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.
What makes you think they graduated, rather than dropping out?
Here's some sample top 40 songs.
Put Em in Their Place Mobb Deep
Getting' Some Shawna
Jiggle It! Young Leek
I Love My Bitch Busta Rhymes
Money Maker Ludacris
Think any of these songs promote good values for kids? The public schools aren't supplying these songs to the airwaves--the record companies are--and stations play them--and stores sell them--and parents allow them in their house.
Inner city schools have an uphill battle just to teach the very basics.
Some sure are--some are not graduates because they dropped out because no one gave a damn about them. So the great circle of life continues and will continue until someone cares enough to say "enough."
All the while those that can do for their children drive by the unfortunates in this new 3rd world country you have just created holding their noses and looking down at the poor -- maybe tossing a coin into the crowd to watch the unwashed grub for it.
Thanx for personalizing your response to me. I don't do those things. I just don't believe's it's the government's place to "allow" them. That's what I was replying to in the first place.
Nope, you can't--you told me that already--it violates your freedom of association.You have already said that just LOOKING at the public school kids with their tatoos and goth hair and short skirt offends you and yes, YOU said, it violated your freedom of association. Your words, not mine.
In fact, you once said that it sickened you to see the pubic hair of girls hanging out of their clothes. Just how close do you get?
The writer is the problem, he is a living example of what happens when we bend so far over backwards that we find ourselves first standing on our heads and then toppling onto our knees where we try and stand again only to witness the revolution we have created where the problem, the previous aberration, as it were, is now the norm and yet we are asked to bend over backward again.
A few more times of this and we may find that we are actually traveling backwards while trying to go forward, a direction by now totally unfamiliar to us in our current dizzy state.
I want off!
So in your bizarro world, your schools can punish parents?
When does the Constitution get re-written? Do you get rid of the courts system--you know the one established to uphold the law. What kind of punishment? Jail? Public execution? Are you the judge and jury? Or the principals and teachers? Will the principal and teachers be armed so that we can shoot on sight?
You gotta work through these details when you are talking about a complete overthrow of a world power.
Nothing in there about "beginning" Just says--do it.
To a great extent, that is true, and has been true for the history of American education. However, as SoftballMom pointed out, these parents are not going to be good homeschooling parents either, and are equally unlikely to respond to strict demands from private schools.
And I don't see too many churches sending missionaries to the inner cities....
As it stands now, public schools, as limited as they are, seem to be the only hope for many of these children. As I pointed out to you in post #39, there are programs which have been quite successful with even impoverished inner city children, but these programs are intensive and expensive.
So far, as a country, we don't seem very committed to actually giving many of these children a chance.
This does not even come close to looking like a schedule I have ever followed, and in fact, no one else said it looked like theirs either.
Stop trying to tell me what my day looks like. You don't know, you aren't there. Your arrogance in trying to describe my day is breathtaking.
So when you going to go volunteer at a school? Maybe read to a little 6 year old? Do some math?
There is the rush in the morning to get dressed, eat, gather together papers, supplies, and projects, and then it is out the door. This is hardly relaxed time to just be a kid. ( about 1 to 1 1/2 hours)
Then there is the bus stop wait and trip to school. ( 1 at the very minimum to 2 or more hours a day in, on, or waiting for a bus.)
6 to 7 hours actually in school. During most of that time their socialization with other children is tightly controlled and highly supervised. In some cases, the teacher will rap the desk and sharply say, "We're not here to 'socialize' boys and girls!"
2 hours of homework
1 hour for meal time.
1 hour on the phone or Internet to socialize with friends, or possibly a video game.
1/2 hour to 1 hour reading alone or with a parent before bed.
This is what you posted a day or so ago. Why do you keep changing the amount of time spent? Looking for some magical combination that is the truth?
Don't try to describe what you don't do.
"He wrongly blames the drug war and not the criminals."
Right. One need not break the law. No matter how stupid, you need not break it. Only rarely does someone break a law unknowingly and without knowing the basic penalty.
Exactly - as long as students are promoted to the next grade without achieving some sort of standards, the schools will fail.
Flunk those that don't meet requirements. Require a standardized test for graduation, and award diplomas only to those that pass.
What about church? You only posted a schedule for the weekdays. We take ours to church every week, in fact, we normally take 1-2 classmates with us--just whoever she has invited this week. Not to mention the summer break, and Christmas break and Easter break. I have found that we have had plenty of quantity and quality time with both of my girls.
So is your argument that all publically schooled children follow only the morales and values taught at school? That these children are incapable of knowing right and wrong? that they are un-Christian children?
When you post something this way out "there is precious **little** time for parents to undo school influences," you need to think out the entire week, not just the times that fit your argement best.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.