Senate votes for English as “national” language of the US

… 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.

140 Responses to "Senate votes for English as “national” language of the US"

Liberty and Justice says:

May 19, 2006 at 9:18 am

English; America’s National Language

When someone moves to the US, it is completely logical they learn to speak English and that it is expected of them.
Whenever one wants to participate in any society, it is logical that one learns to speak the language that is spoken in that society a…
Borg Blog » Blog Archive » Senate Votes English as ‘National Language’ says:

May 19, 2006 at 10:17 am

[…] This is great news.Â Overall this appears to be a good bill.Â (Though the Sister Toldjah blog reminds us that it still stops well short of making English our “official” language.) 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.”Â […]
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 11:02 am

– 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
Baklava says:

May 19, 2006 at 11:31 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.
andrew says:

May 19, 2006 at 11:57 am

Its like they say, E PLURIBUS UNUM
Baklava says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:19 pm

Yes. It doesn’t mean balkanization. It means unification. So get behind it Andrew. Hop to it.
andrew says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:22 pm

” It means unification. ”

In a foreign language too.
Severian says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:30 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.
sanity says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:34 pm

In God we Trust

All others pay cash…..
andrew says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:42 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?
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:46 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
andrew says:

May 19, 2006 at 12:49 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.
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 1:17 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.
Kathy says:

May 19, 2006 at 2:27 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.
Severian says:

May 19, 2006 at 2:30 pm

Sad isn’t it Kathy?
Kathy says:

May 19, 2006 at 3:11 pm

Yes, it is, Severian. Maybe on that much we can agree.
Pug says:

May 19, 2006 at 3:17 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.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 3:52 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
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 4:09 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
andrew says:

May 19, 2006 at 4:24 pm

“Apparently its working Pug. english is the fastest growing language, worldwide.”

Hooray for Nash equilibria!
Severian says:

May 19, 2006 at 4:26 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?
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 6:39 pm

Deutsch, Chotto Wakarimasen Severiansan. Gomenasai!

The other Pug
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 6:51 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.
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:10 pm

andrew, what do strategies or the lack thereof, have to do with this thread? Is that the Nash equilibria you refer to?
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:30 pm

“Wenn catapaults geÃ¤chtet werden, nur Haken catapaults haben zie”

The other other Pug
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:33 pm

Translation: (Duetchen)

“When catapaults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapaults”

– Bang (gitty bang bang)
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:37 pm

My guess was close. Catapult as the tools use implies, sort of gives it awaaaaaaaaay.

Bang, is Duetchen Dutch?
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:39 pm

Heh – Forest he googled “John Forbes Kerry”, but got “John Forbes Nash” instead….. *snort*

– Bang
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:40 pm

German Herman…
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 7:51 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
forest hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 8:09 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.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 19, 2006 at 8:17 pm

No sie habla Inglis mi amigo…. ::Heh::

– Bang
Pirate’s Cove » Blog Archive » Senate Says Yea To English says:

May 19, 2006 at 8:17 pm

[…] Others: Hot Air, Sister Toldjah. Explore posts in the same categories: Politics […]
Kathy says:

May 20, 2006 at 1:22 am

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.
Severian says:

May 20, 2006 at 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.

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.
sanity says:

May 20, 2006 at 9:35 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.
forest hunter says:

May 20, 2006 at 2:05 pm

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.
Kathy says:

May 20, 2006 at 7:09 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.
Lorica says:

May 20, 2006 at 9:09 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
Kathy says:

May 20, 2006 at 9:44 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.
Lorica says:

May 21, 2006 at 10:55 am

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
Severian says:

May 21, 2006 at 11:48 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…
Severian says:

May 21, 2006 at 2:17 pm

“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.
forest hunter says:

May 21, 2006 at 3:50 pm

Truer words never spoken, Sev.
Kathy says:

May 21, 2006 at 8:18 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.
Severian says:

May 21, 2006 at 8:25 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.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 21, 2006 at 10:15 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
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 21, 2006 at 10:27 pm

The real Marxist manifesto…..

“From each according to their gullibility….Too each according to their sloth”…

– Bang
Kathy says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:05 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.
Kathy says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:18 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.
Severian says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:20 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.
Severian says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:27 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.
PCD says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:43 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.
Baklava says:

May 22, 2006 at 2:44 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!
Pam says:

May 22, 2006 at 5:00 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!
Kathy says:

May 22, 2006 at 7:09 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.
Severian says:

May 22, 2006 at 7:31 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.
Pam says:

May 22, 2006 at 7:38 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.
Severian says:

May 22, 2006 at 7:49 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.
Pam says:

May 22, 2006 at 7:52 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
Pam says:

May 22, 2006 at 8:03 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.
Severian says:

May 22, 2006 at 8:10 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.
Pam says:

May 22, 2006 at 8:13 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!
Kathy says:

May 22, 2006 at 10:20 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?
Severian says:

May 23, 2006 at 7:48 am

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.
Severian says:

May 23, 2006 at 7:54 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.
Pam says:

May 23, 2006 at 8:26 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.
PCD says:

May 23, 2006 at 8:30 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.
Severian says:

May 23, 2006 at 9:10 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.
PCD says:

May 23, 2006 at 9:31 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.
Pam says:

May 23, 2006 at 10:39 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 category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10 percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores and nearly half of American Indian scores aren’t broken out, AP found.
Severian says:

May 23, 2006 at 10:50 am

Well, Pam, it’s once again the evil conservative’s fault for actually requiring results! Of course they have to lie and distort, it’s because they care so much!

Ethics? Morality? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Kathy says:

May 23, 2006 at 5:01 pm

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.

Why the defensiveness, PCD? I wasn’t trying to correct you or argue that your daughter didn’t do well on the SAT. My intention was to point out that my daughter achieved a very high score on the SATs — not to prove that my daughter did better than your daughter or that your daughter did better than mine. I mentioned the different scoring scales because they ARE different, not to imply anything about your daughter’s score.

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.

That’s wonderful, PCD. I’m sure you’re just as proud of her as I am of my daughter, who gets excellent grades, too — but I won’t say what they are, because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to boast or make comparisons.

There are no liberal “embellishments” here. Just facts and acomplishments, not talk, Kathy.

Okay, that’s nice. I’m not sure what your point is. Your daughter did well in her school, which may be liberal or conservative, I have no idea. My daughter has done very well in her school, which has very liberal programming. So they both did well. Great news for both of us as parents, right?
Severian says:

May 23, 2006 at 5:09 pm

Hey, Kathy’s back. Expect another 4 or 5 page tedious repetition of the same liberal inanities in 5…4…3…2…1…
Kathy says:

May 23, 2006 at 6:08 pm

I live in MI an the test scores are going up in spite of the teachers that said it wouldn’t work.

