Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education 1515
In 24 hours, many of you will be able to vote. So as we come down to the wire, this is really our last chance to talk about the issues. We've already discussed Health Care, the War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years. Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?
Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuff said. (These issues are a stimulus to trigger a voting response, and have NOTHING to do with policies that will exist post-election.)
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't vote:
So get off your lazy butts and vote! You are not too busy.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
By being given the opportunity to vote, we're invited to participate in our electoral process.
If you decline to vote, then you really have no recourse to complain about the results of that process, do you? You had your chance to be heard and decided you had other things to do.
Re:Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely backwards. If you vote, you have no recourse to complain about the results of that process.
Example: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. If the sheep votes, he is implicitly supporting that voting system and cannot complain when the carving knives come out. He had his democratic say, how can he complain about the outcome? The only option which makes sense, which lends any weight to his position, is to refuse to vote and so refuse to endorse the system.
"Winner takes all" is not a just outcome. What is needed is a diplomatic process to reach mutual agreement, with concessions on all sides if necessary. Oh but that requires effort.
Voting just legitimises a corrupt system.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm a sheep, I'm arming myself with big guns. If I'm going to die for dinner, I'm taking someone with me.
THAT's the reason for the 2nd amendment.
Re:Vote (Score:4, Informative)
No, you have it backwards. And reveal the downside of popular democracy. If everyone votes for their bests interests, not for the common good (however you choose to define it) then yeah, the morjority wants will be voted in everytime.
That's why the US is democratic republic. The people don't vote on every issue. The people vote for other people to represent their desires on various issues.
If you don't bother to vote for a representative, then what gives you the moral right to complain about the choices any of those representatives make?
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
No,
living under that system legitimizes it.
voting is merely the exercise of what little power you might posess with in it.
if you live in this country, you legitimize this system of government. if you live in it and use the infrastructure, you legitimize it even more. if you accept what a traffic signal tells you what to do, you endorse the system. voting and being involved in the passage of laws is forming the system. if you do not take part, you are the sheep.
what you describe towards the end there is supposed to be the outcome of people electing rational representatives and senators who will have that "diplomatic process" on your behalf. i.e you are supposed to elect people who are good at distilling the needs wants of their constituency rather than electing an ideological tool. because so-called rational people, like you seem to claim to be, absolve themselves of responsibility for making any "effort" ideological tools, who only believe in the winner take all mentality, get elected.
your argument just makes me ill, and the analogy would only be valid if all three are sheep, or all three are wolves. as presented, you are anthropomorphizing two different animals with different needs. (even then, the sheep was out voted. the system would only really be broken in your example if there two sheep, one wolf, and the sheep still end up getting eaten. in your case, the sheep is going to get eaten regardless. so whether or not the sheep votes is completely immaterial. national politics is not that simple.)
Re:Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes I can. Who made up that rule? I never agreed to it.
What they vote for is irrelevant. The sheep isn't abstaining because he doesn't like the choices on the ballot, he's abstaining because he sees the system is broken.
I'm posting this before the election.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet, when two countries are on the brink of war, we use diplomacy to come to a mutually agreed outcome, not voting. Huh. It would be absurd to vote - what if the population of one country was twice that of the other? How come in that situation it is instantly obvious that "winner takes all" voting is unfair, while within a country it's seen as fair?
My preference is not for laws to govern millions of people, anyway. It is for localised governance at a scale that people can join in and actually have a say that makes a difference to their own community. As a country expands and a population increases, the size of each council should stay the same, but there should be more of them. So you don't have one law for the entire country - so what? Many of the problems in society are due to the fact that there is nowhere else to go - everywhere is the same. I'd like to live somewhere with sane drug and privacy laws, and I don't want to have to leave my country to do that. We need to wake people up to the fact that laws are made up, and we can change them if we want to.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm... As someone who's served the country to ensure you have a right to vote I have to agree. You have a right to vote, even an arguably moral reason to vote, but the electoral system is so fraught with insanity that your vote truly means little.
This does not, in my mind, absolve one of their duty to vote. I consider it my duty to vote (and at least bitch enough in the many emails that I send to my congress critters) and hope that the remainder of the citizens feel the same way. It's a false hope, let's not go there. Allow me some shards of hope.
I do discount the opinion of those who don't vote. I don't go so far as to say that they're not entitled to an opinion. I just say that I'm entitled to not listen to their opinion or to not give their opinion as much weight as I would if they'd shown themselves to be an active participant in this so-called democracy.
Voting doesn't do shit in the larger scale other than give us the illusion of having accomplished the task of making our opinion known. This is, to me, true and yet I still vote. I'm all for changing the system but until it is changed I will cast my vote.
On the idea of accomplishing something...
Voting and protesting...
Letters and marches...
Emails and lobbying...
Those haven't done much in the past few years.
A million man march wouldn't even phase Washington D.C. these days. So... I've been thinking, a dangerous act, and I have a solution but we might get arrested.
Get a million people WITH cars together. During rush hour, downtown, when they're breaking for a holiday, drive into the city from the direction you came from and drive as far as you can into it until the gridlock stops you. Get out of our vehicles and stand there or simply sit in your vehicle and hold your horn button down. Do so until we have press coverage.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
The D's had two years control of Congress to withdraw from the war, but did not, so I hold both parties equally to blame for our continued presence in a foreign power.
If you consider a majority, but not enough of one to surmount a presidential veto or overcome a filibuster the power to withdraw from the war, that would be true.
It really isn't, though.
Re:Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a REPUBLIC, not a democracy. What matters is to uphold the laws that ensure protection of the individual, not "majority rules".
Which is why the current system is bullshit. This one man/woman, one vote is crap. The Founding Fathers never intended for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to vote. They intended for educated land owners to have this right. It was done this way on the theory that if they had something at stake they would be responsible voters.
We should restore this but extend it to educated individuals with the basic skills to read and write. This way people would know the issues because they could get them from several sources and not just what the talking idiot box tells them. If informed people voted instead of the masses then you wouldn't get people who have no clue what they are doing or have the skills to carry out their agenda. You also wouldn't have hordes of idiots voting for someone just because of the color of his skin.
Voting should be a privilege, and not a right.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree here.
For one, the founders disagreed wildly on exactly who should have full citizenship and the vote. Where they agreed on, was that each citizen should have full human rights, including the right to full representation in the government that represents them. That's not a priviledge, because it's "We the people," not "We, the property of the government."
I find your argument especially flawed because, for YEARS now, the Republican party has aimed more and more of its efforts at portraying itself as anti-intellectual. I mean, it's not a mistake that we have a yale graduate who pretends to be a simple-minded cowboy, is it?
