My school district can afford its own district police. You wanna discuss ponzi schemes?

Great ticker Karl. That is exactly why my wife and I decided to raise all four of our children from pre school to university in private Catholic schools. The difference in knowledge, morals, values and principals vs. their friends who went through the public school systems is staggering. It came at great cost to both my wife and I but damn if I was going to let my kids be "educated" by the Los Angeles Unified Scool District.

I just got back from vacation, our school district principal just left us a message because he claims we did not tell the district that our children would not be attending the last half day of school.

We sent the required note by the way with a SASE to get our kids grades, that's their punishment for not sending your kid to be counted for one half day on a Friday as that of course messes with their Federal funding, they lose out if the kids aren't there.

I can't wait to hear what sort of lame assed lecture this cock sucker thinks he's going to push on me.

I don't get involved often but after I'm done they cease ****ing with me or my kids.

I'm going to print off a copy of your ticker and wallpaper the ****s office with it.

The school leaches can give my daughter detention for being "less than respectful" but they can't give it to ME.

Quote:

The school leaches can give my daughter detention for being "less than respectful" but they can't give it to ME.

Better watch out you'll be in the newspaper and invited to a public STONING. Bwahahahahahaha.....

and the next thing you know you'll use a boogeyman word and be lynched in public on here.

"Faith can move mountains" and not buy into DELUSIONAL horse**** no matter how much EVIL is thrown to put out the fire of TRUTH.

LAUSD is truly disgusting.

I agree wholeheartedly that the public school systems, probably throughout the country, are abyssmal. But what I'm seeing is not exactly or entirely what I would call "socialism."

For one thing, I don't recall that I was ever asked to donate school supplies to be "pooled" for use by the whole class--with the exception of Kleenex. Every year (but only at the elementary school level), seems like, I was asked to provide two boxes of Kleenex per kid.

I also haven't seen the "awards for all" thing until rather recently. Even then, it wasn't exactly "awards for all," so much as there were so darn many awards for so darn much (mostly silly) stuff that everyone got some kind of award.

The extravagant "gifting" of awards is actually pure self-promotion on the part of the school district. Historically, the self-promotion has been in the interests of increasing property values, promoting real-estate development, and making sure that local banks can make a lot of lucrative mortgage loans on shiny new developments. It also helps assure that the real-estate developers will be able to repay the banks. I mean, consider who sits on the Board of Education. It's the folks who hope and intend to use the school system to promote their private investments in the community. Local business people also want to see well-heeled types purchase McMansions and start spending their money locally.

The closest I've seen to the "feel good" approach to education was when my kids were enrolled in public schools in a very snooty suburb. In situations like this, praise is lavish and criticism is very circumspect. In this case, I think the main reason is because teachers (who do not exactly occupy a position that is high on the income/status ladder) will be very cautious about criticizing children of very powerful, influential, and high-status parents. A teacher who can't master this game will wind up in the unemployment line--and they will tell you as much, though circumspectly.

The really awful decline in educational standards arises, I think, from several sources. One of them is that it's gotten to where public education has almost no other function than to produce "a servile reverence for a sacrosanct State." That's what they are focusing on, that's what they consider important, and any intellectual discipline that doesn't contribute to that end gets thrown overboard.

Obviously, just about every intellectual discipline is, as you (KD) pointed out, absolutely inimical to that end. So there is naturally some anxiety lest kids master math, economics, and history--and lest they become literate, which might cause them to read something, and language, which might enable them to express themselves intelligibly.

There are a lot of different kinds of school systems with a lot of different kinds of problems. The types of problems I've described are what you find in affluent (or would-be affluent) school systems. My kids were in an affluent school district when they were, most of them, in elementary school. Their later school years were in a district that fancied itself the next big noise in suburban development and was very keen on promoting itself as the most up-and-coming exurb.

With inner-city schools, you have a whole different ballgame--which I won't go into, other than to say they are heavily politicized.

But all these problems originate with the increasing government stranglehold on education. Government dictates what will be taught by making funding dependent on test scores on government-generated tests. Teaching school is a job where you are employed by state government. A person who would like to teach would be well advised to cultivate "a servile reverence for a sacrosanct State"--and to watch their back. Their loyalty to both the State (and the state)--and to local business/banking/development interests--will be frequently tested.

The public school system began to seriously to go to hell back at the time of school consolidation in the 1950s. By all accounts, it was going to hell for some decades before that, but that's another story.

To ramble on a little further, the people who are really running the public school systems are the community's weathiest and most powerful people. Their economic interests are closely tied to the reputation of the school system. They tow the government line chiefly because there are people at the state and federal level who are even wealthier and more powerful than they are. So they play the hand they've been dealt.

When you confront the school system, you are, first of all, confronting the hired stooges (teachers and administrators) who know perfectly well that their jobs depend on promoting the business/banking/development interests of the community as laid down by the Board of Education, which is made up of representatives of those interests.