Most teachers and parents I know who are opposed to NCLB or think it’s done our children a disservice, are not opposed to NCLB because they think it’s impossible to get test scores up. They’re opposed to NCLB because they think that the NCLB’s single-minded focus on standardized test scores to measure educational success is impeding actual classroom learning.

You are assuming that test scores going up means that actual learning is going on in the classroom. Teachers and parents work exhaustively with students all year long to get their test scores to go up enough to meet the requirements of NCLB. But that does not mean the students will remember anything they did on the test, or that they have learned anything substantively. All that can be said for certain is that they have learned how to take that test. Learning how to take tests is important, but it’s not the same as learning in general. Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently. You cannot assume that students have demonstrated this ability by looking at a test score.
Kathy says:

May 23, 2006 at 6:18 pm

Hey, Kathy’s back. Expect another 4 or 5 page tedious repetition of the same liberal inanities in 5â€¦4â€¦3â€¦2â€¦1â€¦

Nah, Severian. I won’t continue the cycle of insults here. There’s no point in doing that. The ultimate truth here is that you and I view the world in completely different ways. I am unlikely to persuade you to share my values and priorities; and you are just as unlikely to persuade me to share your values and priorities. It’s not for me to say that you are wrong and I am right. The only thing I can say is that my values and beliefs are deeply held, have been formed over many years and as the result of my own experiences and the way I was raised to believe and think by my parents — and I am certain that exactly the same is true for your values and beliefs.

We will just have to agree to disagree. It won’t kill us.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 23, 2006 at 6:36 pm

– I don’t want schools to be “Liberal” or “conservative”. I want the politics the hell out of our schools.

– But that would mean the Left would lose one of its “back door” tactics, so I’m sure thats the reason they fight like hell to keep schools politisized.

– Bang
Pam says:

May 23, 2006 at 9:18 pm

said Kathy-Most teachers and parents I know who are opposed to NCLB or think it’s done our children a disservice, are not opposed to NCLB because they think it’s impossible to get test scores up. They’re opposed to NCLB because they think that the NCLB’s single-minded focus on standardized test scores to measure educational success is impeding actual classroom learning.
It’s funny that you say that. The people I speak to are in favor of the program. I guess it depends on who you talk to and what type of school system you have your children in. My friends/family have their kids in school systems that are parent driven for support. College is the goal. Testing is a byproduct of the lessons. Education is the most prescious gift a parent can give a child.

You are assuming that test scores going up means that actual learning is going on in the classroom. Teachers and parents work exhaustively with students all year long to get their test scores to go up enough to meet the requirements of NCLB.
You are presumming to know what I think. Testing is a tool that has been used since teaching began. How do you measure progress in a classroom if not for tests. I believe in testing the teachers and the students. I believe in getting rid of the union and paying teachers based on performance.

Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently.

Some people might call that comprehension. The more a child comprehends, the better they will do.
Kathy says:

May 24, 2006 at 10:56 am

The people I speak to are in favor of the program. I guess it depends on who you talk to and what type of school system you have your children in. My friends/family have their kids in school systems that are parent driven for support. College is the goal. Testing is a byproduct of the lessons. Education is the most prescious gift a parent can give a child.

Yes, it’s the same in my daughter’s school district, and in the surrounding school districts. In my case, I talk to a lot of parents because for the past two years I’ve worked in the Children’s Dept. at a Barnes & Noble that’s in a middle-class to upper-middle-class location. Parents and teachers come into to buy workbooks for their children and students all the time. I’ve had many conversations with them about how useless at best, and harmful to learning at worst, NCLB is. Children are being test-prepped in the first grade now, test prep in kindergarten is right around the corner. It’s not because the tests are mandated that early; it’s because getting high scores on the tests is so crucial to a school’s funding that test prep has to start that early.

You are presumming to know what I think.

I assumed that you believed high test scores to be an accurate measure of the quality of education a student is getting, because you mentioned, in an approving way, that your school district’s scores have gone up.

Testing is a tool that has been used since teaching began. How do you measure progress in a classroom if not for tests. I believe in testing the teachers and the students. I believe in getting rid of the union and paying teachers based on performance.

I agree that there is a place for testing. However, relying entirely on test scores to measure student learning or the educational standing of a given school is wrong, too. Standardized tests, which rely heavily on rote learning, memorization, and test-taking strategies, do not tell you how much a student has truly learned, in terms of lasting understanding. Doing well on these tests is all about knowing how to get the right answer, or memorizing right answers for commonly asked questions. It does not teach a student anything more than that.

Now, mind you, that’s important, because students will face test-taking situations of many sorts later in life — but it should not be used to determine comprehension, or enjoyment of learning for its own sake, or the ability to think independently.

I wrote: Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently.

Pam responded: Some people might call that comprehension. The more a child comprehends, the better they will do.

Yes, that’s exactly my point. The kind of real learning is what I was describing in my quoted statement. But comprehension cannot be effectively or reliably measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests do not measure comprehension. They measure the degree to which a student has learned how to answer the questions.

That’s what those SAT prep courses are all about. They are almost exclusively test-taking strategies and learning how to get the right answer on the specific questions or problems that are likely to be on the test. You don’t have to understand the problem, or the process used in solving the problem, to do that. You just need to know the correct series of steps to go through to come up with the right answer.
Kathy says:

May 24, 2006 at 10:59 am

Just to clarify: When i wrote that “it’s the same in my daughter’s school district, and in the surrounding districts,” I was referring to Pam’s comment about the schools in her district being parent-driven, with college as the goal, and an awareness that education is the most precious gift you can give a child. In my experience with parents and students, that’s why so many parents and teachers I know oppose NCLB.
PCD says:

May 24, 2006 at 12:56 pm

Kathy, there should be NO politics in school. Where I have seen LIBERAL politics in the school, I see functionally illiterate children passed on, learning deficit children ignored, and teachers spoon feeding answers to tests so the children pass with high enough scores to avoid the NCLB sanctions. Botton line, Liberals don’t teach, they preach their religion in school, and I don’t mean Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
Kathy says:

May 24, 2006 at 9:25 pm

Kathy, there should be NO politics in school. Where I have seen LIBERAL politics in the school, I see functionally illiterate children passed on, learning deficit children ignored, and teachers spoon feeding answers to tests so the children pass with high enough scores to avoid the NCLB sanctions. Botton line, Liberals don’t teach, they preach their religion in school, and I don’t mean Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

“There should be no politics in school”: That makes no sense at all. Everything about education is political — from school funding to choice of textbooks to lesson planning. Saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning is political. Teaching a unit on slavery is political. Teaching about the settling of the West by the pioneers is political, because you have to decide whether you are also going to teach about the settling of the West from the Native American point of view — and either choice you make is political. Teaching evolution didn’t used to be political, but is now; and teaching creationism, aka intelligent design, is political. How can you even begin to teach history or American literature without making choices about how to approach the subject or what to discuss that have political implications?