Also, I would imagine as many, if not more, people are voting for McCain on account of the color of his skin.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't support the philosophy of socialism, which is really wealth redistribution from the working middle class to the lazy bums.
You have been grossly misinformed as to the nature of socialism and its implication on tax policy- you might find this useful [wikipedia.org].
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vote (Score:5, Informative)
To my knowledge this claim has been debunked [mediamatters.org], and the Obama campaign still firmly stands behind the original $250,000 cutoff.
If you don't want to believe them, that's fine, and another issue altogether; but this crap about "surrogates" is ridiculous. The Obama campaign has been clear and stable on their plans from the time they laid them out until now, all that's changing is how other people are talking about them or interpreting them (in particular, the press to some extent misinterpreted the original plan and presented it as a lot more win-win than it was). Regardless, Gov. Richardson has no authority to set Obama's policy, so I don't know why anyone considers that statement in any way indicative of Obama's stance.
Frankly I don't care about whether anyone got a tax cut under Clinton - whatever he did, his tenure in office resulted in one of the most steady periods of economic growth that this country has ever seen, so his policies were clearly within the bounds of what we require to thrive (not to attribute the success of his economy to his policies or the failure of ours today to Bush's, though - I don't think presidential policy ultimately has a very large effect on the economy, at least in any predictable way, to be perfectly honest - if there was such an effect, we could calculate the "right" answer to these political questions, but every calculation I've seen comes up with a different result, so there's just way too much interpretation involved to be sure that there's any causative effect at all). I think that's the most we can hope for.
I'm not sure if Obama will cross that line or not; I suppose you probably think he will, and I sympathize a bit with that fear. It's not so much that I think his stated policies are over the line (we've had other periods with parameters at those levels and we came through them just fine), but that I worry that a full Democrat Congress will push things even further, to a ridiculous point. I half expect that things may get so nutso that we'll swing the other direction four years from now and play political ping-pong for the rest of my life, each party screwing the country further into the ground with each tap of the paddle.
Where's the freaking reasonable middle when you need it? Sheesh!
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with you! That sounds great. Screw taxes. The government will just waste our money anyway. Let's abolish taxes. Though it will be hard for me to get to your house to play with our extra money without keeping up the road between our houses. Why don't we pool our money and pay somebody to fill in the potholes? While we're at it, we should take up a collection to pay for some security and firefighters since I'd like a fire truck to show up when my house is on fire and somebody to keep those damn uneducated kids out of my yard. I don't know about you but I can't afford a fire truck or private security--but if we get our community to all chip in I bet we could. We'll want to maintain some control over those people we're giving authority to as well, so we should have some kind of association of people we'll pick to set up rules for them to follow. We should also think about taking up a collection to educate the street kids, since we don't really want them out on our streets setting our houses on fire and shooting at us instead of working on our roads, carting off our garbage, and teaching our own kids, and it doesn't seem all that safe to just shoot back at them.
With all the collections we'll be taking, maybe we should appoint somebody to control all the money and dole it out for these pet projects of ours, since we'll be too busy playing with our money for our own personal enjoyment to govern it all. Maybe the same people we appoint to set up the rules could do it. We should come up with a good name for this organization, something conservative-sounding and important. Maybe we could call it the 'government' or something.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Informative)
Yeaaaah... That's not how it works, remotely. Welfare doesn't pay out equal to a living wage, and doesn't remotely cover the expense of maintaining a child.
The fact remains, welfare isn't actually a significant drain on the average taxpayer. Social security, maybe, but social security benefits are specifically not based on poverty, and you stand to benefit from them as much as anyone else.
Reagan actually made up the example he used when he coined the term, and the fact is, while welfare fraud does exist, it's never been the TERRIFYING HORROR DISEASE that alarmist rhetoric has made it out to be.
Also, through both community work and less fortunate family members, I can tell you for certain that that is not how HUD housing works. The income does scale, but even with extremely low income (my mother has no steady work, my brother unemployed), they pay $750 in rent per month. Add to that that, if they find work that brings them up to the poverty line (collectively, not singly), they have to move out.
I very much hate to say this, but you are uninformed. Do actual research. If you're interested, I can find the names of good books on the subject for you; I don't have them off the top of my head.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Our government's authority is only limited by the ability of people to organize opposition to the government. If a few people, acting as agents of the government, ask companies to violate the law and enable the government to violate the constitution, and those companies say yes, then where is the people's protection? And then newspaper reporters discover this illegal espionage, and the paper's editors choose to suppress the story for a year because "there's a war".
And then five years later, Congress passes a law saying that the companies that did the snooping on the government's behalf get away with it scot free.
The Constitution is only as good as the people enforcing it. If the President can create an emergency that enables him to do what he wants, then the Constitution is irrelavent.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a common misconception, the Government doesn't derive any power from the constitution. It derives it's power from the citizenry's agreement to be governed under those terms.
Trust me in a country with a population ~300m there's far more of us than there are of them. We don't have to agree to continue the current method of governance. The founding fathers gave us militias and protection for weapons for that very reason.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
The founders also gave us a staggering amount of protected freedoms and legal mechanisms to fight tyranny. The reason being that armed insurrection is horrible, leads to much higher casualties on the side that isn't an established military, and is more likely to fail the more developed a society is. Not to mention that it leaves the country open to outside attack in a way nothing else does.
It's in everyone's interests to see that it doesn't come to that.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to change the system, vote for anyone except a Democrat or Republican. Any time another party looks like it might be competitive it will scare both parties into better behavior.
Re:Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
They blow their wad (both financially and enthusiasm wise) on a hopeless bid for the highest office.
This country would probably be a lot better off today if both Nader and Perot had gone for Senate seats instead (not an endorsement of either of their policies, just rooting for strong alternate parties). Then they each would have had strong voices within the system, and could have leveraged their seats to continue to build up awareness and support for their parties.
Instead they spent a whole bunch of money on failed presidential campaigns, enthusiasm faded and now they and the people that supported them are in the same position they started in, on the outside looking in.
Re:Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually LIKE the electoral college. I think it's a good way to give low-population states a bigger voice. To use the worst-case as an example, Wyoming only has half a million people and so would count as about only 0.2% in a pure popular vote election. Safe to say that no candidate would pay any attention at all to Wyoming no matter how close the race. Because they get 3 electors, though, they effectively more than double their vote in the Presidential election.
Is it the most fair way to do this? No. But I'd want to make sure that anything that replaces the electoral college would still protect states with a low population.
Personally, I'd love to see some kind of preference-based voting done at least at the state level to see if it would work on a large scale.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a believer in the whole "one person, one vote" thing huh?
