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....
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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.
Your wife is one of the saints of the system that provide some inkling of respite for those kids that want out. She is one of the few beacons of hope out there--and if anyone suggested that she is part of the problem--that would be one cold-hearted b*tch.
We spend more on K-12 and college every year, and the graduation rate keeps falling. Besides that, more and more of the freshman courses at college are the remedial type. Not only that, but enrollment in math and science courses is declining while the easy classes where plagiarism and cheating are nearly expected are ovepopulated. Besides that, following graduation the jobs are in service sector and brokerages, which aren't rocket science. This is a clear indication that we have just about arrived at BNW, which was detestable in the fifties but preferred now.
The main problem is that blacks have failed as parents, which leads to their children commiting a disportionate number of total crimes in the U.S., and leads to their children performing poorly in school. If blacks were not such failures at parenting, their kids would be less likely to commit crimes and more likely to study.
"Throwing money at them is not the solution."
Don't be absurd. It is the solution...if the money is being thrown at you. That is why the system can't be reformed - $600 billion a year in cash flow will be defended to the death by the beneficiaries.
I don't allow or disallow this behavior. I'm just not going support the trash that does it. If you want to smoke dope and take other drugs till ye die it's fine with me. Just arrange for your rotten carious to get to the dump before you go.
The failed war on some drugs is buring up too many resources for zero gain. End it.
The main problem is that blacks have failed as parents
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Government schools are utterly ill-positioned to deal with failed parents. Government schools can not dish out the politically incorrect moral, ethical, and religious advice that these parents need. They can not make the hard demands that these parents and kids need either. If government schools were to try, they run smack into the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
According to your posts, you have never attended or taught in "government schools", nor did you send your children to them.
Yet you make pronouncements as if you were some sort of expert, even when your opinions are contradicted by people who do know something about public schools.
I don't suppose you see a problem?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
I have done so, at least in part, beginning with post #39, which you haven't responded to.
Attacking me personally is not useful.
I have not "attacked" you personally or otherwise. I have questioned your qualifications to make the sorts of pronouncements you are making on this thread.
On the other hand, you have made some comments about public school teachers, including at least one specific one directed toward another poster's wife, which could definitely be construed as attacks.
Government schools are utterly ill-positioned to deal with failed parents. Government schools can not dish out the politically incorrect moral, ethical, and religious advice that these parents need. They can not make the hard demands that these parents and kids need either. If government schools were to try, they run smack into the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
There needs to be tidal wave of change from the inside out to put pressure on women and men to stop breeding children they cannot take care of. The culture of "my baby daddy" is sickening and demeaning to men in general. One of the few lone voices is Bill Cosby--and he's right.
The scary part is that whites are about 20 years behind blacks. When the government is the father to the majority of children in this country, we will be in a world of hurt.
The only thing that will reduce people winding up in prison is their having acquired the right values.
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Government schools are utterly incapable of teaching these values. If they do attempt it they run smack into the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
I agree with you 100%. The problem is, given the current situation of the Federal and state governments, the constitutional constraints of ADA, IDEA, and civil rights laws, we are in a quandary. Nothing can be done at the school level to change the popular culture of hating authority (all authority from the president down to the beat cop), the glamorization of thug life, the insistence of immediate gratification, and the disdain for knowledge. Nothing can be done by the schools. The only ones in a position to change this are the parents! These would be the same parents who can't be bothered to feed their children in the morning, who stay out all night partying, who cannot read themselves. These would be the same parents who would be expected to fashion an education for their children if the schools were closed. They wouldn't. I'm telling you that as a fact. If a parent is too damn stoned to make sure their kid has a pencil and some paper for school, they are sure not going to stop their partying to teach them their ABC's.
Yes if every public school was closed tomorrow, each working person would keep a bit more money in their pockets, but the price of that few hundred a year would be devastating.
Rather than rant and rave at the public schools, why not go out and help? Ooops, that wouldn't work, it would offend your freedom of association. I hope to God that you never get what you want in terms of public schools. The rest of us would pay in blood while you tool on up the mountain to yet another ski vacation relieved that the traffic lanes are now clear of buses.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
These would be the same parents who can't be bothered to feed their children in the morning, who stay out all night partying, who cannot read themselves. These would be the same parents who would be expected to fashion an education for their children if the schools were closed.
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These reprobate parents are themselves graduates of amoral government schools.
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