The only way you can keep politics out of the classroom is if you do only math and vocabulary drills all day long, and nothing else. And even THAT would be a political choice.

Re your comment about teachers spoon-feeding answers to tests, if that bothers you, you shouldn’t be supporting NCLB. That’s what NCLB requires teachers to do: They have to get their students to pass the standardized tests, or their schools get failing scores and the teachers get fired.

How would YOU suggest the schools do right by the students with learning deficits when they absolutely HAVE to meet the testing requirements of NCLB? How would YOU suggest functionally illiterate students be actually taught to read fluently and understand what they’re reading and ENJOY reading (now THERE’S a radical notion for you) when every minute of the day has to be devoted to teaching whatever is going to be on those NCLB tests?
Kathy says:

May 24, 2006 at 9:54 pm

You are such a hypocrite, PCB. How DARE you accuse “liberals” of “preaching their religion in school”? NCLB is the neocons’ religion, not the liberals’. How typical of the neocon philosophy to foist a law on schools that has no educational validity at all and then blame others for the mess it creates.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 24, 2006 at 11:44 pm

– “How would YOU suggest the schools do right by the students with learning [deficits]sic….”

– How about letting them learn at their own pace, or isn’t that “nuanced” enough for the Liberal social engineers?

– Bang
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 25, 2006 at 12:06 am

– I just love it when people spout off about things they have little or no personal experience with. I can’t speak to the situation in the rest of the country, and I wouldn’t even try, although a good guess is there are similiar conditions throughout the country, depending mostly on available facilities.

– My son has aspergers, and was in a program from the age of 6 when I started raising him on my own. There is a very large spectrum of learning obsticles, very few of which are true “deficiencies”, a word I personally abhore, since its so typically a catch-all having little to do with the true facts for most kids. A very small percentage of children have a true “learning deficiency”, and ADD/ADHD are not in that group. Bottom line is my son started in a 100% program, and gradually mainstreamed to only college career planning in the program now. Hes an honors student with a 3.9 average, with close to straight A’s, with a B from time to time, when he gets lazy or bored. Schooling for a child is 90% involvement and interest of the parent, which is one of the core problems, rather than learning disabilities in most cases. Its there if you take part in your childs learning process. Absentee parents is a much greater problem than any learning “deficits”.

– Bang
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 25, 2006 at 12:22 am

– I should make one correction. “Most” ADD/ADHD/Aspergers, children do not have a true learning deficit, the numbers I’ve seen being in the less than 5% range, with about 15% having a higher than average learning ability. Just ask Steven Spielburg.

– Bang
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:14 am

How about letting them learn at their own pace, or isn’t that “nuanced” enough for the Liberal social engineers?

ROFL! That sounds absolutely perfect to me, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible with the everyone-march-in-lockstep, numbers-tell-you-everything, philosophy of the No Child Left Behind requirements. An Orwellian moniker if ever there was one. Hey kid, learn at your own pace, that’s fine — just make sure that your pace is stamped with the date of the next standardized test! Talk about “social engineering.”!

We agree on one thing, though: PCD’s decision to use “learning deficit” children, as he or she called them, to make a totally illogical point about NCLB, was laughable.
Pam says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:37 am

Kathy said:Re your comment about teachers spoon-feeding answers to tests, if that bothers you, you shouldn’t be supporting NCLB. That’s what NCLB requires teachers to do: They have to get their students to pass the standardized tests, or their schools get failing scores and the teachers get fired.

Has it occured to you that this is the most ridiculous thing? I will again remind you that as a child, I too went through the standardized testing. The only thing the school cared about was that the kids were present on the day of the test. We never were refreshed prior to the test. Why? Because they were teaching the kids all along!

Let me ask you a question Kathy..do you believe kids should receive report cards?
PCD says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:50 am

Kathy, you are sophmoric (Literal translation: Wise fool). Teachers should teach like the Jon Voight character in “Conrack”, Or the Olmos character in “Stand and Deliver”, not outcome based education, or other useless pap that teachers use to pass uneducated kids on to the next grade.

Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person since you condone cheating and side-stepping the requirements of NCLB for the kids to LEARN. Tests measure the learning. Only NEA union goons think that teachers should not be held accountable if the kids learn or not.
PCD says:

May 25, 2006 at 10:55 am

Oh, and Kathy, if throwing money at the school system is THE answer, then the DC schools ought to be turning out geniuses being funded at $10,000 per pupil per school year.

Your cultural Icons, Bill and Hillary, sent Chelsea to Siddwell Friends rather than to the DC schools.

That alone was enough to prove your, and the NEA’s, Mantra wrong.
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 12:50 pm

Let me ask you a question Kathy..do you believe kids should receive report cards?

Of course, but they don’t have to have letter (traditional) grades. My daughter went to a public Montessori school from PreK through 5th grade where the students received progress reports. There were no letter grades. Starting with middle school, she started getting letter grades, and she’s been doing just fine.

I had standardized tests as a child, too. But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score.

Teachers should teach like the Jon Voight character in “Conrack”, Or the Olmos character in “Stand and Deliver”, not outcome based education, or other useless pap that teachers use to pass uneducated kids on to the next grade.

I couldn’t agree more. So then why are teachers being asked to meet the requirements of a totally outcome-based law that ties funding to scores on standardized tests?

Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person since you condone cheating and side-stepping the requirements of NCLB for the kids to LEARN.

The requirements of NCLB are that schools present the government with specific scores on standardized tests or lose their funding. The consequences of not meeting the testing requirements of NCLB for a school are so draconian that teachers are forced to “teach to the test” if they want to keep their jobs and school administrators are forced to require their teachers to “teach to the test” if they want to keep their schools open.