No, not in a federation. You have to make the federation appealing to states with low populations or they won't join (which we did). Now that they've joined, it's not really fair to change the rules without protecting their interests.
There's already a system to "protect" smaller states; the Senate.
And there's "already a system to protect smaller states"; the electoral college. Both have been there since the beginning. Why is the Senate a good idea and the electoral college a bad one?
Re:Vote (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
You might be joking, but if you voted for the person you felt was the best choice, you have nothing to apologize for.
As I look back on my presidential voting record, I've voted 3 times for a third party, and 3 times for one of the two major parties because I felt the election was "too important." As I reexamine my record, the only ones I regretted were the ones that I voted for the mainstream party.
Here's what you can expect with either McCain or Obama: at least $4 trillion more in debt by the end of the first term (McCain worse than Obama) and increased income redistribution (Obama worse than McCain).
As far as education goes, since that's the topic at hand, I don't believe taking money from people to pay for other people's college education is exactly "fair." I support vouchers, but that's a state matter, so neither candidate (even if they supported it, which Obama doesn't) can actually do anything about vouchers. Obama also hates home-schooling, which goes right along with what a lot of slashdotter's seem to believe.
Both will make energy cost more. Nuclear is expensive. Obama is now promising to "bankrupt" any coal power provider if they wanted to build a new coal power plant.
I'm not going to say they are the "same," but frankly, there isn't much of a choice.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
No, if I don't vote it will make no difference whatsoever. I live in a state that will definitely go Democratic. Unlike 2 years ago, there is no one running for office that is contested. Given our electoral system, my vote cannot do anything other than possibly give an independent candidate enough votes to receive election funding and a place on the ballot next time. Unfortunately this time, there is no Ross Perot to get my vote.
I will vote, as my civic obligation. But if I chose to not vote, please do not assume it is because I am too lazy to do so. It has nothing to do with it, and none of your points make any sense to me.
1. My opinion really doesn't count anyway, my vote can't help anyone get elected unless I change residence to a more independent state.
2. The two party system gives me every right to complain
3. Every time I vote for a candidate I regret it anyway, cause all we get is more of the same - bigger government, more taxes & more intrusion. Ross Perot got my vote twice and I have regretted he didn't win each time. I can't remember the name of the independent candidates the last two times, and regrettably we ended up with W.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Informative)
Bob Barr / Wayne Root: Libertarian Party
Charles Baldwin / Darrell Castle: / Alaskan Independance Party, Reform Party
Cynthia McKinney / Rosa Clemente: Independent, Green Party
Ralph Nader / Matt Gonzalez: No Party Affiliation
You can check the facts yourself at VoteSmart.org [votesmart.org]
If I don't vote I can't complain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly me. I thought the First Amendment allowed me to bitch until my heart is content.
I'm tired of hearing that I can't complain if I don't vote. Who made up this mantra? The people who want you to vote for them.
And the masses have bought it. They think they really have a say in what happens in government. Ha!
By choosing not to vote I *am* making my statement: I don't like the candidates or the system.
Enough with Groupthink.
Re:If I don't vote I can't complain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Until "Neither" appears on the ballots not voing is a perfect valid way to voice your opinion, sadly it hard to tell if people are protesting or being lazy sometimes.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
So vote if you'd like, but don't fool yourself into thinking you're morally superior because you did, or that you really had an effect. In Wyoming, your vote is about 1 in 150,000 of a share in electing 3 electors, who are a 3 in 538 share of electing the president. And that's the best you can do. Every other state is worse.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Your opinion doesn't count.
So vote, it doesn't matter who or why, just go to the polls so you get a sticker which gives your uninformed opinion the weight it didn't have before.
you're not entitled to complain
See above.
you'll have several years to regret it
But who cares? You voted, you're free to complain.
Vote if you actually agree with one of the candidates.
Voting for the "lesser of 2 evils" is still voting for evil.
Voting outside of the 2 main parties isn't throwing your vote away.
If you do go to the polls and don't know anything about any of the presidential / local candidates, don't vote for that position.
If you do go to the polls and don't know anything about the state and local measures, don't vote for that question.
Casting an uninformed vote is worse than being informed and making the decision not to vote. At least the non-voter didn't waste any time at the polls casting votes they didn't truly believe in. And the uninformed voter truly wasted their vote.
There's still time to actually read up on the candidates and their positions.
Look at the state and local level as well.
Find a copy of your local ballot and at least read the questions you'll be voting on. Research them further, they're rarely written clear enough to be informed solely on the 1 or 2 sentence description.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Funny)
Voting for the "lesser of 2 evils" is still voting for evil.
Vote for Cthulhu! [theelderparty.com] Why settle for a lesser evil?
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
So, IF you must be an uniformed voter, and are going to vote. Vote third party. Since you don't know who you are voting for anyways, you were already going to throw your vote away. Since there is not yet a chance for the third party candidates to win, you do not run the risk of accidentally electing a kook, AND you help to put a scare into the two primary parties.
Heck, if you were not going to vote because you don't like either candidate, vote third party for the same reason.
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say I go to a restaurant, the only place to eat in town, and there are two dishes on offer. One is a rotten fish, full of maggots. The other is a burger made from cow shit. If I walk out, do I not have the right to complain about being hungry?
It's the teachers, and the parents. (Score:5, Insightful)
The federal government really isn't the appropriate place to deal with any kind of primary educational policy.
Great plan you have for being competitive w/ China (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called investing in our workforce to remain competitive in a global economy. I realize long-term planning isn't the Republican's forte; sorry we see things differently.
Re:Great plan you have for being competitive w/ Ch (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not the government's job to plan things for us. It is hilariously bad at it, anyway. It is the government's job to protect our liberties so we can do things ourselves.
We are perfectly capable of organizing our own local educational systems. Some of them won't be as good as others, but they can learn from the ones that are successful.
Having the government plan it, and run it, will just guarantee that the quality continues to degrade universally.
Re:Great plan you have for being competitive w/ Ch (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so let me see if I understand you...
My parents immigrated to this country when I was 2. My dad had only a high school education, and my mom a middle school education. My brother and I are the first generation of our family to totally grow up in the US and get college educations.
So, if we become financially successful, and can afford to give our children a better education, you want to deny us that "In the interest of trying to give people some sembelance of an equal playing field?"
That is just immoral.
We went to crappy city schools, and still learned well, because our parents instilled in us a sense of how important our education is. There is nothing the government can do to take the place of that.
Education will never be equal for everyone, and that is the major problem with the ideologues that wish it to be so. It is futile and can only degrade our education system on the whole, not "average things out."
