… but not our official language, of course:
After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the “national language” of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law.
The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to “preserve and enhance” the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.
This is largely a symbolic vote more than anything (considering how watered down the bill was), but I’m going to look on the positive side and consider it a baby step towards one day making English the *official* language here in the US.
More from the article:
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called the amendment “racist,” and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) dismissed it as divisive and anti-American.
When all else fails, the Dems throw into the recipe their favorite card: the race card. With a little helping of “anti-American’ accusations on the side.
(Hat tip: Outside The Beltway)
In related news, the Kyl amendment - which would have required guest workers to leave at the end of their (supposed to be) temporary stay - failed.
- If we ever actually decide to start acting like this is America, and we’re Americans, and enforce our laws, or the standards of our Nationality LIKE EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, the Libtards are screwed.
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 11:02 am
They are required for citizenship to know US founding documents. English is a must if you want to own a business. In order to have a non balkanized society English would be the GLUE that achieves that.
ON THE KYL ammedment. That bites. This is the jist of trying to make sure that noone is here illegally. If they DON’T have the paperwork (visa or whatever) then they need to go. The 9/11 hijackers had expired visa’s. And yet our Senators are negligent.
18 Republicans are part of the negligent. Left wing lawmakers this time. We do NOT have a working majority of conservatives in office and haven’t for over 6-7 decades. We need to elect more conservatives in office because this country continues to be driven to the left. Conservatives try to tackle issues and are defeated by the handful of liberal Republicans.
McCain was one of the 18. And you guessed it Dewine from Ohio. As well as Snowe and Susan Collins and Specter and Voinovich the crybaby. These people are affecting NATIONAL policies. Not just state issues. They need to go.
Comment by Baklava @ 5/19/2006 - 11:31 am
Its like they say, E PLURIBUS UNUM
Comment by andrew @ 5/19/2006 - 11:57 am
Yes. It doesn’t mean balkanization. It means unification. So get behind it Andrew. Hop to it.
Comment by Baklava @ 5/19/2006 - 12:19 pm
” It means unification. ”
In a foreign language too.
Comment by andrew @ 5/19/2006 - 12:22 pm
Wow, andrew has a dollar bill and can read!
Once again, a shoot from the lip response that totally ignores the fact that that quote points exactly to the problem we have with most illegal immigrants. They don’t want to be “out of many, one” they want “out of many, even more “diversity,” with someone else footing the bill.”
If they truly believed in E Pluribus Unum, there would be no Spanish speaking enclaves, no use of any language other than English, etc. etc. etc. But that’s not what they want, they want their own sub country with the majority of taxpayers footing the bill for bending over backwards to provide for multilingual everything and free medical care, etc.
Comment by Severian @ 5/19/2006 - 12:30 pm
In God we Trust
All others pay cash…..
Comment by sanity @ 5/19/2006 - 12:34 pm
“They don’t want to be “out of many, one” they want “out of many, even more “diversity,” with someone else footing the bill.””
But we do have out of many one. Immigrants, natives, documented and not, all add up to be the one country we have.
“no use of any language other than English,”
No latin languages?
Comment by andrew @ 5/19/2006 - 12:42 pm
Not really…. andrew, in his snarky way, probably doesn’t realize hes “discovered” that our language is based, in part, on latin, the Romans having occupied England for a time and all that. Always good to see even the left can be taught.
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 12:46 pm
“andrew, in his snarky way, probably doesn’t realize hes “discovered” that our language is based, in part, on latin, the Romans having occupied England for a time and all that”
Oh dear god you’re dense and desperate for something.
Comment by andrew @ 5/19/2006 - 12:49 pm
andrew, I must agree with you. “Out of many one”, I presume you mean, “out of many one”, language is implied.
Countries the world over, are learning english as a second language. The ESL schools thrive in Japan and when the Americans, Aussies, Kiwi’s, Cannucks, Limeys and other English speaking countries who teach there are asked, why are so many schools teaching English there, the answer is virtually the same. English is considered the international language by a substantial majority of countries.
Why should there even be a debate about the language here, when that issuse was addressed and decided a couple hundred years ago.
If you go to an international airport, you’ll see multiple languages displayed. Though in a slightly more limited version, you could even expect similar kinds of helpful assistance in train and bus stations, for the aid and benefit of travelers who are passing through our country. The key phrase there is that “they are passing through”.
Go to any country in the world and I guarantee that the inhabitants expect you to learn their language, traditions and culture. It’s considered thoughtful and well-mannered, as opposed to the rude and impolite that comes standard with the surly public demonstrations of recent days. Their antagonistic disdainful approach as they wave flags other than this country and shout gauche slogans, point out addittional motivating reasons, to oppose their presence here in America.
Hopefully they didn’t learn this behavior from the MSM. If they brought it here, they can take it with them, as they return to the land where they were born.
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 1:17 pm
What I like best about it is that the “amendment would require more thorough testing to demonstrate English-language proficiency and knowledge of U.S. history and elements of U.S. culture such as the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem.”
Would Americans who already speak English as their first or only language also be required to demonstrate English-language proficiency and knowledge of U.S. history? I’m thinking specifically of the fact that the vast majority of Americans cannot name more than one of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/19/2006 - 2:27 pm
Sad isn’t it Kathy?
Comment by Severian @ 5/19/2006 - 2:30 pm
Yes, it is, Severian. Maybe on that much we can agree.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/19/2006 - 3:11 pm
Go to any country in the world and I guarantee that the inhabitants expect you to learn their language, traditions and culture.
Unless your an American, of course. Then, the rest of the world knows we’re too damn lazy and superior-feeling to actually learn another language and that we expect everyone to speak English.
Comment by Pug @ 5/19/2006 - 3:17 pm
- Apparently its working Pug. english is the fastest growing language, worldwide.
- I probably shouldn’t mention this because I don’t want to set the trolls off in a torrent of “conspiracy” comments, but since irony is lost on andrew, it probably won’t matter.
- Maybe English is growing because they want to do business in American markets. The number of the beast?
(girding for obligitory conspiracy/anti-christ theories)….*snort*
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 3:52 pm
- Worse than that Kathy, they interviewed a group of recent HS graduates, and 4 out of 5 couldn’t locate New Orleans on a map of the US. Lets hear it for the public school system.
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 4:09 pm
“Apparently its working Pug. english is the fastest growing language, worldwide.”
Hooray for Nash equilibria!
Comment by andrew @ 5/19/2006 - 4:24 pm
Unless your an American, of course. Then, the rest of the world knows we’re too damn lazy and superior-feeling to actually learn another language and that we expect everyone to speak English.