I don’t condone cheating. I don’t condone what NCLB requires teachers to do. You are getting angry when I tell you what teachers are compelled to do in order to get their students to do well on the tests. I don’t know why you think that test prep is “cheating.” Test prep is test prep. It’s not “cheating.” But it’s also not teaching. It’s test prep. And tests do not measure learning — at least not meaningful learning. Tests (standardized tests) measure the test-taker’s ability to take tests — which is why test-taking strategies are so important. If any of you have ever used one of those test-prep books like Barron’s, or had someone tutor your child for the SATs, or enrolled your child in an SAT prep course, then you have been helping them learn test-taking skills. That’s 95% of what test prep is about.

Tests measure the learning.

If you’re talking about standardized tests, no they do not. They measure the student’s ability to take a standardized test.
Baklava says:

May 25, 2006 at 1:16 pm

Kathy wrote, “But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score.”

I believe it is a reasonable goal to do something different with schools that are failing children. The only real measurement of that is with tests. The schools aren’t going to be removed from the children. The schools will be taken over from the people who failed it and the children. Is there something wrong with that?

Kathy wrote, “The consequences of not meeting the testing requirements of NCLB for a school are so draconian”

Draconian for who? For the failing administrators? Who cares? It’ll be POSITIVE for the children stuck in the situation. They’ll get more opportunity in life if they are not failed so badly.

Your last paragraph was COMPLETELY false. I have two daughters that do VERY well on those tests. The school here in CA does NOT teach to the test as you keep alleging. I’m sure that happens in some classrooms but your assertion is far from the truth in most situations. Do you recognize that at least? My daughters both place in the top quintile for results and it isn’t due to their “ability to take a test”. It’s because they know the answers because they LEARNED.

Learning is key to whether kids are learning and the only way folks can assess whether or not kids are learning is tests. Not interviews. Not brain scans. Not a guestimate. There are too many areas where schools have been allowed to FAIL THE CHILDREN for far too long. Draconian changes needed? Yes. So that kids aren’t failed in life. They need to be given the opporutunity to learn.

I had posted a message to you a few days ago where I challenged you to learn about the fact that your assertions of what has been spent by the government to help the poor were FAR from true. It sounds like the education system has failed you. Or, if you are old enough that you have failed to verify if the sources of information you are reading are telling the truth. What does misinformation and lack of education do in life? It holds you back. It keeps you a victim. You can break free from that with due diligence.
PCD says:

May 25, 2006 at 1:17 pm

Kathy,

Giving the kids the answers is cheating just as much as giving them palm notes for during the test. You aren’t teaching them how to reason out a problem to reach the answer.

You may be fine with kids being taught to feel answers or other self-esteem tricks, but then you blame every one else for the teachers doing that. Typical liberal.
Pam says:

May 25, 2006 at 3:06 pm

Said Kathy- I had standardized tests as a child, too. But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score. Yes it was Kathy.

Of course, but they don’t have to have letter (traditional) grades. My daughter went to a public Montessori school So you sent your kid to a private school, not public, or did your child attend public schools later on? Yes, unfortunately, the grades do need to be traditional in the public schools. I will take you back to my childhood again..we had special classes for those that were not able to keep up, as well as classes for those that were ahead of their peers and needed a bigger challenge. Making an entire class learn at the slowest kids pace is a disservice to all the kids in the class.

The requirements of NCLB are that schools present the government with specific scores on standardized tests or lose their funding.

Well yes they will lose their funding because they will be shut down. What sense does it make to fund failure.

One thing you have not touched on, or maybe I overlooked it, is the fact that the failing schools are predominately in lower income areas.
PCD says:

May 25, 2006 at 3:30 pm

Pam,

We have failing schools here in Dubuque. They are the poorest, but the whole school system had been run by Diana Lam who instituted all sorts of touchy-feely, Liberal, avante-guard ideas into these failing schools. Lam has been gone for awhile, but the carnage she left is still ruining kids in the schools.

If you google Diana Lam, you may find where she’s been fired from other school systems.

All classes are homogenized. There is no fast learning class or slow one. Most kids are lost isn the shuffle and learn nothing, hence the low scores.

Kathy, like most arrogant liberals puts her kids in private schools, not the public ones run by NEA teachers and administrators.

Get rid of the NEA and the Administrators’ unions. Cut the fat in the number of paper pushers in school administration. Cut the consultants and other frills, and the kids will have the money for paper and pencils the schools have diverted to admin costs.
Pam says:

May 25, 2006 at 4:45 pm

PCD this is a good point:but the carnage she left is still ruining kids in the schools.
Amen to that PCD. Our inner city district went through that and within the past 5 years under new management, closing schools and redistricting the district..it is finally turning the corner! And I am happy to report…they passed this year! WhooHoo! They aren’t failing.
Baklava says:

May 25, 2006 at 4:46 pm

Gosh Pam. Sounds so draconian (refering to Kathy’s comment). Who would’ve wanted them to turn the corner….
Pam says:

May 25, 2006 at 5:08 pm

Don’t you just hate accountability Bak
sanity says:

May 25, 2006 at 7:14 pm

Want to see how fast the public schools turn around, force politician’s children, and medium to well off kids, all those that go to private schools, to HAVE to attend public schools.

First bully punches their child, you will see some action.

First shooting in the school, you will see action taken.

First ranting and raving teacher that goes on personal opinion rather than teach – you will see action taken.

First time you see a sexual assualt from a teacher on their children, you will see action taken.

All you need to do is put the private schools children in with the public schools.

Because as it stands now, politicans can say they are helping the public schools and make all sorts of appropriate noises of concern, but when it comes down to it – where do they bring their children for education?

Same goes for health care…

Same goes for Retirement….

As soon as we take away the divider that gives one set of things for one group and a completely different set for another, like retirement, health care, ect like our politicians enjoy – as soon as we bring them down to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.

But as long as they enjoy a completely different set of rules, different health care, different retirement, different set of laws that govern them, then we will never have them fully appreciate a problem if they do not know about it.
Big Bang Hunter says:

May 25, 2006 at 7:51 pm

I agree sanity, except I’d put it a little different.

“as soon as we bring them “UP” to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.”

– The Liberals hate anything that’s goal orientated, has accountability, or is incentivised/competitive. They don’t want it in society, and they don’t want it in schools. When you know that the focus of their main program is homogenization of everything into one big unhappy, but welfare braced community, then you can see where everything they do leads to under achievement and mediocrity, if not outright failure and incompetence. That concept is as anti-American as it gets. Nanny-stateism replacing American individuality and self sufficiency.

– Bang
Severian says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:32 pm

Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person…

Well, yeah, by definition. She already told us she was through with her constant, wordy repetition of her touchy, feely, liberal mantras, that is complaints with no solutions offered, but here she is, still at it. And not a solution yet, other than we don’t pay teachers enough, and that history is political, the pledge is political. In other words, traditional values like duty, honor, country, hard work, humility, are all alien concepts to her, how dare we try and indoctrinate kids with such evil ideas.