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's saying it's not an education or school problem. It's a parents and social issue. Education is not valued in lower incomes. For whatever reason it's not the 'cool' thing to do. When a higher income family sends their kids to private school they are not only spending their money to do that, but showing that they value an education. I was poor growing up and went to some pretty poor public schools, but my parents pushed education from day 1 as a way to better myself. When I talk to my teacher friends today they can't even get a parent to call them back to discuss their child. More money is not going to solve this issue, and neither is sending these kids to 'better' schools. A does of harsh reality is the only way to fix it at this point. It's time to stop blaming their current situation on everyone else and do something about it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You really think the federal government should be involved in the education of our children? There are over 13,000 school districts in the United States, each and every one of them with their own distinct needs and situations. What possible help could the federal government provide for them? The local government knows what is best for its students and should be the sole decision maker for them too. Interference from the federal (and even state) will just gets in the way because they're making decisions
Re:It's the teachers, and the parents. (Score:4, Insightful)
McCain... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see him actively supporting homeschooling as well, and we know he's going to be against vouchers.
The biggest problem, however, will NEVER be government involvement. I don't care who is in power, but the ONLY real influence on children's education is PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. It doesn't matter what teachers, principals, politicians, and everyone else does if a parent doesn't care about how well their kid is doing in school - it's nearly too great a hurdle to overcome.
I think that the only thing that I have ever seen that may do something is a performance-based state-sponsored tuition program (like Louisiana TOPS or Georgia HOPE) which is directly tied to secondary school performance with college tuition on the line - there are a LOT of parents in those states that I know of who pushed their kids to get good grades simply because there was a near-free college tuition at stake (it's what paid for my own tuition at Louisiana Tech).
Re:McCain... (Score:5, Informative)
MAYBE Obama will get rid of NCLB, but I don't see him getting away from the typical left position of supporting the teachers' unions goals and just throwing money at education without real standards.
He plans on reforming it, not eliminating it. From his site [barackobama.com]:
Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.
What I emphasized does seem to align with your assessment of throwing money at the problem. Those are the best details I can come up with so don't ask me how he plans to improve accountability ... I wish he had thrown out some metrics or requirements that he was aiming for. But if he did that, we might be able to hold him to it!
How do you grade performance? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell me, how do you "grade" teachers? Why can't you simply go to your PTA meetings and your teacher in service meetings and be a responsible parent and know what your children are doing?
The reason i don't want teacher "appraisals" outside of what a school district does in and of itself is because some people would rate teachers poorly because they're not christian enough, not moral enough or not forcing "family values" enough or other non public educational focused education based issues.
Start by giving teachers livable wages, start by funding real programs that put books, science and math into students hands. Start challenging and teaching kids AT school. Get away from homework, let kids live a life after school and make school about learning.
BTW, if the middle class is doing better, so will the schools. Fix it from the bottom up, not top down.
Obama'08
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're a... wrong person (Score:5, Informative)
(Note my restraint)
In most districts, schools have a mandatory 165-180 day school year. With holidays and spring break, this makes for a school year of at least 9 months and often closer to 10. I know of no teacher that gets 4 months off for summer vacation. I have to believe you're just totally lying. Add to this, the fact that most teachers require a couple weeks to prepare for the start of the school year.
However, that doesn't really count here, since in most cases they're not paid for it.
I also knew a teacher who taught three classes and a study hall. He was getting paid $18K a year. Most teachers have a mandatory 7 hour work day with a 30 minute lunch. However, its common for teachers to spend 2-4 hours of time after the end of the school day preparing for the next.
I know a few teachers who'd love to show you where to put your head for implying that they were too lazy to try and get a second job to fill out those last four hours of spare time they have a day.
I suspect the real problem here is that you simply don't have a clue what you're talking about. You cherry picked an example which made you bitter and never used another neuron to think about it.
Re:How do you grade performance? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd vote for your platform.
I'll add this bit.
Retrain retired professionals to be teachers. They are going to need to re-fund their retirement anyways after this economic dump.
Provide college grad students with opportunities to be teaching aids in local elementary schools, taking some of the stress off the teachers. All they have to do is show up and be decent human beings. They can get work credits towards tuition. I say grad students because they are more likely to have gone past the stage where they need to party every night.
Re:McCain... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in the only comprehensive, nation wide assesment of student achievement (not just self-selected college bound seniors), Massachusetts ranks #1 in both verbal and math.
We rank in the top 10 for both teacher student ratio, as well as in teacher wages adjusted for local cost of living. So it is true that we throw money at the problem.
The difference in the percentage of kids who are proficient on state standards vs. proficient according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing is a measure of how "tough" a standard is. Massachusetts has the lowest gap, only 5%. The next smallest gap is California, at 27%. So we also throw standards against the problem.
The way I see it is that we treat education as important enough to spend money on, but also important enough to pay very close attention to what happens after that money is spent. As a result, we get the best results in the country. The teachers' unions aren't completely on board with every aspect of this, nor should they be. No program is perfect. But teaching is an honored and well compensated profession in my state, and it's probably not coincidental that teachers are not a significant barrier to progress here.
Maybe not every state is willing to spend the money and effort on this that we do. Maybe there are other ways to get results. But I doubt looking for scapegoats helps as much as rolling up your sleeves and working on the problem.
Intelligent Design (Score:5, Informative)
... belongs in the philosophy class, not science. Science is a set of facts seeking a conclusion to support them- Intelligent Design is a conclusion seeing a set of facts to support it.
In a philosophy or comparative religions class? Absolutely- go nuts! Be sure to include a whole bunch of other religious theory, including Hindu creation myths etc. Would be a fun class.
But as science? ... Do not want.
Re:Intelligent Design (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Intelligent Design (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, teaching creationism to biologists and alchemy to chemists can be very useful for helping them understand the society and the role of evidence in science, but teachers and students have limited time and this time has to be invested in the most rewarding activity, and I wonder whether teaching creationism or alchemy is more rewarding than teaching more advanced biology or chemistry. Perhaps a short introduction is ok, but too much time spent on it would be counterproductive?
Re:Intelligent Design (Score:4, Informative)
Not the Federal Government's Job (Score:5, Insightful)
Do Over? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we vote for a do over all the choices suck?
Smarter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither candidate will make the next generation smarter. Either one might put policies in place to help the next generation get education, but ultimately learning happens inside the heads of the students.
That said, Obama looks a lot more tuned-in when it comes to educational issues. His keynote address to the American Library Association's conference [senate.gov] in Chicago (2005) pretty clearly demonstrates his commitment to education, particularly literacy programs and such.