So, how many languages do you speak Pug? It’s once again an apples and oranges issue, we don’t need to speak a lot of different languages, our country is huge, and we don’t interface that much with foreign languages, unless you have to work in Mexico or Quebec, and even then it makes more sense for them to speak English. Here’s a little fact that supports this argument, there are a lot more Dutch that speak German than German’s that speak Dutch. Holland is a tiny country, without much industry, compared to Germany, so it doesn’t make as much sense for German’s to learn Dutch as for the Dutch to go Deutsch!
Verstehen sie? Ja oder nichts?
Comment by Severian @ 5/19/2006 - 4:26 pm
Deutsch, Chotto Wakarimasen Severiansan. Gomenasai!
The other Pug
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 6:39 pm
Pug I really don’t know what you’re trying to say but I’m American living in Japan and I do my Japanese taxes in Japanese. I am not the exception or exceptional, but I know how to honor the country/ies that I inhabit.
I fly two flags side by side and I help my neighbors in hard times like we helped the Finns, where I grew up in rural Washington as a boy.
Your generalizations and all inclusive, feeling oriented thoughts, do little justice for someone with a point or purpose, unless the purpose is to dilute reality.
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 6:51 pm
andrew, what do strategies or the lack thereof, have to do with this thread? Is that the Nash equilibria you refer to?
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:10 pm
“Wenn catapaults geächtet werden, nur Haken catapaults haben zie”
The other other Pug
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:30 pm
Translation: (Duetchen)
“When catapaults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapaults”
- Bang (gitty bang bang)
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:33 pm
My guess was close. Catapult as the tools use implies, sort of gives it awaaaaaaaaay.
Bang, is Duetchen Dutch?
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:37 pm
Heh - Forest he googled “John Forbes Kerry”, but got “John Forbes Nash” instead….. *snort*
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:39 pm
German Herman…
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:40 pm
- funny story - When I married my South Korean Ex the first thing I did was set about with great dedication to learn the language and all I could about her countries customs, history, and family.
- I kept at it until I had a fairly good grasp of things, noticing along the way she was less than enthusiastic about the idea, which puzzeled me greatly, until one day another Korean fellow I had made friends with told me the reason.
- She was upset because she couldn’t gossip with her mother without me knowing what she was saying…..(oopsie….lol)
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 7:51 pm
HA! Can I relate to that Bang!
You don’t suppose that kind of thinking has anything to do with the non-english rhetoric at the Mexifornia/Colexican peace rallies of late, do you.
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 8:09 pm
No sie habla Inglis mi amigo…. ::Heh::
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/19/2006 - 8:17 pm
Worse than that Kathy, they interviewed a group of recent HS graduates, and 4 out of 5 couldn’t locate New Orleans on a map of the US. Lets hear it for the public school system.
We could have the finest public school system in the world, if public education was prioritized as high as national security is. In fact, if Americans thought of a first-class public education system as being an essential component of national security, we would have the best public school system in the world, just as we have the best military in the world.
In life, it seems to be true that you get what you most deeply believe in, because that’s what you put the most effort into. If teachers were hero-worshipped as much as soldiers are, every single adult in America would be able to locate New Orleans on a map of the US; and every single adult would have all six of the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment engraved on their hearts.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/20/2006 - 1:22 am
We could have the finest public school system in the world, if public education was prioritized as high as national security is.
If that were the case, we wouldn’t (and we shouldn’t) leave it under the control of the liberal NEA and would actually put people in charge and as teachers that are competent and focused on actually teaching, not “raising self esteem” or showing anti-Bush films or giving communist manifesto based lectures.
I know that paints with a broad brush, there are lots of good to excellent teachers, but unfortunately the union/leftist mentality of the majority, and the cripling influence of the NEA, pretty much hamstrings the teachers who are trying to make a difference.
Comment by Severian @ 5/20/2006 - 8:45 am
We could have the finest public school system in the world, if public education was prioritized as high as national security is.
We throw billions of dollars at education to no substantive results.
Democrats idea is to keep throwing money at it figuring some amount will eventually solve the problem, but they fail to realize we have more than a money problem - education gets money from lotto, government, ect.
Any time there is any lesser amount of the increase in education away from the full amount increase each year, the democrats scream and whine about cuts, which they are lying through their teeth, since reducing the amount of an increase does not equate out to a cut.
We have too much politics going on with our public schools, and we need to get back to the basics of teaching the reading, writing, math, ect. We need to quit playing politics with our school systems, quit playing liberla agenda games with adding intelligent design, gays in textbooks, teachers who give their opinions instead of facts and not teaching what is suppose to be taught. Quit trying to make little activists out of our children and teach them to read and write.
If you do that, we wouldn’t have a problem with kids passing an exit exam for 8th grade english and 10th grade math (or is it the other way around?)
Whn you take Liberalism and politics out of the schools, you will begin to see an improvement I would think.
Comment by sanity @ 5/20/2006 - 9:35 am
Since this thread is about something other than our troops, I hate to digress too far into that topic. However, I’d like to clarify hero-worship. The two terms in my opinion and especially if I were considered a hero, do not belong together. The true hero’s that I know personally would be sickened by that lumping of words.
Kathy, I don’t know your age so forgive me if presume that you are unaware of the treatment of the Viet Nam Vets, upon their return to the world. Reprehensible in a word. As to hero-worshipping, I find that a bit of a stretch at best. Worship has it’s place and we don’t do it to our troops. They would detest being worshipped or even thought of as a hero. If you spend time around those who are defacto hero’s, you’ll understand. Those of us that have that kind of understanding don’t suffer from that affliction. The phrase in general is contentious and likely spawned from the libtards for reasons other than honorable.
The thing missing when our people returned from Viet Nam or for that matter, the entire time they were there, was honor. Now many on the left have learned that attacking our troops openly, as had been done was more than wrong, which is why so many of them spout, “We support our troops”, but lack the understanding of what all that entails. I venture to say that of those, there are substantial quantities of them, who are as phony as a three dollar bill.
To the topic at hand, as was explained by Severian and Sanity, there’s not much to add, except that as having ten years personal experience with teachers and over twenty years with school sponsored coaches and various school related programs, the system in their own words is a joke. It might be funny if it weren’t such a miserable performance regarding far too many teachers and administrators, who’s self- serving reasons create in part added problems in the Socialist styled system and thereby become the systems worst enemy. The good teachers and admin staff’s hands are tied, but they can’t tell you much about that.
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/20/2006 - 2:05 pm
Kathy, I don’t know your age so forgive me if presume that you are unaware of the treatment of the Viet Nam Vets, upon their return to the world. Reprehensible in a word.