“You don’t have to use traditional letter grades,” yeah, you also shouldn’t grade papers in that scary red color too, might just hurt junior’s self esteem. He has to feel good about himself, it’s not his fault, even as they march him to the electric chair for whatever crime he committed because no one ever taught him to live in society and exercise any self control. But at least he has his self esteem!

It’s hard to expess in words how little respect I have for people like her, who consistently contribute to a majority of the country’s problems while cloking themselves in a mantle of elitist superiority. You shouldn’t break your arm patting yourself on the back on ho much more caring you are Kathy, contributing and continuing the problems that are destroying so many young lives is hardly something to be proud of, no matter how much you “care.” And it appears that in addition to just holding these deluded ideas, you are actively out there mucking up the system with all your “altruistic” volunteerism and proseletyzing. Doesn’t matter if your ideas don’t work, stroking your feeling of moral superiority and baseless self esteem is the important thing.
Severian says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:36 pm

When you know that the focus of their main program is homogenization of everything into one big unhappy, but welfare braced community, then you can see where everything they do leads to under achievement and mediocrity, if not outright failure and incompetence.

Of course they do Bang! Liberals in general are the most depressed, miserable, unhappy, constantly complaining people I’ve ever met. Reagan pointed out that Democrats act like every day is April 15th, and Republicans act like every day is the 4th of July. Misery not only loves company, it demands it, and that describes the liberal attitude too well.
Pam says:

May 25, 2006 at 8:42 pm

sanity, I disagree with you(I think). Why do the politicians need to get involved in school districts? This is the job of the parents working with the police who, together, demand action of the school system. The parents should be the ones that are in the face of the school administrators. Day in and day out. On the phone, and in their offices. Get with local News Channels. You would be amazed at how something like a story on TV, pulls a community together to demand change in the system! The liberals did this and look how they destroyed public education. But they got their way!

As for their kids being in private school..we don’t pay for that. We pay them a salary and they can spend it as they see fit. If they are receiving a free education under suspicious circumstances..that is another story. But if people can afford to send their kids to private schools, that’s their business. They still pay local property taxes that fund public schools.

As for this statement: As soon as we take away the divider that gives one set of things for one group and a completely different set for another, like retirement, health care, ect like our politicians enjoy – as soon as we bring them down to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.

Bring them down? People aspire to go up. Everything you listed are benefits that people recieve from their employers or save for throughout their lifetime. They are benefits not something guaranteed under the COTUS.

If your arguement is with the benefits of Congress..I agree. I don’t think they should have control of deciding their pay and benefits. We the people should and it should be on the Presidential Election Ballot every 4 years.

It disgusts me to think of Byrd’s retirement! Or Kennedy or Levin or Thurmonds!
sanity says:

May 25, 2006 at 9:35 pm

Pam says, “Why do the politicians need to get involved in school districts? This is the job of the parents working with the police who, together, demand action of the school system. The parents should be the ones that are in the face of the school administrators. Day in and day out. On the phone, and in their offices. Get with local News Channels. You would be amazed at how something like a story on TV, pulls a community together to demand change in the system! The liberals did this and look how they destroyed public education. But they got their way!”

True, but public schools do have problems, and are federally funded, unless you are suggesting cutting federal involvement out completely.

My thoughts is that instead of always throwing more money at schools because they think that will solve the problem, perhaps if they had to experience what parents and their children go through in the public schools, they would take a more active role in looking at public schools or at least more interest in getting the problems fixed – more than just throwing more money at it.

Pam says, “As for their kids being in private school..we don’t pay for that. We pay them a salary and they can spend it as they see fit. If they are receiving a free education under suspicious circumstances..that is another story. But if people can afford to send their kids to private schools, that’s their business. They still pay local property taxes that fund public schools.”

I understand that, and most of what I said was rhetorical in a sarcastic or ironic sort of way, that if they had to experience what the ‘peons’ have to go through and what their children have to put up with, that perhaps more things would be done to fix problems instead of just throwing money at something like that is all that is needed to fix it.

Pam says “Bring them down? People aspire to go up. Everything you listed are benefits that people recieve from their employers or save for throughout their lifetime. They are benefits not something guaranteed under the COTUS.”

Again I know it is the striving to reach upwards and beyond, but as I said, it was in an ironic sense that if they had to experience wha many think are beneath them, they might actually do more than sining off a blank check to fix problems.

Pam says, If your arguement is with the benefits of Congress..I agree. I don’t think they should have control of deciding their pay and benefits. We the people should and it should be on the Presidential Election Ballot every 4 years.”

Actually I was thinking about these senators and congressman as I wrote this, thinking of how many bounce thousands of dollars in checks and nothing happens to them, thinking of how they have someonething completely different for their retirement than Social Security (so what is the big deal to them to fix it if it doesn’t affect them?), voting for their own raises, sometimes in the middle of the night to bypass the scrutiny of the public…

I am sorry if it seemed to get beyond that, but I am tired of the disconnect between our representatives in Congress and the Senate and the rest of us.

I am tired of them not listening.

Especially since in one of the hottest debated items of this century (immigration) they ignored what most the nation wanted, and essentially gave us all the finger in a vote for immigration that barely does anything of what we wanted.

Again, there is a big disconnect between ‘We the People’ and our representative…….
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 10:47 pm

In other words, traditional values like duty, honor, country, hard work, humility, are all alien concepts to her, how dare we try and indoctrinate kids with such evil ideas.

1. Duty, honor, country, hard work, humility are, as you say, concepts. They are not political concepts. They are not American concepts. They are neither conservative nor liberal. They are concepts that have existed throughout human history. They do not become political until they get defined in the context of specific policies.

2. “Traditional” refers to a body of concepts, beliefs, or practices built up over time. It doesn’t mean “better” or “more valid.” There are other concepts — secularism, egalitarianism, cultural relativism, knowledge, freedom, democracy, reason, dissent — that are just as traditional as the ones you named. These concepts have come to be identified as “liberal” and thus “bad” in the thinking of neoconservatives; but in fact, they are the values of the Enlightenment and our country was founded on them.

No concept is evil until it gets yoked to an evil policy or intention.
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 10:54 pm

Liberals in general are the most depressed, miserable, unhappy, constantly complaining people I’ve ever met. Reagan pointed out that Democrats act like every day is April 15th, and Republicans act like every day is the 4th of July. Misery not only loves company, it demands it, and that describes the liberal attitude too well.

