Random Politics & Religion #20

I watched it and she didn't need to spend 15 minutes to get to the point. Just a lot of filler.

I don't consider west boro baptist religious more like a cult like Jim Jones.

Things have actually been pretty quiet for the staff. It's kind of bizarre.

Sorry, I misread you.

I thought you said that he pledged to cut entitlements.

/reports Vyre for stirring the pot.

Flat-Earthers? Christ, not this ***again.

I heard Trump is going to cut the FFXIAH budget...it's been nice talking to everyone.

I always wonder if people who cant provide their kids with decent food are able to set the correct priorities in their life. or if they're mentally not responsible enough to take care of their children.
Granted there will always be people who actually have had really bad luck in their lives and who do need wellfare and a social net to tackle financial and social hard times, but its very hard for a government to controle who's taking advantage of wellfare and who actually needs it because they have no other options.
Getting more control on the subject means the government needs to appoint more people to perform said control and thats the last thing most countries want to do.

providing free meals for children in concentration schools is just a drop of water on a hot plate though, it doesnt tackle other demographical problems schools suffer from nowadays. Good students with a positive social background go to good schools with average high grades. While the children on the bottom of the social ladder end up in concentration schools where antisocial behaviour just gets elevated and idolised by the other kids.
Investing in a better education and pay for teachers would go alot further then providing free meals.

Your confusing cause and effect. Children create the atmosphere at a school, if the children are raised with the attitude that education doesn't matter and they won't amount to anything anyway, then that's the kind of environment the school will have. If the children are raised with the attitude that education is important and they need to do their best to raise themselves out of that situation, then the school will have a much better environment. Parents, as a collective group, are directly responsible for our education situation. Parents who view school as nothing but free daycare and don't spend the time and effort early on to instill a positive self reliance in the child.

You can throw all the money you want at a school and it won't change anything except line the pockets of the senior administrators. Buy lots of new computers, just to have the same children tear them apart, same with any other piece of equipment. Bring in high paid super teachers, just to have them lose all motivation after a few years once they realize the kids don't give a *** what the teacher says.

Now someone tell me about my unearned "Privileged"...

When I went to highschool, I didnt do much for school, my grades were fine nothing to worry about but not great either. I messed up quite a bit but I did have 2 motivated teachers who had a very positive impact on my life and who have probably molded me more into who I am now then my parents ever did. So yes out of personal experience I do think good teachers do make a difference.

Children who grow up in a not motivating environment at home can pull themselves up in a good school atmosphere. Atleast in school you can invest, how are you going to invest in parents who dont give a ***about how they raise their children?

But I'm not going to go deeper in this, I think my English isnt good enough to explain exactly what I mean. But its a discussion thats been going on here too lately hence I picked in on the subject.
In Belgium 1 out of 10 children grow up in poverty apparently...shocking numbers.
The government here financed meals for €& for people who live in poverty, they can go on cheap vacations, doctor visits for €1 etcetc...
I just wonder where it ends and what the use is on a long term.

So by admittion you went to a medium school and not a poor ghetto school.

Let me put it bluntly, I went to ghetto class schools full of poor kids who didn't give a rats *** about grades. Personal experience, and actual statistics, shows that no amount of money nor teacher involvement will change that environment. Was a great Hollywood movie but was fictitious.

The only reason I became successful was my parents hammering into me the need to be so. Parental involvement at young ages is critical to not raising a future criminal.

Thats a difficult comparison, doubt we have "ghetto schools" unless we talk about schools where immigrants are the biggest group and language and culture is the biggest problem. School is heavily subsidised here and "good" schools are affordable for everyone....Unless yeah, your parents dont give a ***if you go to school or not.
I'm not saying you're wrong, Parents have the biggest responsibility in the end, but I do think a good school gets kids a long way.

Are you speaking of the USA cause we most certainly do have ghetto schools. Children go to schools based on where they live and populations tend to stratify themselves based on wealth. Wealthy people prefer to live near other wealthy people, middle class people live near other middle class people and poor people are stuck living wherever is cheap which tends to be where other poor people live. This creates the situation where the children of wealthy parents go to school together, the children of middle class parents go to school together and the children of poor people end up in the same school too. Schools are funded by property taxes along with a generous helping of government general funds. That reliance on property tax means those wealthy people, who pay a *** ton of property tax, have kids in well funded schools. Those poor saps stuck in the poor area's are going to underfunded schools that rely heavily on government general funds. So yes Ghetto Schools exist, they are schools that have lots of poor kids going to them because their school district encompasses an area predominately of poor people.

When I was growing up my family was dirt poor, I went to those underfunded ghetto schools and got a personal experience on how little poor kids care about their education. They simply don't believe it's possible for them to live any other lifestyle so why even try and instead spend their time being baby sited by teachers who have long since stopped caring. Can't really blame the teachers, they try hard at first and really want to make a difference, yet soon reality asserts itself and they realize the parents and kids just don't give a ***. Some, like myself, try hard and we find ways to get away. When I left home at 17 all I had was literally the clothes on my back.