I was born in July, 1950, so I am not unaware of the way returning Vietnam vets were treated; and I agree with you that the way they were treated was reprehensible.
I, too, struggle with the concept of “supporting the troops” and what that entails in the context of the war the troops are fighting. If “supporting the troops” means supporting the Bush administration then I don’t support the troops. If supporting the troops is synonymous with supporting the war, agreeing with the war, cheering the war, then I don’t support the troops.
But I don’t believe, in my heart of hearts, that that is what “supporting the troops” has to mean. It CAN mean that. But “supporting the troops” does not have to mean supporting the policy that puts the troops where they are. It can also mean having an attitude of compassion and concern for soldiers who fight a war they had no part in starting. I support the truth that soldiers who fight in wars are not the ones who start those wars. Soldiers don’t make the policies; they just are asked to risk and sacrifice their lives for the policies that others have made. I find that contemptible that my government would start a war that was not necessary for our national security. I don’t support this war. But i do care about the men and women who are dying in it — on both sides.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/20/2006 - 7:09 pm
Yes and so do we Kathy. The sooner this mission is over the sooner Iraq can start to it’s growth as a democracy. I pray that the total mission is finished soon. That is the prayer of many on either side of the political spectrum. - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 5/20/2006 - 9:09 pm
We have too much politics going on with our public schools, and we need to get back to the basics of teaching the reading, writing, math, ect. We need to quit playing politics with our school systems, quit playing liberla agenda games with adding intelligent design, gays in textbooks, teachers who give their opinions instead of facts and not teaching what is suppose to be taught. Quit trying to make little activists out of our children and teach them to read and write.
If you do that, we wouldn’t have a problem with kids passing an exit exam for 8th grade english and 10th grade math (or is it the other way around?)
Whn you take Liberalism and politics out of the schools, you will begin to see an improvement I would think.
Your assessment of why public schools are failing our children has absolutely zero connection to reality.
“Trying to make little activists” out of children has nothing to do with whether they can read or write at or above their grade level. My daughter (16 years old now) has spent her entire school life in the kind of school system you think is ruining our children’s minds. She goes to school in Montclair, NJ, which is an ethnically, racially, economically diverse town with a reputation for being very liberal. There are plenty of right-wingers in Montclair, too; but the school system does reflect liberal ideas and values.
My daughter is a high school junior. In the fall she will enter her senior year. She chose to enroll in a mini-school within the larger high school called the Center for Social Justice. She takes all the traditional subjects — history, English, a foreign language (Spanish in her case), physics, math, gym. The only difference is that the history and English component of the program is integrated into a social justice curriculum. All of the classes she takes are honors or high honors courses, and she will be getting AP credit for some of them, too.
If there was ever a school curriculum that “tried to make little activists” out of children, this one would be it. Yet my daughter was reading well above grade level from the time she was in first grade. She gets straight A’s, her SAT scores were stratospheric, and she is considering colleges like Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury, and Wesleyan.
I am currently volunteering in a high-needs school in the Bronx. It’s a requirement for the teacher training component of my alternate certification program, which will qualify me to teach in another high-needs school in the fall.
In the class I volunteer in, there is no diversity at all, either racial or economic. All the kids are either African-American or Hispanic. All the kids come from poor families, some more desperate than others. In NYC, once you reach middle school, you can go to any school in NYC. Many of them have an application process, but it’s not selective at all. Basically, you just apply and tell them you want to go there, and you’re in. Most of the students in the school where I volunteer are from the Bronx, but not all from that neighborhood — and the Bronx is a big place. Some students come from Manhattan or Brooklyn. They travel hours every day to come to the school that they and their parents have decided will do the best job of educating them.
The teachers I’ve met so far are all extremely professional, dedicated, committed, aware, knowledgeable. They WANT to teach. They are willing to teach in some of the city’s worst schools because they believe so deeply that all children should get a good education.
BUT. Those children do not get the same education. The first time I walked into that classroom, I was overwhelmed by the difference in the kind of education these kids are getting and the kind my daughter is getting. It’s not because the teachers don’t care, can’t teach, or teach the wrong things. It’s not because these students are stupid, or can’t learn. Nevertheless, many of these students cannot read at grade level, and don’t like to read. They don’t know the difference between a comma and a semicolon. They cannot focus or concentrate on what the teacher is saying. They lack very basic knowledge about how to research a topic — stuff my daughter knew in fifth grade. They lack curiosity and imagination in approaching a topic they have themselves chosen. They pick the topic, but then can’t think of more than one or two things they want to find out about it. They fall asleep in class or stare blankly into space.
There are no Communist manifestoes being taught in these classes. There are no anti-Bush videos being shown. There is no touchy-feely liberal agenda being advanced. The focus in English class is on reading: decoding and comprehension and developing a love for reading. There are rules, and they are enforced.
These kids are getting a much more basic, traditional, no-frills education than my daughter is getting; yet they are so far below where she was in their grade that you can’t even understand it unless you’ve seen it.
Why is it like this?
First, if children are not read to on a regular basis when they are very young, they will start school off already behind. Children who come from poor families often were not read to as babies and very young children, for a number of reasons: Parents who cannot read well themselves and don’t enjoy reading or who don’t understand the importance of reading to children. This is not intuitive knowledge; it’s something middle-class parents know from reading books and magazines and talking to their pediatricians and their friends and from their own experience. Low-income families do not necessarily know these things.
Add to this the fact that children from middle-class and wealthy families almost always have school experience BEFORE first grade. They have gone to pre-school and certainly to kindergarten. Many children from more economically fortunate families have been in school or enriched day care since the age of 3 — learning number and letter skills, social skills, and more all that time. These children have a huge advantage over children who start school later — an advantage that has nothing to do with teachers (except indirectly, in that they had teachers) or unions or liberalism.
There are other reasons, too — some of which I did not know before I started visiting schools and talking to teachers. Why are these kids sleeping in class? I would ask. Why can’t they focus? Why do they seem not to be interested in anything the teacher is saying?
1. They are exhausted, having spent hours taking two or three subways or buses or both to get to school, with the same commute to get home.
2. They are hungry, sometimes very hungry. One teacher whose classroom I visited told me that many of the students don’t get to eat lunch because their schedule doesn’t include it. She told me flat out she thought it should be illegal to let students skip lunch, but it is not illegal. At least not in NYC.
Some students don’t eat breakfast, either. Yes, there is a free school lunch program for students whose family income qualifies them for it, but the same teacher told me that many students don’t use it, because there’s a stigma attached to it.
3. The school environment is not conducive to learning. You have to go through a metal detector and be scanned by a police officer before you can get into class. Usually the lines in the morning are so long (some schools have thousands of students) that many students don’t get to class until mid-morning, hours after classes have started.