You’ve got to be kidding. What is this litany of grievances you regale us with then, Severian? It sounds dangerously like complaining, discontent, and misery to me.
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 11:11 pm

Giving the kids the answers is cheating just as much as giving them palm notes for during the test. You aren’t teaching them how to reason out a problem to reach the answer.

That’s not what test prep does, and I’ll bet you know it. Test prep teaches kids how to figure out the correct answer on a multiple choice standardized test if they don’t know it. Test prep teaches kids how to handle test anxiety and it teaches kids logical strategies for figuring out the correct answer instead of spending too much time trying to figure it out if they’re not sure. You call that “reasoning it out.” Everyone I know calls it test prep.

One thing you have not touched on, or maybe I overlooked it, is the fact that the failing schools are predominately in lower income areas.

Yes, of course the failing schools are predominantly in lower income areas. Does that mean it’s a problem the rest of us don’t have to take seriously?

And yes, I did touch on the fact that failing schools are predominantly in low-income areas. Extensively.

Kathy, like most arrogant liberals puts her kids in private schools, not the public ones run by NEA teachers and administrators.

My daughter (one daughter, one child, not “kids” plural) has gone to public schools her entire life, as I made clear throughout this entire discussion. Not once did I ever write anything that could have been taken to mean my daughter goes to private school.

Is this the conservative value of honor at work here — making up something and claiming another person said it when you know they didn’t?
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 11:22 pm

Of course, but they don’t have to have letter (traditional) grades. My daughter went to a public Montessori school So you sent your kid to a private school, not public, or did your child attend public schools later on? Yes, unfortunately, the grades do need to be traditional in the public schools. (Ital mine; boldface Pam’s.)

I just saw this. Pam, you pasted my comment, but you don’t appear to have read it. Or maybe you read it, but you didn’t understand it. I told you, Pam, that my daughter went to a PUBLIC Montessori school. It is one of the only public Montessori schools in the country. It is in Montclair, NJ. It is called Edgemont School. If you would like to check all of this out; if checking all of this out would help you to comprehend that my daughter went to a PUBLIC elementary school, you should do that.

My child has attended public schools her entire life. Not just elementary school. She has never spent one day as a student in a private school.

Can I make this any clearer?
Kathy says:

May 25, 2006 at 11:26 pm

P.S. to the above.

Pam, you are wrong that report cards have to be traditional letter grades in public schools. I think what you mean is that you think they SHOULD be letter grades in public schools. However, it is clearly not true that report cards HAVE to be always letter grades in public schools, because my daughter went to a public elementary school where letter grades were NOT used.

You may be of the opinion that this is appalling and evil, but nevertheless it IS a fact that my daughter went to a public elementary school that did not give letter grades.
Pam says:

May 26, 2006 at 7:16 am

Sanity- Then in response to your 1st post, I know that I do not disagree with you.
Pam says:

May 26, 2006 at 7:19 am

Yes, of course the failing schools are predominantly in lower income areas. Does that mean it’s a problem the rest of us don’t have to take seriously?

Well of course we should take it seriously. Hence we have the NCLB.
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 7:44 am

“Traditional” refers to a body of concepts, beliefs, or practices built up over time. It doesn’t mean “better” or “more valid.”

No, the fact that they have worked and produced honorable, capable citizens out of our youth, for centuries means nothing, at least to the liberal mind. You and your fellow travelers sure have refined the ability to see what you want to see, not what is, to a fine art. Liberalism/socialism, despite marked, highly visible failures every time they have been applied, only means they haven’t been done “right” yet, we just gotta keep trying whereas the myriad successes of capitalism/conservative/traditional approaches means they are just tradition, doesn’t mean they actually work!

Yeah, got it, that makes total sense.

There’s a reason that traditions become traditions, and that’s because the vast majority of people, over the vast majority of times, have found them to work well. The liberal/socialist approach to education has most definitely NOT worked as well as the traditional approach, but your response to that is that we need to be even more radically liberal/socialist, rather than return to what actually was proven to work.

Yeah, and Stalin didn’t really kill 20 million people, and the fact that the liberal/leftist/anti-war moonbats caused the US to cut and run in Vietnam, and cut off all support to the S.Vietnamese government, had nothing at all to do with the subsequent brutal communist uprising that caused the death of 3-4 million people. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

You may love living in a leftist fantasyland, but please please stop trying to drage the rest of us kicking and screaming into your fantasy world.

And I still haven’t heard any valid ideas out of you on how to solve the education problem, just continued complaints and dismissive nonsense about approaches that we know work. Typical liberal response, all whine, no cheese.
Pam says:

May 26, 2006 at 8:02 am

Kathy- I did check it out and according to the Board of Ed, your childs school is the only public Montessori school in the state of New Jersey. So it is a public school. The school assesses children in kindergarden to see where they fit in, and the child is placed in the appropriate class. I also saw their attitude toward the NCLB to be right on track.
PCD says:

May 26, 2006 at 8:07 am

I like how Kathy redefines words to suit her artuments and purposes, like Clinton redefining what the meaning of “is” is.

Kathy, you are the lowest form of liberal life on the internet. No matter what it shown to you, you say, “NO, this is how it is in my world”, yet your world is not the world out side the sight of your Clinton issue Rose (Law Firm)colored glasses.

You are a waste of bandwidth.

You have an exclusive setup with a Montessori school set up with in your public schools. Well, sister, let me clue you in on something. THAT IS AN ADMISSION OF FAILURE BY YOUR LOCAL SCHOOLS! THE NEA PARADIGM DOES NOT WORK. YOU ADMIT IT BY SENDING YOUR KID TO THAT SPECIAL SCHOOL!
sanity says:

May 26, 2006 at 8:35 am

One thing I have yet to hear discussed is our culture now, and how the children interact with it.

Back in when we went to school, things were alot different, and most likely the parents were also.

We used to have more time outside, TV was not allowed on all he time, there was discipline in the home, for the most part children were doing the homework before doing anything else.

Now we have where if you spank a child you get hauled into court.

You have teachers that barely know the material they are teaching.

You have kids who disrespect the teachers commonly calling them “B*tches, Hos, ect”.

You have a generation that thinks being pimps and hos is something grand and want to be that. With rap stars they want to be like, and movies like 50 Cent’s movie “Get Rich or Die trying” that they see as the type of culture they are in.

You have children now want emulate rap stars and thugs than something more ‘wholesome’.

You have children now that think if you ‘disrespect’ them that they can bring a gun to school and shoot you.

You have children now that do not really know what manners are, do not know what respect is…

You have children that have sex at ages commonly around 11-14, but many times earlier than that.

