. Having to deal with all kinds of people as a child I think makes you more tolerant and capable as an adult. You know the personality types you don't get along with and the kinds you do and how to deal with a disagreement. With you and some others as an exception, humans are social creatures. So knowing the rules of social engagement are important for everyone who wishes to function well in society. If my kid had problems functioning at school for whatever reason or had a valid reason for not wanting to go to school anymore, then of course I'd hire a private teacher for them, but that's only after school didn't work out. If my kids want to socially reclusive than that's their business, but it won't be because I never let them see the light of day.
     
  22. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    How can a child decide to be home-schooled? I mean what if they live in a one parent home where the adult has to work? What if they live in a two parent home and the parents have to work? What if the parents don't have the education to school their children or to tutor them? It quite a presumption to think that all parents are not aware nor understand the nature of their own children.

    I'm glad I have had the opportunity to know some wonderful people, kind and interesting people so I don't have to go through life thinking the world is full of cruel, selfish, horrid people. Its a shame, basically you don't see any value in the other members of your community or society.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2009
  23. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    It's not that I've been around a greater quantity of people, I'm claiming that I've been around a much more diverse group of personality types. I've been around good and ugly people, and I've even been around some evil people. The good and evil people are equally rare, the ugly people are the majority.

    I'm less tolerant. I now know exactly what kinds of people I dislike and wont tolerate. I know what kinds of people I like being nice to, and what kinds of people I like being mean to. Yes I'm better at dealing with people, I'm also better at manipulation, and I'm more jaded. I don't get pleasure from dealing with most people because most people are a chore to deal with.

    This would be fine if the people you get along with far outnumbers the people you don't get along with. This would be fine if the majority of people were friendly, or the majority of people were worth the effort, but the truth is the majority of people aren't worth much and you know exactly what I'm talking about if you've been around as many types of people as me.

    Okay thats fine. I'm only asking for parents such as yourself to respect the autonomy and human rights of the children. Some children are very unhappy in school because they go to a school filled with shitty people and teachers who arent teaching them anything. Why waste their time? Why force them to be miserable? Then they learn to hate learning and probably will drop out.

    I'm not saying its not important to learn these lessons, I'm simply saying that these lessons are not easy lessons to learn and some kids never recover. You have some kids who learn to identify good and evil, and who become street smart really fast, and you have other kids who become naive adults who never in their life learn to distinguish between the different kinds of people. All I'm claiming is that they don't have to learn this in school, they can learn this at home, at church, or any place. I do think people need to be taught not only how to identify the good and evil in any particular room or setting, but they also need to develop a different set of strategies for dealing with each. What works on good people wont be what works on evil people. So you can never really teach any sorta social rules which apply to all people, only rules which apply to the different kinds of people.


    Like how to deal with a good person who is shy and who has trouble making friends, there are some rules about that. But there are also rules on how to deal with the neighborhood bully, or the drug abuser crowd, or the jocks, etc.
     

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