Every time I volunteer in the high school I mentioned, I go through this, too. Last time I had to put my handbag on the conveyor, then walk through the metal detector, then allow a police officer to scan me with a wand. It was done (at least with me) in a polite and respectful manner, but it still made me feel more like I was in a high-security prison than a school.
4. Low self-esteem: the dreaded low self-esteem. Sorry, but it’s real. These are kids who, by the time they get to high school, have been given to understand, in a thousand verbal and nonverbal ways, that they cannot learn, cannot achieve at the same level as those kids in the suburbs, and cannot be anything better than a garbage collector or a prison guard. It’s beyond many of these young people’s wildest imaginings that they could go to college — not just because of the expense, but because they cannot conceive of college being a possibility for them. Until that changes, nothing else will change.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/20/2006 - 9:44 pm
It does sound like a hopeless situation. Many of the large cities have this problem. NYC, Chicago, LA, St. Louis even New Orleans. There is just no hope to ever get out of the situation these people are in. So what do you do, throw more money at the situation. How do you give hope to the hopeless?? Takeing a cue from New Orleans, many of the folks that were relocated out of NO, were quoted as saying that for the 1st time in their lives they had hope. That right there could be your answer. A man with a job and a paycheck feels more like a productive citizen, and therefore feels more like a man. Perhaps classical education isn’t what is needed in these cities. Maybe a jobs training program is what is needed. America needs welders and mechanics as much as it needs computer programers and accountants. I have always thought that High School education should concern itself more in the tradeskills. My older brother went to Iowa State University for his bachelors, but I went to a tech college for my associates. Presently I am making more money than him in our careers. I loved the education that I got. Granted I didn’t have that “big school” experience, but I am pretty proud of what I achieved too. I worked 45 hours a week in a 5.00 an hour job, and went to school at night Monday thru Thursday for 4.5 hours each night. It was tough, but I graduated with a 3.5 and was very proud of that, and was able to help my fellow students graduate in some cases.
It is hard for me to arm chair quarterback this. I don’t know, I don’t like the large cities. I don’t go to Chicago, which is closest to me. I don’t like St. Louis either. Just too many people. I like small town life, and even in our poorer areas, the folk have a hope to get out of their situation. That in my mind is significant. Hope, you can live without most things but much like air, you have to have hope. - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 5/21/2006 - 10:55 am
Hmmm…and the fact that school and student performance has consistently deteriorated as more and more of the liberal agenda has found it’s way into both the school system and society in general is just one of those inexplicable mysteries, just a random coincidence. Just like the fact that mass murder and oppression strangely seems to occur in communist countries. Can’t be related, nah…
Comment by Severian @ 5/21/2006 - 11:48 am
“Social justice” eh? Hmmm…let me get my George Orwell 1984 Commemorative Edition of the Democrat/Liberal Newspeak Dictionary…just a sec…
Ah yes: Social Justice, a belief system that all problems in the world are caused by the United States in general, and white male US citizens in particular. Also guilty are white male Europeans, but as Europe has proven to be as anti-American and pro-socialist as possible, they are forgiven, and all remaining blame transfered to said white male Americans.
Sounds like just a wonderful school curricula.
Comment by Severian @ 5/21/2006 - 2:17 pm
Comment by forest hunter @ 5/21/2006 - 3:50 pm
and the fact that school and student performance has consistently deteriorated as more and more of the liberal agenda has found it’s way into both the school system and society in general is just one of those inexplicable mysteries, just a random coincidence.
I guess you didn’t read my post, Severian. There is no liberal agenda in the high-needs schools I visited. The students are taught in a very traditional way. They are taught the traditional subjects. And most of them are way below grade level in math, science, reading, writing.
It’s my daughter who is going to a school with a liberal agenda, and she is doing spectacularly well, as are most of her classmates.
So go ahead and throw out theories for why so many public schools are failing our children, but just recognize that that your theory has no connection to reality.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/21/2006 - 8:18 pm
Kathy, I wasn’t only talking about liberal agendas in schools, you didn’t read my post and understand it. You describe an inner city school, with people who are demonstrating the types of attitudes and behavior that are a direct result of over 40 years of failed socialist “Great Society” programs and liberal refusal to hold individuals accountable, prefering to blame others for their problems, and establishing “victim” classes for the poor, the disadvantaged, the “black” and the “brown.”
Everything has a root cause, and ignoring it benefits no one.
Comment by Severian @ 5/21/2006 - 8:25 pm
“She chose to enroll in a mini-school within the larger high school called the Center for Social Justice.”
- Have to indoctrinate those young formative minds before they get to broad a life experience to buy into the “class warfare” mind set. Can’t bear the idea they mind decide for themselves. Just being “helpful” and all that don’t you know. Yes. We know. We fought it out for years with a country founded on those same failed ideas. Marx would be proud.
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/21/2006 - 10:15 pm
The real Marxist manifesto…..
“From each according to their gullibility….Too each according to their sloth”…
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/21/2006 - 10:27 pm
You describe an inner city school, with people who are demonstrating the types of attitudes and behavior that are a direct result of over 40 years of failed socialist “Great Society” programs and liberal refusal to hold individuals accountable, prefering to blame others for their problems, and establishing “victim” classes for the poor, the disadvantaged, the “black” and the “brown.”
You are wrong. You are living in some kind of delusional, fantasy American society that does not exist. The “Great Society” was Lyndon Johnson’s baby, and it was scuttled by Johnson’s own escalation of the Vietnam war. The “liberal, socialist” programs you speak of began to be dismantled under Reagan; and Clinton (nominally a Democrat) finished the job.
Five out of the seven presidents following Johnson have been Republicans. Even more to the point, Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress since 1994, with the exception of two years (2001 - 2003) when Democrats had the majority in the Senate. Over the last seven years, since George W. Bush took office, Congress has been transformed into the Republican Party’s docile pet dog. What’s more, the D.C. lobbying industry is overwhelmingly Republican. Bush 43 and his Republican Party have succeeded in creating an executive branch with vast new powers — an imperial presidency that almost completely overrides the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances. And you are arguing that there is a “liberal, socialist, Great Society” set of programs out there that George W. Bush and the Republican House and Senate are helpless to change?
Give me a break!
It’s people like YOU who refuse to take responsibility for failures on the domestic front. It’s astonishing that right-wingers are STILL trying to get away with blaming “liberal socialist Great Society” programs that never were fully funded or supported to begin with, and that have been thoroughly out of political favor since the 1980s, for failing public schools NOW.