You have children that think a BJ is not sex.

You have parents that work too much and work with their children less.

You have parents that do not actively work with their children.

I believe there is more to the school problem than just teachers and agendas, that it is more of our culture today, the culture our kids evolve around, how they interact with it and become part of it.
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 8:58 am

I believe there is more to the school problem than just teachers and agendas, that it is more of our culture today, the culture our kids evolve around, how they interact with it and become part of it.

Absolutely, this is the payoff of almost 50 years of liberalism, socialism, and Great Society at work. It’s produced a disfunctional culture, but it’s still all the fault of the evil Neocons! Bwahahahahah!

The liberal/leftist/socialists have worked hard to dismantle everything of value in this society, everything and every attitude and every insitution that made this country great (just look at their continued assault against the Boy Scouts, how dare they try and teach self reliance, honor, duty, and morals!). And then they decry those same ideals and institutions as the cause of all the problems. Sinister and stupid together make a bad bad mix.

The left, with their anti-war hysteria, is directly responsible for the pullout in Vietnam, and thus the deaths of 3-4 million people. But no, they pat themselves on the back with self righteous glee that they “stopped the war.” Bull, they helped and are complicent in the deaths of millions.

Now they want to do the same in Iraq, following the Vietnam model. Completely ignoring that they are following the same template of actions and attitudes that resulted in millions of deaths before. But, hey, what do they care about mass murder as long as they get to protest and feel good about themselves.

What was that Kathy was bemoaning about doing the same things over and over and expecting different results? Oh yeah, that only applies to conservatives, liberals have short memories for their own failures. But that’s OK, they “feel” so much more than we do.

Pah! A pox on all their houses.
Pam says:

May 26, 2006 at 9:03 am

Sanity- quit bringing common sense to the discussions! You are becoming a real pain!

I should find the article I read back in October. It discussed the fact that colleges are having a huge problem with parents. Parents are trying to involve themselves in every aspect of the kids life on campus. Things the student should be taking care of, the parents are doing.
PCD says:

May 26, 2006 at 9:42 am

Pam,

I read tha same article. Also, there was an article I saw on Right Voices where teachers are trained how to keep parents out of the classroom and out of their teaching, especially when they are politically active teachers.
Pam says:

May 26, 2006 at 10:36 am

I had forgotten that PCD! Thanks!
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 12:32 pm

You have an exclusive setup with a Montessori school set up with in your public schools. Well, sister, let me clue you in on something. THAT IS AN ADMISSION OF FAILURE BY YOUR LOCAL SCHOOLS! THE NEA PARADIGM DOES NOT WORK. YOU ADMIT IT BY SENDING YOUR KID TO THAT SPECIAL SCHOOL!

Thanks for sharing that with me, PCD. I’ve learned something new today.
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 12:45 pm

I did check it out and according to the Board of Ed, your childs school is the only public Montessori school in the state of New Jersey. So it is a public school.

Thank you for that, Pam.

The school assesses children in kindergarden to see where they fit in, and the child is placed in the appropriate class.

Just to make sure you are aware now that my daughter went to Edgemont from PreK through 5th grade. She is a junior at Montclair High School now. There is no preK at Edgemont anymore, because the Montclair Board of Ed eliminated the public preK program in the late 1990s because of school budget cuts. It was a full-day public school preK program; my daughter was lucky to have been four years old when the program still existed.

I also saw their attitude toward the NCLB to be right on track.

Does that surprise you, Pam?

I
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 1:07 pm

There’s a reason that traditions become traditions, and that’s because the vast majority of people, over the vast majority of times, have found them to work well.

Yes, that’s true; but just because a tradition works well, doesn’t mean it’s a good tradition. You have to ask, What is the functional purpose of the tradition?

Lynching was a Southern tradition from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-1960s. The functional purpose was to terrorize black people and thereby control their behavior. It was not a good tradition.

Same goes for the tradition of Jim Crow, and any number of other traditions the purpose of which was to maintain one specific group’s power.

Furthermore, a tradition does not have to be followed by “the vast majority of people” to be a tradition. In the ante-bellum South, black Americans held in slavery outnumbered white Americans who owned slaves (and, I think, whites in general in the South); but that did not prevent Southern whites from effectively upholding a tradition that served THEIR interests quite well.

Minority traditions don’t have to be evil, either. The tradition of dissent in this country is quintessentially American; these days, though, so-called “conservatives” don’t usually think about dissent in positive terms. And traditions followed by smaller numbers of people over time have accomplished huge public goods — like voting rights for women and African-Americans, for example.
Baklava says:

May 26, 2006 at 1:37 pm

Kathy again made the accusation about budget cuts saying, “because the Montclair Board of Ed eliminated the public preK program in the late 1990s because of school budget cuts.”

Uh. Which year did New Jersey cut education spending? It didn’t happen Kathy. You seem to be on a roll with the non-facts. Please share with us some due diligence. We’ll all wait here to see what New Jersey spent on education every year in the 90’s.

Education is key!!!
sanity says:

May 26, 2006 at 1:55 pm

It is the culture our children live in and emulate:

Students film sex in classroom between sophmore and junior all the while you can hear the teacher in the background.

The culture nowdays is what makes them think this is acceptable.

Child pornography in filmed in high school…..
PCD says:

May 26, 2006 at 2:03 pm

Kathy, none are so blind as Liberals looking at the world through Clinton issue Rose (Law Firm) Colored glasses.

You think the NEA demanded increases in funding not given are cuts. You flunk accounting and finance on that, kathy.

Also, do you realize how arrogant and elitist you look in not recognizing you have a school not set up and run by NEA union teachers and administrators, but by Montessori, a private entity? Why does your community need such a school if standared public schools are so adequate? This is a difference in teaching methodology, not funding. You go back to funding. If you feel under taxed, take your money to the state and federal treasuries and leave the rest of us alone.
Baklava says:

May 26, 2006 at 2:04 pm

It must’ve been because of those budget cuts (that can never be shown). Those kids are victims of the evil republicans who cut services for the poor, education funding, veterans services, health services and social services. Liberals say the cuts happened so they must’ve happened and those kids need to be saluted for highlighting the results of those cuts.
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:08 pm

Yes, that’s true; but just because a tradition works well, doesn’t mean it’s a good tradition. You have to ask, What is the functional purpose of the tradition?

That is, hands down, the stupidist statment I’ve seen since steve was banned.

I guess, your view, the “functional purpose” of actually educating our children to be self reliant, well educated, capable, and competent is a “functional purpose” that should be opposed.