In contrast kids from wealthy families don't have such a bleak "it doesn't matter I'll never succeed" outlook and while they screw off just as much as any normal kid does, they still put in the effort and get a decent enough education. Middle class families are somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. The point is that the Education is one of those areas that you get out of it what you put into it. If a kid doesn't put in any effort then they won't get ***back no matter how expensive the iPad learning device is. Conversely if a kid really puts in the effort then they'll succeed even with textbooks falling apart on decades old equipment. Money doesn't fix education, culture and parental involvement does.

Now for a note on parental involvement and what that means. That's not helicopter moms trying to relive their broken childhood through their kids. It's parents teaching their kids positive behaviors and beliefs. Children form their basic personality framework at a really young age (think two) and they absorb everything they see or hear. Parents exposing their children to unhealthy behaviors at that young age will instill negative personality traits that will hamper the child's future growth. Furthermore a child's basic set of beliefs also comes from it's parents through inference. Parental involvement isn't parents sitting down and doing homework with the kid, though that's important, it's the parents building a healthy positive environment for the child to develop starting long before the kid goes to school. Yelling and having a violent interaction around a four year old is a very bad thing to do.

No, in this case, "ghetto schools" are basically schools in neighborhoods where crime is prevalent.

While, on occasion, somebody in the ghetto may turn out to be a great leader/successful person/overall outstanding citizen, most aren't, and they go into these schools with the mindset that they will fail in life (pushed on by their parents) and it's not even worth it to try to succeed. Which lowers the overall drive for that system to succeed.

Uncaring parents are one of the driving forces that create situations and societies where crime and gangs are prevalent in the community. It's really a great example of a death spiral, which is the death of society.

No, The flag next to my name is accurate, I live in Belgium. Our schoolsystem is not the same like in the states and after your explanation of how it is in he States, its very different here. Different funding, different mentality.

Exactly.

Belgium actually cares about their education system. They, along with all of the other EU/Asia/Africa/Middle East/South America countries, along with Mexico and Canada, care more about the education system than Americans do.

Or, more accurately, care more about their education system than the teachers unions who control the education system in the US does.

The unions here only care about more funding and more control than they do about providing education.

Case in point: DeVos's confirmation hearings. It was never about her or her ability to lead the Department of Education. It was about her viewpoint that unions shouldn't be the ones controlling the shots, and that parents should be more involved in their children's education than the teacher's unions currently are. She saw, rightly, how stifling the unions are making education, and she wants to give power back to the parents, and away from the bureaucracy.

Edit: Cause I can.

Yeah thought so after hearing you say there were no ghetto schools.

The funding situation is a result of how the US is formed. Most outsiders see the USA and think it's a single big entity with it's big military, which isn't true. The US is a union of fifty dissimilar mini-countries called "States" that happen to use the same currency and support a singular national military. Each individual state has it's own government, it's own executive entity, it's own legislature, it's own courts, it's own culture, it's own police, it's own taxes, it's own budget and can borrow money independently from the rest. If California passes a law, that law only applies to California and doesn't apply to Colorado, Texas, New York or any of the other states. The Federal government can create laws that effect everyone but the Constitution puts sharp limits on what the Federal government can do, limits that our current political parties like to ignore or find ways around. Education is decidedly a States issue, even though Obama tried to nationalize control over it, each State runs it's own education program and has it's own requirements for such. Furthermore funding for that is a touchy subject since you can't force a wealthy person to live in a poor district. There is a reason why when you cross over into a good school district property prices suddenly skyrocket.

The best way to view the US is to understand that it's more similar to the EU then any individual nation. Would your Belgium school system, culture, laws and beliefs work in Spain, France or Norway? How would you feel if Portugal with the help of Spain was demanding you change your culture, politics and government to be something they find more appropriate? How would your citizens react to a Spanish politician demanding you backwards Belgians to change your lifestyle and be more like the enlightened Spanish? Yeah welcome to life in the USA and why our political system seems so crazy to outsiders.

We have similar situations with Brussels/Flandres/Wallonië. There are provincial/regional/national/European governments, they also make their own laws yet some laws are national, some laws are regional or European. They all (aside of Europe) have their own taxes.
The justice department is national though.
Schooling here is Regional, so there is a statistical difference gradewise between the rich Flandres (dutch speaking) and the poorer Wallonië (French speaking).
Alot of Flemmish people look down on The French speaking part of the country, alot of people feel like laws are being made to benefit one region over another.

So it it poor ghetto parents faults for the education system failing kids or the unions?

Yo guys make it seem like the only people that don't succeed are kids in inner city ghettos or that's the only place education fails...

Not exactly. That's the cop-out excuse that people tend to use though (what you said, not what Saevel said).

The only person who can get you out of a bad situation is yourself. You should not expect anyone else, much less the government (who, frankly, wants you to stay where you are).

I'm not sure if you are advocating a nanny state (which is not surprising, since Canada is almost one themselves).

You're talking to posters who think H.R 899 will be a good thing if it succeeds in passing.

The problem with the politicization of welfare programs is that no matter how inefficient, bloated, or counter-productive they get, you are not allowed to cut funding to them under any circumstances without being accused of hating whatever group the program is benefitting.

Additionally, if you support the programs there is often little incentive in fixing the problems because you are already reaping the political benefits so why bother? The worse they get the more likely your opponent will try to get rid of them, creating a win for you politically either way.

If politicians actually cared about the people these programs benefit, they would take the time to make sure they're running as smoothly as possible instead of just raising a stink when they inevitably hit the chopping block.