till they QUIT saying "you trying to be white???" to those that TRY/WANT to learn... money means nothing.
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.
till they QUIT saying "you trying to be white???" to those that TRY/WANT to learn... money means nothing.
The well-known fact everyone is too afraid to say is:
Many inner city kids JUST DON'T GIVE A SH** ABOUT EDUCATION. No amount of money or special "program" will force a kid to learn who doesn't care to learn. And that is 95% of the time because the parents of said kid never instilled proper values in that kid.
Ok. Quit committing crimes. That's the fix. It's simple.
Sometimes they fail because they don't come to school. Sometimes they fail because they don't do their work even if they come to school.
Failing students are promoted because it would hurt their self esteem to hold them back.
Sometimes failing students are promoted because administrators don't let the teachers hold students back, because they'd have to build more classrooms to hold them, hire more teachers to teach them, and they don't want older students in with the more innocent younger children.
Students fail because they care more about pimpin' hos, smokin' weed, partyin' and the new 50-Cent CD than anything else. If a kid doesn't want to learn, they won't, no matter how good a teacher is. The reason? Parents. Parents who themselves are uneducated, or otherwise inadequate, that don't instill proper values in the kid.
What is?
No farther at home = crime.A black problem.
That's the problem root problem. Money will only get misused. The more we pour into the inner city schools the worst they get.
You're right; the article is so full of logical fallacies and inconsistencies, one does not know where to begin to start.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Logical fallacies, indeed!
This man is supposed to be judge ruling on law? Scary!
Ronnie White is a judge too. He doesn't get it either, and Bill Clinton wanted to appoint him to the Federal bench.
Wouldn't we be better off if we stopped crime first?
"In 1977, I was incarcerated for seven months." In other words, he made a stupid decision that got him there.
"I was told that it cost taxpayers $30,000 to incarcerate me." If this was a violent crime, that was money well spent.
"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." He had seven months in jail to figure out that a life of crime was not that great. Although the taxpayer had to foot the bill for his bad decision, he eventually made the right choice.
Bottom line: He chose to commit a crime and go to jail; then he chose to become a good citizen. It is not a matter of money, it is a matter of choice. But liberals rarely recognize that people (other than their own, glorious, self-righteous selves) have the abilty to choose. So the unwashed masses cannot really be blamed for where they end up.
So allowing people to lay around get high and make unwanted babies. Is going to make high achievers?? LOL
It's these stupid liberal poverty programs & federal spending. They created all of this that Mathis is now crying about.
Actually, people have been worrying about children in the inner cities not learning, as well as crime and poverty in the inner cities, for at least 150 years in this country. Of course, 150 years ago, they were more worried about Irish immigrants than black people....
"If We Want to Grow as a Nation, We Must Invest More in Education than Incarceration"
Ah! Would that we lived in such a world that we could do that! If everyone behaved themselves, we could pull all the money out of prison creation and maintenance and invest it in education.
Unfortunately, The heart is deceitful above all, and desperately wicked! Don't tear down the prisons yet.
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