As a parent, I'd say your chances of prevailing against the Big Dawgs of your community--i.e., persuading them to act against their own economic interests--is slim to none. I would go so far as to say this is an observable fact, even if it weren't an obvious fact. We have parent murmurings--and even occasional parent uprisings--around here on a regular basis. Nothing ever comes of it. The net result is that a lot of people home school.

Major gripes include bullying, sexual harrassment, absence policies, and sometimes abusive or moron teachers.

KD, wait till your daughter is 13 or 14, and one of the boys at school is fondling all over her, and you have spoken to administors and the the school board, and you've been stonewalled--all you've gotten for your trouble is a flat, barefaced refusal to put a stop to it. (I personally know of such a case. I know of a lot of cases of one kind or another.) Your only option is to home school.

My point: What you're seeing is not exactly socialism. It's a confluence of both private and Statist interests.

Believe me, I've been toe-to-toe with these ****ers on many an occasion. My biggest battle was asserting my right not to have my kids vaccinated. This was when we were living in "doctor-and-lawyer land," so it was no mean undertaking.

I've also taken my kids out of school to visit their grandmother. The reason I gave for the absence was, "We're going to visit grandma." The expectation is that you'll at least be scared enough of their power to lie to them.

I also used natural methods to get rid of my kids' head-lice, during one of the regular head-lice epidemics (also in "doctor-and-lawyer land"). At the time, I had five little girls with very long hair whose beds looked like Cleopatra's barge. So naturally it took longer than the school nurse deemed appropriate. Social Services paid me a visit to investigate a "child neglect" report from the school nurse.

Bottom line:
The problem with schools, in general, has nothing to do with pencils or boxes of Kleenex.
The state-required course of study against which testing is assessed is MINIMAL.
Schools, generally, operate on a MANDATED 180-day year.
The course of study is geared to the entire student population for the entire state. That includes the 'worst of the worst'. Therefore, the typical course of study is a truly DUMBED DOWN body of work.
Truth is, it does NOT take 180 days to develop knowledge around ANY state's course of study.
The problem is TEACHER ATTITUDE and ADMINISTRATION ATTITUDE. They have chosen to think their job is hard and that they have too many students.
What can possibly be so difficult about educating a sub-18-yo mind? Two months off every year and an extended leave at Christmas and, often, spring?

The problem with schools is that we don't invest into it. Simple. We, society as a whole - not only government, rather spend money on ... you name it. We blame everything on teachers and then we lay them off (more than 10,100 in California alone) because we spent money on prison healthcare and health care for illegals.

It is interesting that socialist and communist philosophers identified this problem with capitalism (they call it: "education and production together"), thus in all socialist countries at least education was on high level. Education was definitely better in Easter Europe. Way better.

Our education system was very different than any socialist system, but I guess it is ok to call whether is dysfunctional in this country as a socialism.

It has been proven time and time again that there is an INVERSE correlation with per-pupil spending and educational outcome.

2007 Tax Detail

Childrens Services Council 82.51
Fire/Rescue MSTU 393.84
Florida Inland Navigation District 4.89
Health Care District 126.11
Loxahatchee Groves 212.55
Palm Beach County 535.77
Palm Beach County Debt 28.37
Palm Beach County Library 70.42
Palm Beach County Library Debt 6.67
Public Schools by Local Board 370.26
Public Schools by State Law 672.07
South Florida Water Management District - District 75.75
South Florida Water Management District - Everglades Construction 12.67
Water Control Maint 507.66
Solid Waste Authority 126.00


wtf is this bull**** about how we don't invest in it?

Is burning $100 bills "investing"?

Oh. My. ****ing. God. I almost fell off the chair when I read that ticker.

Let me put some color on this for you. I grew up in Hungary, and went to school there until we left when I was 12. This was before the Iron Curtain fell. I can tell you that NOT EVEN UNDER A COMMUNIST EDUCATION SYSTEM do I recall experiencing that kind of Marxist horse**** by teachers. It was ALL about educating. Hungary had a great legacy in education, especially with regards to math and science. The Commies had the good sense of not dismantling it. Yes, in high school and beyond you were forced to learn Marxist dogma but other than that, you were EXPECTED to learn and were NOT allowed to pass the grade if you failed one course.

You were expected to be able to read and write after grade 1. In the latter grades, spelling and grammatical errors cost you dearly in any work you handed in. There was none of this "peer editing" horse**** (which, by the way, is a clever tactic employed by teachers to make it appear their class has a higher literacy then it actually is, since there is a good chance your **** gets fixed up by someone more literate. I experienced this in high school, and was appalled at the level of illiteracy. People were simply not capable of writing coherent sentences, let alone paragraphs. I was way better at it even though I only started learning English in grade 7. It made me wonder what was the point of studying Shakespeare, with its old English, when most students could not read or write present day English!) By the 3rd grade, you were expected to have memorized multiplication tables up to 10, and you were graded on your knowledge by oral examination - teachers would often have snap oral examinations where your name got called up at randomly, and your responses were graded and counted toward your final mark. By the time you graduated 8th grade you were able to do trigonometry. Those who did not/refused to learn were punished mercilessly. No whining was allowed.