You and I are in agreement on one thing you said: Ignoring root causes does no one any good. The root cause of poor public education (or one of the root causes) is the fact that our society (meaning our leaders, our government structures, our laws, our customs, our fixed beliefs, our priorities) pays lip service to the idea that “children are the future” but in reality does not value children, or the people who devote their lives and livelihoods to children (that means both teachers and parents), or the institutions that are needed to educate children and help them reach their full potential as human beings and citizens. Public education is simply not as important as the military is. Excellent schools are just not valued as highly as a powerful and wealthy Pentagon.
These are FACTS. Children are failing, and are being failed, by public education because they are not getting what they need to succeed. Your imaginary liberal socialist agenda has nothing to do with it.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/22/2006 - 2:05 pm
Have to indoctrinate those young formative minds before they get to broad a life experience to buy into the “class warfare” mind set. Can’t bear the idea they mind decide for themselves. Just being “helpful” and all that don’t you know. Yes. We know. We fought it out for years with a country founded on those same failed ideas. Marx would be proud.
And your idea of broadening her life experience would be what? Visiting military bases, talking to military recruiters, pledging allegiance to the flag, talking to other students and adults who believe that Pres. Bush liberated Iraq, being required to pray in school?
Don’t get upset at my examples. My daughter has been exposed to ALL of the above (well, almost all; she hasn’t visited a military base). ROTC officers are in her school; she knows that her school is required to give military recruiters her home address and telephone number unless her parents opt out (which we did, at her request); she has debates all the time with students who support the Iraq war (some of them are her friends); the Pledge of Allegiance has been said in the schools she’s attended since she started school; she hears the national anthem at sporting events; and she’s even had a taste of the in-class prayer.
She’s also had experiences — like going to Europe with People to People — that most American students don’t have. I would lay odds with you, in fact, that my daughter’s life experiences have been far broader than the life experiences of most of the high school students YOU know.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/22/2006 - 2:18 pm
Gee Kathy, you want some cheese to go with that whine.
We keep throwing more and more money at public education, with worse and worse results. The Republicans have done little to nothing to dismantle the Great Society, they unfortunately keep shoveling money at the same failed programs and ideologies that were put forth by the Democrats (the only bright spots are in those areas where they were successful in getting rid of programs, like permanent welfare). Throwing even more money at the problem, to “fully fund it” as you so charmingly wish, would just be pissing more money away, you’ve achieved such stunning results with the programs you have funded.
Go back again, without your blinders on, and look at the socialist mentality that’s essentially told minorities, go ahead, act irresponsibly, it’s all the man’s fault you don’t get anywhere, go light on criminals, it’s society’s fault not the fault of the criminal, don’t come down hard on school kids, it’s bad for their self esteem, don’t use red to mark grades with that’s scarey, etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
You are just like every other libral socialist, you make excuses for the failures in the world rather than stop and look at your own ideology and realize you and your mantras are poisoning the very people you claim to want to help.
Yup, it’s all our leader’s fault alright. Pull your head out of the sand and realize that the ills are not due to leaders “paying lip service” to it, they are symptomatic of deep problems in society that are in large part due to the very mindset you have and the solutions you seem to hold dear.
Comment by Severian @ 5/22/2006 - 2:20 pm
BTW Kathy, you want to almost overnight provide an order of magnitude improvement in schools? Abolish the NEA and allow teachers to be disciplined or removed for poor behavior or ability, and allow rewards above the norm for good teachers and administrators. Allow teachers who do little more than preach leftist politics or who are incompetent to be fired, and teachers who actually teach to be rewarded instead of having the union protect the poor performers and tie the hands of the good instructors.
I used to teach the lab section for “Physics for Education Majors” when I was in college. I felt then that things were not going to be improving, as by and large the education majors I encountered were dumb as rocks. They chose education because it was an easy course, not because they had any deep, compelling desire to educate the young.
You are going to have to attract a better class of people to be teachers, and overcome parents that couldn’t care less or who only care that their precious isn’t disciplined, before you can even begin to improve education, and the NEA is a MAJOR impediment to that. It rewards mediocrity and punished excellence, just like socialism always does.
Comment by Severian @ 5/22/2006 - 2:27 pm
Kathy,
My daughter just graduated from USC. She graduated high school as a valedictorian and had an SAT of 1550. She accomplished this IN SPITE of a number of LIBERAL, NEA goon teachers. The classes she learned nothing in were taught by LIBERALS spouting their LIBERAL PROPAGANDA instead of teaching.
Comment by PCD @ 5/22/2006 - 2:43 pm
Kathy wrote, “The “Great Society” was Lyndon Johnson’s baby, and it was scuttled by Johnson’s own escalation of the Vietnam war.”
This is FACTUALLY incorrect. Please do us a favor and give us the budget dollar amounts before and after what you think is true. You will find that aid to the poor has RISEN (the opposite of your statement) at every point in the last 6 decades and including during the escalation of the Vietnam war.
Kathy wrote, “The “liberal, socialist” programs you speak of began to be dismantled under Reagan; and Clinton (nominally a Democrat) finished the job.”
These statements are a product of the liberal media but again are factually incorrect and I ask you to do the due diligence (don’t be negligent) and get the dollar amounts (total dollar amounts spent) which every liberal before you that I’ve discussed this with has FAILED to do. Trust me. I used to be a liberal pre 1991 until I visited the library 3 times a week that year during my conversion to conservativism.
Kathy wrote, “Five out of the seven presidents following Johnson have been Republicans. Even more to the point, Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress since 1994,”
Pre 1994, Essentially there was a 54 year span of Congress being controlled by Democrats. Congress CONTROLS the PURSE STRINGS. Neither during the 54 year span of essential Democrat control nor during the last 12 years has the amount spent on health services, veterans benefits, social services, education, etc been cut This is a true statement and if you want to make the opposite FALSE charge you should give us the amount spent on any category the year prior and the year that followed. You CAN’T do it. The Department of Treasury and the CBO and the White House and all sorts of libraries have this information. Here’s a clue: When Democrats or Bill Clinton or CNN said cuts/slashing/axing any budget what the failed to do is be truthful. For example: Bill Clinton and the media charged for 5 months straight in 1995 that Medicare was being cut by 270 billion dollars by Republicans. That didn’t happen and wasn’t even planned by the Republicans. The bill called for 7% increases for 7 years which is more than 49% compounded which is more than medical inflation plus new participants of the program. .
I didn’t have time to dissect the rest of your post or view what others had to say (I’m sure a lot) because I have to go to another building for a meeting but I hope you do the due diligence required.
Humanities struggle is against confusion as someone once said.
We all “care” and or pretty much “well intentioned” Unfortunately liberals believe that the 50% who are conservatives do not “care” and are “mean”.
