Posted on 12/17/2006 6:32:35 AM PST by wintertime
Last year, more than 7 million American people -- that’s about one in every 32 adults -- were behind bars, on probation or parole. The United States has, for years, imprisoned more people than any other country in the world. Yet, we don’t have the highest literacy rate....
(snip)
Inner-city schools fail half of their students, and jobs are removed from communities, replaced with guns and drugs, resulting in incarceration, if you’re lucky; death if you’re not. Nonetheless, many U.S. states have cut their education budgets to compensate for rapid growth in prison populations and prison construction. The misguided priorities that inform such decisions have only served to further marginalize already oppressed populations. It’s time that this country shifts its focus away from imprisonment and commits its resources to education and empowerment.
In the past 20 years, more than a thousand new prisons and jails have been built in the U.S. Yet, our prisons are more overcrowded now than ever.....(snip)... The nation’s "war on drugs" and the stiff sentencing laws that grew out of that war are largely to blame.
......The numbers of individuals sentenced for drug crimes increased nearly 65 percent between 1996 and 2003, accounting for the largest increase in inmates in the federal system.
(snip)
If federal and local governments were to adequately fund the nation’s public schools, ensuring all students had access to high-quality teachers, tutoring and after-school programs, we could stem the growth of the nation’s prison population. With support, many could be steered away from drugs and the street life and pushed towards college or vocational school. Instead, the country has poured its money into a criminal injustice system that, instead of creating special programs designed to rehabilitate the low-level offender, corals these lost souls into the nation’s prisons. Upon release, having no education and no skills, many return to the lifestyles that landed them in prison. It’s a dangerous cycle, and only prison architects and big business benefit.
In 1977, I was incarcerated for seven months. I was told that it cost taxpayers $30,000 to incarcerate me. A year later, I enrolled at Eastern Michigan University under an affirmative action program. Because I was poor, I had to use loans and tax-payer supported government grants to pay for my education. The cost of my four-year education was $24,000, less than the cost of my short jail sentence. No longer a burden to taxpayers, I am a significant taxpayer, helping, through my tax contributions, to pave the way for others who’ve yet to get an opportunity to make a way for themselves.
The tax dollars used to support my education were a worthy investment, one that benefits all of society. America should take note and act accordingly.
2) Government schools can NOT provide the moral direction that parents and children need. The advice that must be given to, and demands made of parents and children can only be dished out by a private school. Why? Answer: Because those demands and that advice is politically incorrect and would violate establishment of religion.
3) Due to the points made in #2, more time in government schools make children worse, not better.
4) Shouldn't a judge know that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved in education?
5) Judge Mathis falsely believes that spending more money on education will reduce the prison population. I won't. Ending the war on drugs will. These people are in prison because they are working in the black market. That black market has NOTHING at all to do with K-12 schools.
6) He states that he benifited from his college education. Well....that college education was funded by vouchers and loans that he could use to attend any private or government school that would accept him. K-12 schools would benefit from free markets too.
He wrongly blames the drug war and not the criminals.
"Government schools can NOT provide the moral direction that parents and children need. "
You are right on target, friend.
The only thing that will improve our educational systems and reduce prison populations is a higher social standard in which people are held accountable from birth to death for bad behavior.
Due to liberal polices enacted since WWII that declared war on the traditional family, marriage and fatherhood.
I love your second comment.
Two words that did not appear in the article: Family and Father. Anything in the original source about this, or is government-financed education the judge's answer to all ills?
Exactly public schools get so much money. Throwing money at them is not the solution.
Maybe he needs some more time in stir or something ~
To believe and say otherwise is a larger statement of ignorance, if not an intentional deception on their part.
Aha! So we already were spending money on education and now that's being cut to build prisons.
Well then, it obviously wasn't working, was it? Why should we go back to a failed policy?
Give prisons a chance!
Mathis: "....and jobs are removed from communities, replaced with guns and drugs....."
he states it exactly bassackwards......
$10,000 per public school student per year,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is far, far more than that.
In my state, the only numbers reported are the operating expenses for the school. Not included are capital expenditures, the services of the state ( for example snow removal, attorney's fees, and grass cutting), and **teacher's pensions and post-retirement benefits.
The teachers' at retirement are considered retired state employees and, therefore, not included in the cost of educating children.
Same old oppressed population bull.
" Because I was poor, I had to use loans and tax-payer supported government grants to pay for my education. "
So did my daughter, plus she did a work\study program on campus. Let me clue you in, having to make sacrifices for education isn't limited to the black community alone,even though listening to the mainstream media would have people believe that b.s. !!!
If a 28% increase in one year on my property taxes for education alone is a cut, then lets increase education spending and maybe my taxes will go down...
Pretty soon I will be getting school lunches out of true need.
Money isn't the problem. Students fail because teachers don't teach. Failing students are promoted because it would hurt their self esteem to hold them back. I suggest getting both government and unions out of education, and it makes me sad because I know it won't happen.
Education...
Here it is... commit a crime, you get punished...
"he states it exactly bassackwards......"
Sad, isn't it. It's nothing new, though.
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