Whereas McCain is, well, not. Remember that McCain proposed a governmental spending freeze as a remedy for the fiscal crisis? With a few exceptions, such as Defense. Well, education was not on the list of exceptions.
Err.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy, just think logically. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't McCain properly defend his education policy? It is the most important issue facing our nation, and it is where McCain is leaps and bounds ahead of Obama!
We have the best private education system in the world. We have the best college education system in the world, both public and private. We have one of the worst public school systems in the developed world. Why? What's the difference between our tremendously successful college system and private system, and our horrendous public school system? Guess what, it's NOT MONEY. Per-student spending in public schools is almost DOUBLE what it is in private schools! Surprised? You certainly didn't hear that in tonight's debate. Only the absolute top most elite private schools cost more per student than we spend on our public schools, and the difference is not much, just 10-20% more. And students at those elite schools get WAY more in return for that extra 10-20%. Oh, and public school teachers earn more than private school teachers, so that's not it either.
So what's the difference between how our public, government-run schools operate, and how our colleges and private schools operate? Here are the differences:
1. No teachers unions in private schools and colleges.
2. School choice: private schools and colleges must compete for your dollars. Public schools don't; the government decides which school you must attend, based on what neighborhood you live in.
Let's go into #1.
The teachers union is the most dangerous organization on the planet. They are more of a threat to our nation than Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined. They are ruining the education of our children and destroying our only hope of maintaining our prosperity and peace.
The teachers union has made it impossible to fire teachers for poor performance. To be fired, a teacher basically has to break the law or molest a student. They can't be fired for simply being a terrible teacher. It's gotten so bad that at public schools across the country, bad teachers are paid full-time salaries to simply sit in the teachers' lounge all day and not teach! Schools are forced to do this because they don't want these bad teachers anywhere near their students, but they haven't done anything that the union says they can be fired for.
In private schools and colleges, teacher pay is based on performance. In public schools, because of teachers union demands, pay is based on seniority (i.e. how long they've been working there). You can't pay good teachers more and bad teachers less, and therefore you can't attract and reward the best teaching talent. Public teachers as a whole lose the motivation that drives the private sector to work harder and better: more money.
Finally, the teachers union is 100% opposed to school choice. Why? Because it would force all public teachers to work harder and compete for their job, just like everyone does in every job in the private sector.
And this leads directly into Point #2.
It is school choice, in the form of vouchers, that will save our public education system. The way our system works now, schools tell the government how many students they have each year, and the government funds them with X amount of dollars per student. The way school choice will work is this: instead of the government giving those dollars to the school, that money will be given directly to the parents in the form of a voucher. The parents can then take that voucher and use it to send their kids to any school they want, public or private.
What affect will this have? Competition. The same thing that makes our private schools and colleges perform so well. They'll have to wise up, stop wasting money, become more efficient, and start teaching better, or else they'll start losing students. Parents will choose to send their kids to better-performing schools.
Cue the teachers union yelling "But you'll be taking money away from already struggling schools!". Of course, that's the point, and that's a good thing - because the struggling schoo
Re:It's easy, just think logically. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's easy, just think logically. (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about hyperbole.
That is a rather large generalization. Not all districts are the same. In some districts, a teacher can be fired for any reason. One of the problems is that there are not enough teachers. If someone is performing poorly, you can't just fire them because there is no one to replace them. Why? Because no one will take the job for the pay. I've personally known many individuals who love children and love to teach. Financially they could not afford to live on a public teacher's salary and had to pursue other employment. That is everyone's loss and that really is the root cause of the problem.
If we have learned anything in history, it is that many complex problems like education are not easily solved by a panacea. School vouchers is just one thing we can do. But they won't solve the problem if you don't actually address root cause of the problem. Eight years ago, the solution was standardized testing. Then Governor George Bush said "Look what it has done for Texas." Having lived in Texas, I can say that solution has done more to harm education than help it. When they tied school funding to standardized testing, it had the opposite effect of raising the standard of education. Given limited resources and funding, schools have started teaching the test as opposed to general education.
Re:It's easy, just think logically. (Score:4, Interesting)
3. Private schools get to choose who they admit and keep, which allows them to only teach smart, well-behaved, native English speakers with parents who care about education.
I presume you have extensive experience with private schools on which to base this analysis? Or are you just spouting something you heard elsewhere, and thought sounded good? I thought so.
The reality is that some private schools do that, but not all and not, IMO, the best ones.
The best school any of my kids went to was a private school that *specialized* in problem cases and was founded by parents who started by homeschooling their severely disabled (but brilliant) son because the public schools failed him. Unable to give him the time he needed and still hold down jobs, they decided to take in other students and start a school, using their large home plus some "portables" in the back yard.
When it became clear the public schools were failing my son, we found a way to come up with the tuition for the private school and were surprised to find that it required far less of our attention to his education than the public school had. In fact, his private school teachers tried not to assign homework, and the principal provided reports on behavior issues, but handled them herself. The school also had a large number of native Spanish-speaking children, and used this fact to help all of the English-speaking children learn Spanish (Spanish was part of their curriculum in every year, K-6).
The school's students consistently averaged in the 80th percentile on standardized tests, in spite of an overabundance of kids with major learning disabilities, so academic quality was excellent. The kids were happy -- my son LOVED that school. The key to their success was hiring excellent teachers, keeping class sizes very small (NO class larger than 10 students, and most smaller) and ignoring all of the administrative overhead found in public schools. All of the teachers took a pay cut when they left the public school system, but they were okay with that because it was a much more rewarding environment to teach in.
Oh, and the final nail in the coffin for public schools, as far as I'm concerned: The tuition for this fantastic school is 20% LESS than what the state spends every year. And tuition includes all books, paper, school supplies, TWO hot meals per day (breakfast and lunch), field trips, etc. We never paid a penny more than the $3500 tuition. The only thing the school didn't provide was bus service, but the school had extended "latch key" hours before and after class so that working parents could drop their kids off on the way to work and pick them up on the way home.
The state spends $5000 per year per student for the public schools, and that doesn't include the $500+ per year that parents are expected to come up with for meals, book fees, school supplies, field trip fees, extra-curricular activities, etc. It does include bus service, though.
If we want to improve education in this country, we need to break the monopoly held by the inefficient, bureaucratic and ineffective public schools. We need vouchers, to introduce some competition.
BTW, the school I'm talking about is only K-6, so my son moved into the public Junior High for 7th grade. We tried it for two years, but realized that the public schools were continuing to fail him, that the only education he was getting was what we (my wife, really) taught him in the evenings at home, so this year we've switched to homeschool, and he's once again getting an education.