Think whatever you want about our “thoughts” but you can’t have your own facts. These are concrete things that are nailed to the wall (unlike jello).
Have a good day and hopefully good year researching!
Comment by Baklava @ 5/22/2006 - 2:44 pm
Said Kathy- We could have the finest public school system in the world, if public education was prioritized as high as national security is. In fact, if Americans thought of a first-class public education system as being an essential component of national security, we would have the best public school system in the world, just as we have the best military in the world.
Yes we could have that if parents really wanted it and demanded that the school systems teach. Yes we could have that if the unions were forced out. Yes we could have that if we actually segreagated students..by segregation, I mean put those that are more proficient with their peers and put the less proficcient with their peers. Stop trying to force diversity and integration as if it is a proven tool that is reflected in test scores. Mixing colors and social classes are fine. Mixing very bright students, with average students is a recipe for failure. It is not the responsibility of the smart ones to lead the less smart to better grades. That is the job of the parents! It is wonderful for children to accept others, but it doesn’t help them solve a calculus problem!
Comment by Pam @ 5/22/2006 - 5:00 pm
You are just like every other libral socialist, you make excuses for the failures in the world rather than stop and look at your own ideology and realize you and your mantras are poisoning the very people you claim to want to help.
Isn’t this exactly what you are doing when you blame criminals, minorities, school kids, the NEA (which is not a union by the way; it’s a professional association that advocates for the interests of teachers and students — in the same way the AMA does for doctors), teachers, parents, Democrats in Congress, and “liberal socialists” — everyone and everything but YOUR ideology — for the appallingly inferior quality of education our children are getting?
BTW, why do conservative oligarchs (I assume that’s the equivalent of liberal socialists) dismiss the idea of “root causes” when it comes to terrorism and smear those who talk about root causes as being “terrorist sympathizers” — and then suddenly become enamored of “root causes” when it comes to public education, and say things like “All things have root causes, and it does no good to ignore them”? Look at how Republicans have completely ignored the root causes of terrorism (Democrats too, for that matter), and you will begin to understand why the number of terrorist incidents has exploded since we invaded Irag; and why that invasion has utterly failed to reduce terrorism, control it, or prevent it.
BTW Kathy, you want to almost overnight provide an order of magnitude improvement in schools? Abolish the NEA and allow teachers to be disciplined or removed for poor behavior or ability, and allow rewards above the norm for good teachers and administrators. Allow teachers who do little more than preach leftist politics or who are incompetent to be fired, and teachers who actually teach to be rewarded instead of having the union protect the poor performers and tie the hands of the good instructors.
The NEA is a professional association. It is not a union. You want to “abolish” the official professional association for teachers? Would you suggest “abolishing” the American Bar Association? COULD you, even if you wanted to?
You would have to define “poor behavior or ability.” If children are not developing a love for reading, for writing, and for learning in general; and if they are not learning HOW to learn, then they are not being taught well. But before putting ALL the blame for that on the classroom teacher, I would look at all the other factors that might be making it hard for a teacher to be as effective as she might want to be. You think that life is a multiple choice exam, with only one right answer. I say that life is an essay, with no one right or wrong approach — but with some approaches working better than others and with many factors contributing to the essay’s effectiveness.
Also, you keep harping on teachers who preach “leftist” politics. What about teachers who preach right-wing politics, or who push conservative ideology?
You are going to have to attract a better class of people to be teachers, and overcome parents that couldn’t care less or who only care that their precious isn’t disciplined, before you can even begin to improve education, and the NEA is a MAJOR impediment to that. It rewards mediocrity and punished excellence, just like socialism always does.
Teachers are leaving the teaching profession in droves because the salaries are so low and the working conditions so bad. They are leaving to take private industry or corporate jobs that pay double or triple or quadruple what they can make as a teacher. This is especially true for math and science teachers, because corporate and private industry is very, very good to talented math and science professionals. A technology instructor in a high school could jump from $40,000 (after several years of teaching) to $80,000 for a fast-track job in software engineering. So if you want to attract “a better class of people to be teachers,” you will have to be willing to pay them the kind of money that “better classes of professionals” get in private industry.
But conservatives don’t want to do that, because it means their taxes might go up. And also because teaching is for people who can’t do anything better. And if you don’t believe that the preceding attitude is widespread, see what happens when a college senior who is a computer genius, brilliant at writing software, or at networking, or at finding wonderful solutions to all sorts of technological problems, tells a group of people at a party that he is planning to be a high school technology, or a high school mathematics teacher.
“Are you sure you want to limit yourself to teaching high school? You could make a fortune working for Microsoft, you know.”
Capitalism does indeed reward excellence — of a certain kind. Excellence in teaching is not of that kind. Excellence at managing and leading a multinational oil company is of that kind.
Perhaps now you have a clearer idea of what I mean when I say American society does not value education as highly as it values other things.
My daughter just graduated from USC. She graduated high school as a valedictorian and had an SAT of 1550. She accomplished this IN SPITE of a number of LIBERAL, NEA goon teachers. The classes she learned nothing in were taught by LIBERALS spouting their LIBERAL PROPAGANDA instead of teaching.
Your daughter must have taken the SAT under the old scoring system where 1800 was the highest score. My daughter took the SAT a couple of months ago, under the new scoring system where 2400 is the highest score. And her score was 2200.
And oddly enough, my daughter seems to have learned the most from teachers who encouraged her and her classmates to question common assumptions and traditional ways of viewing history and society. You would call that “liberal propaganda,” I suppose. It’s turned her into an original, independent thinker with a truly awesome ability to express herself and formulate her ideas.
Think whatever you want about our “thoughts” but you can’t have your own facts. These are concrete things that are nailed to the wall (unlike jello).
True, but “facts” are tricky things. For example, it was Bill Clinton who ended what you call permanent welfare, not a Republican president. Clinton campaigned on that issue. It helped get him elected. And he kept that promise, unlike most of the promises he made to his liberal constituents.
Another example: Conservatives are very fond of saying that the U.S. spends more money on foreign aid (meaning aid meant to help ameliorate human suffering in other parts of the world) than any other country. That is presented as a fact, but it’s really a misleading distortion of fact. The U.S. spends more in absolute dollar amounts for foreign aid, because the U.S. *has* far more money than any other country in the world. But as a percentage of the U.S. gross national product, the U.S. lags far behind spending for international humanitarian needs than many other countries with far lower GNPs. So in FACT, the U.S. is quite miserly about spending money on nonmilitary foreign aid.