Man, and I thought you had said some inane things before! I’m just stunned.

I bow down before you Kathy, you’ve even got steve beat with that one.
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:10 pm

Also, do you realize how arrogant and elitist you look in not recognizing you have a school not set up and run by NEA union teachers and administrators, but by Montessori, a private entity?

No, the school to which you refer is not “set up and run by Montessori, a private entity,” nor is it “set up and run by NEA union teachers and administrators.” Neither one of these accurate describes the public school in Montclair, NJ, called Edgemont School — nor does your language accurately describe what any public school is.

There’s something wrong with your understanding of plain English, PCD.
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:12 pm

I guess, your view, the “functional purpose” of actually educating our children to be self reliant, well educated, capable, and competent is a “functional purpose” that should be opposed.

No, I never made that statement, nor did I imply it. I can’t begin to understand how you inferred it from what I have said here.

Who is Steve, and why was he banned?
PCD says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:13 pm

I don’t, Kathy, but you have problems of perception yourself, and you just demonstrated them amply in this thread, indeed!
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:14 pm

Furthermore, a tradition does not have to be followed by “the vast majority of people” to be a tradition. In the ante-bellum South, black Americans held in slavery outnumbered white Americans who owned slaves (and, I think, whites in general in the South); but that did not prevent Southern whites from effectively upholding a tradition that served THEIR interests quite well.

Not just Southern whites Kathy. Depending on the year and state, slave ownership was between 5 and 10 percent of whites who owned slaves. For free blacks, that percentage was 28%. Kind of the same thing we see mirrored today with black on black crime isn’t it? Some traditions die hard.

You really are ignorant of history and the South. Did you know, for example, that slavery was not declared illegal in all states after the end of the War Between the States…it lasted until 1868 in Delaware. So much for the Emancipation Proclamation, which only freed slaves in the South.

You liberals have established a strong tradition of support for every failed policy possible, you don’t seem to be that eager to address that particular tradition. Guess your “functional purpose” really is to destroy this country and everyone in it in favor of whatever socialist wet dream you have this week.

C’mon Kathy, break with tradtion, the Neocon’s are waiting for you, and we have cookies!
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:20 pm

It’s called logic Kathy, you should try and learn it sometime. You say traditions should be evaluated based on whether or not their “functional purpose” is worthwhile in deciding whether or not to continue them.

Traditional education worked, all of your touchy feely socialist liberal approaches don’t. You are against tradtional, objective standard based education. Ergo, you must find that the “functional purpose” of educating the young to be ethical, competent, and well educated isn’t something you want done. Typical liberal response, liberal socialists view the purpose of education is to create docile, ignorant sheep who will do what their betters tell them and help bring about the destruction of the US way of life, all the while enjoying the perks of that same way of life.

Disgusting Kathy, absolutely disgusting.
PCD says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:20 pm

Kathy,

You started the “functional purpose” bushwa. Just us the find on this page function of your browser.

I just love it when you have to show liberals their own just denied words and expressed thoughts.
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:20 pm

Uh. Which year did New Jersey cut education spending? It didn’t happen Kathy.

The state of New Jersey gives each school district a certain budget to work with. Within that budget, the local districts have to make decisions about which programs they can keep and which they must cut. Trenton cut Montclair’s school budget over a number of years, not just one year. The local board of ed had been saying it was going to eliminate the public preK in response to these cuts for a number of years, but parents always saved it by showing up at board of ed meetings and speaking up in behalf of the program. But finally even that was not enough to save the program, and it was eliminated. There is a town preK program still, but it is not part of the public schools anymore, and parents have to pay tuition to put their children there (on a sliding scale based on income).

The above is factual. Do you live in New Jersey, baklava?
Kathy says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:23 pm

You started the “functional purpose” bushwa. Just us the find on this page function of your browser.

I said that traditions serve functional purposes; and that a tradition is not good just because it’s a tradition.

I did not at any point say or imply the statement that severian attributed to me.
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:25 pm

The local board of ed had been saying it was going to eliminate the public preK in response to these cuts for a number of years, but parents always saved it by showing up at board of ed meetings and speaking up in behalf of the program.

Yeah, why should parents have to spend time with their kids when they’re small, better to shove them off on the state to baby sit. We wouldn’t want to inconvenience the parents when we can soak the taxpayers and start indoctrinating the little tykes early. Wonder if there’s a kiddie popup book of Marx’s Manifesto?
Severian says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:27 pm

I did not at any point say or imply the statement that severian attributed to me.

Yeah. I did not have sex with that woman either. Depends on what the meaning of is is. We’ve heard it all before Kathy, from people a lot better at it than you, and it still reeks. Newspeak all over again.
Baklava says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:34 pm

Kathy asked, “Who is Steve, and why was he banned?”

I’d say he was banned because of his racism. But the kind Sister should speak to that. He was a leftist racist who spoke racism almost every post.

Kathy asked an irrelevant question, “The above is factual. Do you live in New Jersey, baklava?”

No. My grandparents do. But it doesn’t matter. My point remains that New Jersey has not in the last 6 decades reduced the amount of spending for education. Your point is that in Trenton’s budget they didn’t find it a high enough priority to continue something but your statement didn’t say that to begin with.

Again. You said, ““because the Montclair Board of Ed eliminated the public preK program in the late 1990s because of school budget cuts.””

So my question was … What school budget cuts? You mean priority changes now but didn’t say that earlier. It’s a lie that’s perpectuated halfway around the world before truth can get it’s boots on. YOu did it in another thread about a week ago and I asked you to tell me WHEN and what were the dollar amounts (you FAILED to do so) to back up your claims about cuts in poverty programs, health services, social services, veterans benefits, education. In the last 6 decades they have all been increased every year and your accusations were UNTRUE and you have FAILED to reconcile what you have said with the black and white truth.

Shifting the story doesn’t do that for me. Neither does asking an irrelevant question.
Baklava says:

May 26, 2006 at 3:35 pm

And he remained her for over a year. Sister was too kind….
Kathy says:

May 27, 2006 at 12:32 am

What school budget cuts? You mean priority changes now but didn’t say that earlier.

When there is less money, programs have to be cut. That’s how it works. And one of the programs cut was public preK.

Your point is that in Trenton’s budget they didn’t find it a high enough priority to continue something but your statement didn’t say that to begin with.

No, that was not my point, because Trenton did not cut the preK program. The Montclair Board of Ed cut the preK program because the school budget for the town of Montclair was cut by the state of NJ. Something had to be cut because the school district’s funding from the state had been reduced, and the town chose to cut the preK program.

Do you understand now?

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