Give them something to aspire to (Score:3, Insightful)
In terms of education here we have
1) Obama - raised by a single mother to a kenyan father who buggered off, progressed through school and demonstrating ability and prowess at all stages before coming top in Harvard Law.
2) McCain - Rich family with a history in the services, graduated near the bottom of his class, married a richer woman on the second try. Paired up with Palin who things that education is elitist.
Seriously when it comes to education shouldn't we be teaching kids than anyone can become the leader of the country if they work hard and are smart enough not just that you have the right set of bigotry and name-calling to get yourself elected?
Given that in the US education is a State (or lower) level then this isn't a big area for impact at the Federal level, but the best thing the US President could do for the children of the country is demonstrate the value of a good education.
Only Obama does that.
Re:What was Obama's GPA at Columbia? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't he's hiding anything, it took me 2 seconds to find it with google:
3.8 GPA ---Columbia Poly Sci major with a specialty in international relations.
4.0 GPA with high honors. ---Harvard Law
Can you define "education" please? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I learned anything in high school, it's that in this country "education" no longer means the process of learning. Instead, school has become a daycare for parents to send their kids to until their old enough to move out. I may not be in the majority but I learned very little from actual classes and tests. I received my own computer at the age of 15 and taught myself about hardware and how to program, neither of which my school offered any classes about beyond keyboarding. Now I'm 24 and a senior systems administrator for a large dedicated server management company... thanks to our country's educational system? I think not.
Parents aren't going to give up their free daycare so if I support any educational plan, it's going to be one that involves getting kids who want to learn out of the classroom and into environments where they can use their time more productively.
My Prediction: Failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless of who is elected, I feel that both candidates have the wrong attitude towards government. I feel that the role of government is simply to protect our lives and our property from one another. Both candidates espouse statist ideals that want to take away from our self governance or continue policies that take away our power.
Both throw out petty scraps of meat to the people to get them to vote for their demise. This year, they throw the meager pickings of tax cuts. Perhaps four years from now it will be the threat of terrorists again, or perhaps health care.
Both voted for a plan to give hundreds of billions of dollars to failed banks that gave loans to people who deserved none. Let them fail. The consequences of propping up zombie banks are greater than of letting them fail and having the market adjust.
Tomorrow I go to the polls to vote Libertarian, to fight the establishment.
Federal government has little to do with education (Score:4, Informative)
Promises about improvement in education by federal politicians are pure pandering.
See this chart [ed.gov].
See how small a percent of education is actually funded by the federal government. It should be obvious that even significant changes to federal spending will have an insignificant effect. They spend in a whole year what they spend in Iraq in less than 3 months.
Does it really matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
One that will NOT help science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the last 30 years I've watched well-funded lobby groups essentially take over the entire political process. Since these groups are generally better funded when connected to commercial interests, the political process has once again become beholden to big industrial concerns (it was even more so 100 years ago). It's not that lobby groups are bad, pre se, its that they are, by definition, lopsided; they present a single view of the world that may or may no be countered by the "other side" of the issue. As elections become more and more expensive, this process has accelerated to its own quasi-democratic existence.
Obama managed to use Dean's model to rally the individual for his funding. He's still beholden to large groups, but so much less so than any presidential candidate over the last decade or so. This is a wonderful opportunity to mute down the influence of lobby groups, because he won't be committing political suicide by doing so.
And no-one's talking about it. It's completely off the radar.
Maury
"Last Known Good" Constitution rollback? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Constitution has been trodden upon these last 8 years (and more). Here is just one citation, for those who need one. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/13/1830202 [slashdot.org]
Has ANY of the candidates described the steps they would take to roll us back from the Constitutional abyss?
The inference has been that the current administration has been abusing its power in this area. It strikes me as "illogical" that they would take such steps toward setting up a surveillance society, only to hand the keys to the Bastille to "another" administration.
Help me understand.
The most important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm personally a libertarian, but one of the few things I think the government should be spending money on is education and scientific research. Education is an investment in the future. If we raise the level of education in this country, encourage students to like learning, and really progress we will remain a superpower, if only because we will dominate technology and science in the world.
We need to pay teachers a competitive wage to get the really bright people interested in being teachers. And we need to give them the resources to really inspire the next generation. A good teacher can make the difference in someone's life. We also need to fund programs to give smarter children access to the resources they need to jump to the next level, not just keep them with the average person. And we need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator - the slowest person in a class should not be dragging everyone else down.
For college, we should be paying students who do well and who aren't going into high paying careers like Wall Street or lawyers. If you offer someone the ability to go to the top private schools for free if they later become a teacher or scientist a lot more people will do that. Higher up, we should be paying more money to graduate students, postdocs, and scientists. Only the most dedicated stay in the field when you get paid so little (disclaimer: I am a graduate student in astrophysics right now, and I've seen plenty of people leave for higher paying jobs in other fields after finishing).
And instead of welfare, we should be getting people educated so that they can work in a more demanding job. I would much rather pay $50,000 for someone to get a college degree and then start working at a good wage then pay someone $20,000 as welfare.
How can I justify this based on my libertarian leanings? Because it's an investment. If the government funds someone's education and it costs $100,000, but then that person is able to make $150k/year instead of $50k, the government will get it's money back in a matter of years. Hopefully there will be fewer criminals because more people will be interested in working instead of doing nothing. Obviously money won't solve everything, but it will be a good start and personally I would much rather see the money currently being spent on social programs invested in the future, not in the present.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you happen to believe in creationism (like many do in the USA) then this is the trigger to vote for McCain/Palin. If every intelligent person voted, these elections would never be too close to call. Also the nefarious involvement of unscrupulous people doing bad things to win, decreases the predictability of an outcome, when both sides are doing it.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Funny)
It should be known (the media is hiding the fact), that there is a special second polling day for registered republicans. This is to help alleviate lines. This Wednesday is a special extra day o voting only for you.
Don't let the unscrupulous liberal media get away with hiding this fact, stand up for your right to vote without lines on Wednesday November 5th!
Remember this special day is for registered republicans only, democrats and independents must vote tomorrow.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be honest here. Unless Palin is actually teaching the class her outlook on evolution has zero to do with her relation to education. Infact, keeping her in as a governor is probably more likely to get creationism pushed on more students than her being a vice president. On the federal level all she's going to do is go on and on about budgets. That's it.
If every intelligent person voted, these elections would never be too close to call.