Comment by Kathy @ 5/22/2006 - 7:09 pm
Kathy, seldom have I seen a bigger collection of inane, nonsensical rants put together in one place since steve left. It’s impossible to know where to start with you, you are a perfect, walking, talking liberal talking points clone. I get tired of seeing the same idiotic rants put forth as fact, over and over again, and now you naturally have to get into the “Iraq is causing terrorism” and “we need to understand them” BS. No Kathy, we don’t need to understand them, we need to KILL THEM! The fact is, if we were 100 times as brutal as we are, they would then respect us, and not screw with us. We don’t need to sit down and analyze their childhoods, or take the blame for the fact that their own governments abuse and repress them into poverty and oppression.
And the NEA isn’t a “union?” LOL, what color is the sky in liberal moonbat land today? For your information, I’d eliinate the ABA as well. Two organizations which do nothing to help anything but the narrow minded interests of their members.
And still, you claim I’m blaming all teachers when I complain about liberal socialist policies, and once again you miss the fact that those same policies are in a large part responsible for the attitudes of those parents and school children who don’t love learning or believe in responsibility.
You still nonsensically stick to the idea that throwing more money at the problem is the “cure.” Bull. We already spend plenty of money, we just don’t get any value out of it.
Comment by Severian @ 5/22/2006 - 7:31 pm
Said Kathy-Teachers are leaving the teaching profession in droves because the salaries are so low and the working conditions so bad. The wages were no secret when they went into the profession. BTW, the teachers make their money in the backend of the deal. It’s called retirement with a pension.
the NEA (which is not a union by the way; it’s a professional association From the USA Today
The 2.8-million-member National Education Association will allow local affiliates to join the AFL-CIO. The hope is that the AFL-CIO will give teachers more muscle when they campaign for political candidates and push legislation.
Comment by Pam @ 5/22/2006 - 7:38 pm
Also, you keep harping on teachers who preach “leftist” politics. What about teachers who preach right-wing politics, or who push conservative ideology?
That’s a hoot Kathy, got any examples? Say, anything near as numerous and heinous as the examples of leftist drivel we see everyday in the news, and those are only the ones that get national attention? Even one or two?
Yeah, how dare an instructor try and instill Conservative values in students, you know, duty, honor, hard work, responsibility, as opposed to class warfare, victimhood, it’s not your fault it’s all those bad white males that are holding you back.
Comment by Severian @ 5/22/2006 - 7:49 pm
Said Kathy- True, but “facts” are tricky things. For example, it was Bill Clinton who ended what you call permanent welfare, not a Republican president. Clinton campaigned on that issue. It helped get him elected. And he kept that promise, unlike most of the promises he made to his liberal constituents.
Funny how he got credit for that! Here is a good Dick Morris article on him!
While Clinton Fiddled
A story of fecklessness in the face of terror.
And this Front Page article sheds some light on welfare and Clinton
Comment by Pam @ 5/22/2006 - 7:52 pm
Said Kathy-Another example: Conservatives are very fond of saying that the U.S. spends more money on foreign aid (meaning aid meant to help ameliorate human suffering in other parts of the world) than any other country. That is presented as a fact, but it’s really a misleading distortion of fact. The U.S. spends more in absolute dollar amounts for foreign aid, because the U.S. *has* far more money than any other country in the world. But as a percentage of the U.S. gross national product, the U.S. lags far behind spending for international humanitarian needs than many other countries with far lower GNPs. So in FACT, the U.S. is quite miserly about spending money on nonmilitary foreign aid.
Comment by Pam @ 5/22/2006 - 8:03 pm
Yeah, Pam, the “we’re such stingy, money grubbing heartless bastards” meme. Once again, the US is at fault for everything, and if we just threw more money at the world’s problems the world would be gum drop dreamy.
Comment by Severian @ 5/22/2006 - 8:10 pm
You’ve got that right Severian.
The funny thing is, when money is thrown at a problem, it usually ends up being an abortion!
Comment by Pam @ 5/22/2006 - 8:13 pm
No Kathy, we don’t need to understand them, we need to KILL THEM!
All things in life have root causes, Severian. It doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore that.
The fact is, if we were 100 times as brutal as we are, they would then respect us, and not screw with us.
You do know, don’t you, that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
You still nonsensically stick to the idea that throwing more money at the problem is the “cure.” Bull. We already spend plenty of money, we just don’t get any value out of it.
The money has to be spent well, not just spent. The policies have to make sense, too. The No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, has done enormous damage to public schools’ ability to teach children how to learn and how to love learning. It’s not even funded well enough for schools to meet the standards imposed by the legislation — never mind whether mindless rote test prep, and drilling children as young as five years old to get high scores on standardized tests, constitutes “education.”
And by the way, we’re not getting any value out of the money we throw at the Pentagon, either — unless you consider tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead and maimed with no improvement to national security at all to be value for your dollar. But that does not keep the White House and Congress from throwing even MORE money at the Pentagon. The less value we get, the more money THEY get. The Pentagon is the biggest permanent welfare scheme ever devised.
That’s a hoot Kathy, got any examples?
Certainly I do. Prayer in public schools. Stickers on biology textbooks that say evolution is “just a theory” (DUH, that’s why it’s called the THEORY of evolution — like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, for example?). The Senate Majority Leader calling for creationism, aka “intelligent design,” to be taught in public schools. The President of the United States announcing that creationism, aka “intelligent design,” should be taught in public schools.
Then again, you state in your next paragraph that you consider all of these examples of neoconservative social ideology to be nonpolitical, totally normal, the default position. In other words, right-wing ideology, in your view, is by definition nonpolitical.
And talk about a sense of victimhood! Look at you, singing the victim blues like Luciano Pavarotti! “Oh, those awful liberal socialist Democrats are destroying the public schools! The evil unions are stealing our money! Those stupid, lazy, irrresponsible minorities are the problem!”
And it’s not just public education where right-wingers refuse to take responsibility for their own failures. Look how rightists have been howling with outrage, pointing their trembling, outraged fingers at “liberals, socialists, Democrats, those rotten no good anti-American traitors,” etc. etc. for the unmitigated disaster we call Iraq. It’s not the Bush administration’s fault for aggressively invading a country that was no threat to us, for venal reasons of their own; manufacturing “evidence” that Iraq had nuclear weapons aimed straight at our shores and ready to be delivered within 45 minutes of Saddam’s order, being arrogant and just plain stupid enough to assume that Iraqis would welcome foreign occupiers with open arms and grateful prayers of adoration, and thus having absolutely NO contingency plan, no postwar management plan, no Plan B whatsoever. Plan A was perfect and would work like a dream. No need for a Plan B. But when the policy fails, do you guys blame Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz et al. for their colossal presumptuousness and their ignorance of Iraq and their insistence on preemptive invasion of a country that could not harm us against the opposition of most of the world? No, of course not! You blame the liberals and antiwar activists who told you from the very start — from BEFORE the start — that all of these things that have come to pass WOULD come to pass.