I remember there was a big chart posted on the FRONT WALL of the classroom, ranking each student in order of grades. I ranged between #1 and #3. No parents or kids ever complained and whined about "feeling left out" and other such horse****. If you were truant, the teachers, some of whom were very strict, came after you, visited your parents, and generally made your existence VERY uncomfortable.

Imagine that. In a communist country, the education system was set up in a way that rewarded success and punished failure, a definite trait of a free market capitalist system. Too bad you could not leverage that education because the rest of the system was ****. The only thing you could do is leave the country.

Yet, in the USA, a supposed free market and capitalist society, the education system is being dumbed down in some weird Marxist experiment. Like all such experiments it is destined for massive failure.

Most Excellent ticker Karl.. hit the nail right on the head and drove it in with one strike.

Obs -

In order to get that kind of education in this country today you have to go to an old-fashioned Catholic school. Only a very few private schools even have that kind of rigor anymore. They've gone all touchy-feely too because parents, who were educated in the public system, don't understand what it means to work in school. Then there's the new method of control - ADHD - where the school can badger you to medicate the hell out of your kid so they're incapable of doing much more than drooling.

Excellent ticker. Thinking back a couple of years, to when I used to teach law to high schoolers at a public school, I recall my frustration at how uncomfortable these kids were with the idea of making generalizations about people and human behavior. Almost inevitably upon making a generalization intended to convey an idea, a hand would fly up, and a kid would have some isolated anecdote which in his mind served to invalidate the generalization. It didn't occur to me until now that these kids' vehement--and often irrational--resistance toward the prospect of making generalizations may be the product of many years of indoctrination at the hands of a school system that rejects any form of evaluative or categorical thinking lest it lead to the unacceptable conclusion that some people and behaviors are more worthy than others.

It is interesting to witness the result of what now has been over 20 years of largely successful indoctrination of our young people. Those in their early twenties (the "milennials," I guess you would call them) appear to me to be entirely unable to function in the world of private enterprise. Most require the same unconditional positive feedback that they have always known, and expect the workplace to bend over backwards to accommodate them and their unique attributes. They are often "short timers," apt to quit in disgust when their superiors fail to appreciate and celebrate their specialness. They are unable to compete or, for that matter, to identify and tackle a problem independently without the support and validation of a group.

It's a very sad state of affairs.

<<I remember there was a big chart posted on the FRONT WALL of the classroom, ranking each student in order of grades.>>


I Like That.

http://www.okaloosaschools.com/OkaloosaS....

http://www.****senders.com/ ---->>>> http://www.votealexis.com/

http://www.okaloosaschools.com/okaloosaschools/absolutenm/templates/template_nimg.aspx?articleid=297&zoneid=5

Quote:

Alexis is a member of many civic, community, charitable, and professional organizations to include: Phi Delta Kappa, I SUK COK, Delta Kappa Gamma, Alpha Delta Kappa, I FUK LK RBT, Shalimar United Methodist Church, I SWLO CUM, Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce, Fort Walton Beach Rotary Club, the Junior League of Fort Walton Beach, and the I SUK Officers’ Club of Eglin AFB. She SERVICES the Board of Directors for the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation, the United Way of Okaloosa County, and Workforce Development.

Obs, weren't our socialist schools worth sometning?! My English comes from my early school years - I have never lived in an English-speaking country. We did multiplication tables at the age of 9, square roots and system of equations at 11, and solving logarythms at 14. Physics, Biology, Chemistry were mandatory. At 15 we learned the basics of genetics. After school we had a multitude of facultative sections available with other extra activities: like chess playing, pottery, knitting - you name it. And, sit down, all scholing was free. I am still giving a serious thought of returning back to Russia for the sake of my sons' education. I am truly freakin frustrated with what I see here in Switzerland.

Those who managed to obtain the best marks, had their photos on the class board. Mine was often there:-)

Quit bragging Heidiland....You guys might be able to play chess against Bobby Fischer at 12 yrs old, but you guys all SUCK at playing "Grand Theft Auto-San Andreas".......And I bet you couldnt even get hired at Starbucks either....priorities man, PRIORITIES !

Bear, our oil multimilliardare oligarchs are the best thieves you can ever think of - just gve it a thought. Ususally I do not brag. But, Bear, how many languages are you proficient at besides English? Three comes my way, at a couple of others I am so-so. I definitely suck at being hired at Starbucks. However, I do not suck at being hired at the world's leading network equipment maker handling part of their European controlling, at another leading tech distributor covering their European credit control, the list can go on. I mean come on, if we Marxists brag, we have a fuggin good reason to do so.

Quote:

And, sit down, all scholing was free.

?!?