Intelligent by who's standards? If your idea of intelligent is the normal Slashdot "everyone who thinks like me" kind of thing than I'm sure you're right. As for me? I know tons of vastly intelligent people who have some ideas that are far from my own. Enough to make me question who's really right. And out of these same tons of people many probably think creationism has some glimmer of truth to it. It doesn't bother me because I'm not asking them to teach biology to me.
Even if I were the difference between the evolutionist camp and the creationist camp means jack shit in the real world. How about we leave that stupid little debate behind and work on the idea that we're graduating kids that can't balance a checkbook. A fucking checkbook has a lot more to do with how this country progresses than whatever theory you have on the origins and progression of life. I bet you that if everyone in this country believed in creationism but could balance a checkbook we'd be a lot better off. We haven't even go an acceptable majority of the kids graduating to cover the basics of everyday life and we're busy bickering over evolution? Huh?
Also the nefarious involvement of unscrupulous people doing bad things to win, decreases the predictability of an outcome, when both sides are doing it.
It's just another reason to reject the two party system if you ask me. When we can finally shed ourselves of the "us or them" maybe we'll also let go of the hate that accompanies it.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Evangelicals want to attack it, to make students skeptical about science in general. They want to move towards a magical world view where cause and effect are not necessarily linked. Why would a person be interested in balancing a check book, if they literally believe that "God will provide " for them? I mean all they have to do is pray hard enough and eventually they'll be rich too. Or at least that's what a lot of evangelical churches are teaching. They teach that poor people weren't pious or good enough, because obviously if they were, God would have provided for them
I haven't seen anything to indicate that more than a vocal minority of creationists believe this kind of foolishness. It's popular to assume that if someone believes in creationism or ID, they're morons who think that thunder means that God is angry with them. This is reinforced because we all stand around telling each other it must be so.
The funny thing is, though, that I know a lot of religious people who are also intelligent. If the subject weren't taboo in the work place, you would probably find that you do as well. These people are successful in their fields (business and science); and they believe that there is merit to both creationism and evolution and that the two are not mutually exclusive. They certainly don't advocate that science not be taught, or that the scientific method be abandoned in favor of faith and magic.
Few of them even care whether "ID" is taught alongside evolution or not - these are people who go about their lives, usually rather successfully. Personally, I believe these "quiet faithful" are the majority of our society's religious people. You might be surprised how many of them you know - and at how little interest they have in shoving their religion down your throat. On the other hand, they /do/ get tired of being considered morons because they have faith in a 'higher power'. I think this is a large part of why McCain is able to make this a close race.
It's much easier to tell ourselves how smart we are when we can paint all of "them" with a single brush as fanatical morons who sit on their asses and wait for god to provide. As is often the case, though, stereotypes only actually fit the smallest minority of the group being classified.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent != ability to make good choices. There are plenty of folks of average intelligence who excel at making good decisions and plenty of brilliant ones who continually fuck up their decisions. Intelligent people are subject to irrationality, self-interest and bias, just like everyone else.
I'm sure that this isn't the popular opinion among the alpha dorks who worship on the altar of IQ, but so be it.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at it from this side of the pond, it is not quite so clear. Compared with socialist-leaning political types we see in Europe, Obama is seen as a very centrist politician. However compared with the usual types of politicians we are used to in this country, it will be a significant shift toward the left if Obama gets the presidency and the Democrats keep control of congress. While this may be only a 2 year shift in power, looking at what happened to Bill Clinton and the Democrats previously, it is nevertheless makes me very nervous to think what might happen in those 2 years.
There is no candidate or their party that represents my more libertarian views on the world. Small government is not represented by either major party, personal gun ownership is shakily represented by the Republicans, and freedom of self-expression is shakily represented by the Democrats (for some history on the changes to what that party represents - look at what the Democrats did to the students in Chicago in the early 60s).
Obama may look right to you. However, I feel he represents the lesser of two evils between him and Senator Clinton. McCain would have been perfect 10 years ago. Now he just seems like a bitter old-man-puppet, who picked a hot "young" thing as his running mate and now will make all of us pay the price of a Democratic President due to his inability to pick a good VP candidate.
It is with pride that I go to the polls tomorrow, especially as a non-native citizen allowed the priveledge to vote via my naturalization. It is with some amount of shame that I pick a candidate that I agree less than 50% with on my topics of interest (including McCain, Obama, Bob Barr and Bill the Cat).
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is, frankly, because your libertarian views are stupid.
No, seriously. "Libertarianism' is a scam invented by the rich, who want the government to only do things that benefit them and no one else. (Like run a police force and court system, to keep people from stealing their shit or living on their land for free.)
They hide this by making claims about the 'original' purpose of government, which is, in fact, exactly that, to protect the rich, although they won't come out and say that.
More to the point, they then make the rather absurd claim that they should get this while paying as little taxes as possible.
While a large percentage of Americans haven't figured out the premise of the party and have a sort of grudging respect for it as the underdog, under no circumstances do they actually want to implement those policies.
Thus libertarians who actually show up and debate on their views for the general election get smashed, and that normally applies to the primaries too, although we saw a fun exception with Ron Paul doing pretty good with some viewers because the GOP has gone so spectacularly off the rails in a different way.
But if Ron Paul had show up against Obama, he would have been crushed. Probably more than McCain, even with the advantage of being able to actually present himself as separate from the Republican Party and without making such a dumb VP choice.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suggest to libertarians that they moved to a libertarian country and see for themselves. No big government messing in your business, no taxes, guns for everyone. If you are smart enough, strong enough, hard working you can have everything.
Examples of heaven on Earth: Congo Democratic Republic, Afghanistan, Somalia, Colombia, Kosovo.
You will live happy as can be, at least until the next warlord/druglord murders you to get your place.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared with socialist-leaning political types we see in Europe, ...
You have some curious notions, I think. A bit like saying that the Archbishop of Canterbury leans towards Satanism because he is not as far to the extreme right as the average American Creationist. And the funny things is, quite a lot of Americans I know seem to agree with a lot of Socialist ideas, as long as it isn't called Socialism. As far as I can see, you Americans are distributed politically exactly like people in Europe, only you call it something different, because you have grown up fearing the words "socialism" and "communism".
I don't think European scepticism about McCain has as much to do with him as with Sarah Palin; she may have put the "hot in hot", as I heard recently, but she's also put the "alas" into "Alaska". You are probably right - it doesn't matter much whether it is one or the other; except for the threat of Palin getting into power. Because to a great extent, the situation in the world is going to dictate which decisions the next president will make, if he has any common sense. McCain has, Obama has, Biden has, but I am not sure what Sarah Palin has.