Great Smoky Mountains, all you neocons! TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN MISTAKES!
Once again, the US is at fault for everything, and if we just threw more money at the world’s problems the world would be gum drop dreamy.
No, Severian. The US is at fault for NOTHING. The US is PERFECT. Perfect, blameless, perfect. Nothing bad that happens in the world has anything to do with the US. Anything and everything that is good in the world exists because we made it good. When we bomb people, it’s to liberate them. When we occupy other people’s countries, it’s because we want them to be free. When we torture people, it’s to save lives. When we detain people with no charges, no evidence, no sentence, and no hope of seeing the light of day again, it’s to protect human life. Even when we break the law and violate our own beliefs, we still remain a country that respects the law, follows the law, believes in human rights, is spreading freedom and democracy around the world.
In fact, if the US were a person, we would be a saint or an angel, incapable of doing wrong.
How dare those evil liberals hold the U.S. responsible for ANYthing?
Comment by Kathy @ 5/22/2006 - 10:20 pm
You do know, don’t you, that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
You should know Kathy, every single one of your tedious diatribes, and you sure seem to have diarhea of the keyboard, boils down to the same leftist failed ideas and talking points that have been proven again and again to not work.
I’ve seen NO ideas or solutions out of you, only whining and complaints, which is ALL I see out of liberals and socialists and Democrats these days. Whining, complaining, and bitching about how bad the US is, how evil we are, how we don’t put enough money in to this or that. You can use 100 or 10,000 words to say it, but it still is exactly the same rants over and over and over.
You want to help public schools, try vouchers. If there is anything that will save our schools it’s competition. But nooooo, the NEA won’t let that happen, they and you seem to view schools as a government welfare program for incompetent teachers and administrators. This also brings in the subtle racism that is alway associated with the left, since vouchers help the poor and disadvantaged even more than the “evil” rich who can already afford to send their kids to whatever school they want. No, you brown and black people better just let us smart white liberals decide what’s best for you, you really aren’t smart enough to decide for yourselves. Add that to the liberal racism of diminished expectations, making excuses for poor performance for minorities, and it’s no wonder many of the racial problems still exist, and a completely amazing thing that minorities still vote so heavily for Democrats.
You continue living in your little dream world Kathy, and let those of us who are adults, and who have realized how the world operates handle the heavy lifting. The trouble is, you, and the rest of your childlike, immature liberals, insist on trying to force the same failed policies and ideas down everyone’s throats.
Comment by Severian @ 5/23/2006 - 7:48 am
BTW Kathy, it’s telling that once again you, in a conversation about education, get back again to the leftist talking points on Iraq. You and your fellow travelers have Iraq on the brain, you are obsessed. I actually have come to the conclusion that liberalism like yours is a form of mental illness similar to obsessive compulsive disorder married with a strong case of projection.
Comment by Severian @ 5/23/2006 - 7:54 am
Said Kathy-The money has to be spent well, not just spent. The policies have to make sense, too. The No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, has done enormous damage to public schools’ ability to teach children how to learn and how to love learning. It’s not even funded well enough for schools to meet the standards imposed by the legislation — never mind whether mindless rote test prep, and drilling children as young as five years old to get high scores on standardized tests, constitutes “education.”
I live in MI an the test scores are going up in spite of the teachers that said it wouldn’t work. That being said, here is a bit on the actual law. You will note that the law leaves the amount of testing up to the individual state. Now I am one of those kids that was tested often in the 60’s and 70’s, in fact, I would bet any of you that are 40+, are as well. And what is remarkable to me is how we were able to be eduacted and diciplined by the schools, with class sizes of 24-30 kids, and still managed to test well.
Comment by Pam @ 5/23/2006 - 8:26 am
Kathy,
You are wrong again. Your suppositions are not facts. To Wit, you never asked me what the top score for the SAT that year was. For your information it was only 1600. That is right, my daughter only missed 5 questions.
I also got her report card from USC. She got better than a 3.9 for the semester, and better than 3.6 for her career.
There are no liberal “embellishments” here. Just facts and acomplishments, not talk, Kathy.
Comment by PCD @ 5/23/2006 - 8:30 am
Pam, you have to understand Kathy’s and her fellow NEA clone’s problems with No Child Left Behind. By suddenly enforcing objective real world metrics for measuring progress on the schools, it’s shining a bright light on them, and exposing the fact that they have been teaching drivel for years. Incompetent people aways fear objective reality. Shine a bright light under a rock, and odds are you won’t like what you see crawling out. It shows the results of years of liberal ideology and “soft” racism at work, years of “don’t fail them, it’ll hurt their self esteem,” “don’t fail them, their parent’s will complain and that’s a hassle,” “don’t fail them, they’re minorities, they can’t help it” and on and on and on. Textbooks that spend more time blaming the US and enforcing multiculturalism instead of teaching math, reading, and historical facts. Hard to properly indoctrinate the proletariat if people are actually paying attention to what you’re doing.
I bet Kathy is just a joy to be around:
Good morning ma’am, would you…
What’s so good about it?! Bush Lied, People Died! The Republican’s are screwing up our schools! The military is actually killing people!
Errr…ma’am, I was just asking what size latte’ you wanted.
I’m surprised she spends so much time online here, surely her Code Pink sisters are missing her, surely there’s an ROTC office somewhere in her hometown that’s gone un-vandalized since she’s spending so much time here.
Comment by Severian @ 5/23/2006 - 9:10 am
Sev,
Well said.
Kathy is one of those people who feel that government doesn’t fund them well enough. IE. they can’t live like a Kennedy.
My fiancee has a “Hyper” child. The progressive teachers either say “medicate” him or ignore him. The child is being left behind by the system and the system most emphatically does not want the parent seeing what is being taught and how it is being taught. But the kid knows where to get a condom and that he has rights not to do anything he doesn’t want to, like study.
Comment by PCD @ 5/23/2006 - 9:31 am
Severian- I think Kathy doesn’t like the fact that we want to hold teachers accountable..I don’t know if you remember the story from 02′, I believe, but there was a teacher from Brooklyn that needed to be tested to keep her certificate..she failed 14 times in a row. She then sued for discrimination because she was black and obviously the testing was racist!
Kathy omitted the part of NCLB that has just been divulged! Minorities are being omitted from the scoring!
Overall, the AP found that about 1.9 million students — or about 1 in every 14 test scores — aren’t being counted under the law’s racial categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores excluded as whites, the analysis showed.
Less than 2 percent of white children’s scores aren’t being counted as a separate categor