I don't know what it is with you guys about "small government"; I mean, you do want public roads, education for all as well as judicial system, police and military, don't you? I doubt that many would prefer all those things to be privatised. And you cling to your guns like a drug addict to his next fix; it isn't even as if people who wanted to own a gun wouldn't be able to. I mean, if I want to own a gun in UK, I can do so legally; it is just not something you can buy in the local car boot sale.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
What us guys mean by "small government" is a small restricted federal government... not gone, I'm pretty sure most of us guys aren't anarchists, just limited. The federal government is primarily meant to act as a single unit with the outside world, including military forces, diplomacy and trade, and to facilitate trade and cooperation between the states. This means that a military, the interstate highway system, monetary policy, and other acts of the federal government are well within their purview and worthwhile. However, on education, police and most other internal matters, many of us guys would prefer the federal government to stay out.
This does not mean, however, that we don't want those things as a public service, just not one provided at a federal level. On police and fire protection, education, drug and alcohol policy, city roads, etc., many of us feel that the local governments serve us better, since they are closer to the people, have a smaller system to administer (less bureaucracy), and if it ever gets too bad where you are, its much easier to move between cities and states than to leave the US entirely. Plus, look at No Child Left Behind, the War on Drugs, and the 21-year drinking age to see exactly how well the federal government has done at getting involved in what should be local affairs.
Of course, there are some problems with the system, it tends to create a patchwork of laws that vary in arbitrary ways (look at our voting laws), which I see as a necessary inconvenience. The biggest concern I have is that with an education system based almost entirely locally, you have a situation where poor areas have poor schools, and you strengthen the feedback where poverty breeds poverty. Even then though, federal involvement has usually had the effect of bringing all schools down to the same level rather than improving the bad ones, while in Tulsa, Oklahoma (not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking) we've had some pretty good results where the school districts include both rich and poor areas, and the poorer districts create magnet schools. Could it be improved, yes, but I'm not sure federal mandates are the way to do it.
So thats what us guys, in a very large country with strong streak of individualism mean when we say small government... and Palin makes me think of an evil mix between Bush, Rove, and Martha Stewart.... I agree with you there.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Typically I wouldn't care about your religion, but I think you really need to be open to the possibility you are not corre
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless they meant- freedom of christianity...
But seriously, how can we be free while subjected to Palin's version of Genesis?
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
how can we be free while subjected to Palin's version of Genesis?
Because, as you quoted, it is freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
Neither Palin nor McCain has ever expressed a desire to force either you or your children to follow their religious choices.
So is McCain (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank God we are heading back into cooler and logical minds.
Re:So is McCain (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So is McCain (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual number [pollingreport.com] is usually over 50%, depending on how the question is asked. In particular, over half of Americans support teaching Creationism alongside evolution in public schools.
See, it's the "alongside" part that I have a problem with. If you want to teach creationism in theology class then all the power to you. Hell, I'd sign my kids up for that class. It's when they start talking about teaching it in science class that I have issues.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm really concerned about is if the Democrats get the fillibuster proof majority and Obama gets elected... One party in complete control of everything... bye bye remnants of democracy...
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Insightful)
One party in complete control of everything... bye bye remnants of democracy...
Eh, democracy survived the first six years of the GWB administration. Somehow I don't think the Democrats will do any worse.....
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end, I couldn't care less about the creation myths others have, even our President. After 6 Republican Presidential terms, they still haven't managed to overturn Roe.v.Wade.
On the other hand, taxes are never found unconstitutional, and rarely reduced significantly. The only way to avoid them is to never increase them.
I vote my financial self interest, and regardless of what the Obama propaganda is it has nothing to do with $250k [foxnews.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The teaching of creationism is the least of America's education issues. We have a significant portion of high school graduates who are well behind their foreign counterparts in literacy and mathematics. The problem is so widespread that many universities have remedial courses to prep students for basic foundation classes in English and algebra.
Unfortunately, in many districts the parents are more interested in spending funding on new athletic facilities then on education.
Re:Looking from afar... (Score:5, Informative)
Palin's stance on creationism? You mean that evolution should be taught exclusively in science class, as it is in Alaska? And that there's nothing wrong with discussing alternative views, in an appropriate context, without putting them in the curriculum? What's wrong with that?
I'm a scientist. I think that intelligent design and creationism are hogwash. But because of America's foundation in religion, they are concepts that anyone will come across outside of school. I think they should be discussed, at the teacher's discretion, especially if a student brings up the question, but should not be mandated in the curriculum.
Palin said in one interview "teach both... don't be afraid of information". The next day she went on to clarify her position by saying that they shouldn't be part of the curriculum, but it's ok to discuss them if a student brings it up. Actually here's the exact quote: "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."
On Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
As Much as Creationism seems to strike a chord with some people, I've never actually understood why.
I've always looked at creationism historically, as in a "This is what a guy 2-3 thousand years ago though how the universe was made when science rarely existed and wasn't as important as religion" kind of way. That being said, it's not too far off from creationism considering the religious source and the age of the text other than the 7 days thing, but realistically what's 7 days to God? a billion years? 10 minutes? who knows.
Based on that, I believe that it should be taught in schools, but only as an historical reference to how we led to the current evolution theory. Similar to how Spontaneous generation is taught in schools as a previously accepted theory until a new theory proved it was incorrect.
Re:"Palin's stance" is better (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I saw her state her stance, it was this: "teach [evolution and creationism] in class and let the students critically analyze both."
This is actually a problem in modern media -- the "journalists" (I use this term loosely) want to give equal time to the nutjobs. Take for another example the vaccinations vs autism discussions. There's little credible evidence to correlate these two items, but if one parent squawks loudly enough, the local news reporter wants to cover it, thus elevating the visibility of the nutjob theory far above that which is justified.
Re:Make them Pay (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before we can do the same with Democrats?
Re:Make them Pay (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama may be a breath of fresh air, but as long as the same career politicians keep getting elected to congress, they will keep acting on their own benefit and not the people.
Re:Make them Pay (Score:5, Informative)
They may have originated with those banks, but because Fannie and Freddie were buying up those mortgages and they had an implicit government guarantee. If Fannie and Freddie didn't exist, those private investment banks would not have had an irresponsible gov't entity to sell their questionable loans to, so they would have had to scrutinize their borrowers more.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And anything to throw out the "No Child Left Behind" system!
It creates a situation where special needs kids are being pushed out of the publish school systems because the act has no accommodation for them, and thus they drag down the scores for schools and schoolboards. So they don't loose their funding, schools only provide the minimal of what the law requires of them, and the kids suffer unless their parents can afford to put them into private schools. It's cruel!
ttyl
F