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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (125361)	10/5/2000 4:03:45 AM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1583505

Ted, In any number of posts on several different OT subjects, you have been very critical of the gov't's ineffective ways and excessive spending. But when a subject is dear to you, you have no problem ordering the duplication of an existing system and spending billions of dollars to make it happen. Its that inconsistency that is frustrating. I think education is too important to abandon, if the only way to improve it is to spend more money, I would be for it. I think many people would be willing to put up some of their own money or time to make the school of their kids better. It has more to do with involvement than money. A lot of money is already there, but it is misallocated and misspend. I don't know if the changes required would end up costing less or more. In NYC, the Catholic church can provide better education for a fraction of the cost of public school: 1/4 to 1/2 of cost of the public schools. It's probably similar in Jewish schools. The "special needs" students need higher spending, everybody recognizes that. Some of the suburban schools are public and are superb. If it can be done in one place, why can't it be done in other places? When a foreign country held American students hostage (Grenada?) we invaded that country. In many school districts, the administrators are holding other American kids hostage, and we look the other way. The political muscle of the people associated with schools may look too powerful to overcome. And as for the schools that get mothballed? You may make some $$$ on the sale of the land under some of them, but in many instances they most likely will become abandoned relics. I didn't say that. The problem is not with the buildings. It is with teachers, principals, administrators, politicians. The old buildings can be re-used, maybe renovated, under new management. I don't think private schools will be immune to the problems plaguing public schools. These problems are societal problems that cross all economic classes, cultures and races; to wit, the shootings in so called safe suburban schools. By putting your kids in private school you may reduce the number of incidents but you won't eliminate them until they are eliminated in the society in general. True, but if the school is something you chose, and you participate in, or maybe even pay for partially, instead of being a dumping ground, the attitude will most likely be different. It is in colleges. Maybe in European public schools there is no fighting in and out of schools. However, in American schools, both private and public, there is the inevitable bully(s) who are bent on picking on the younger kids. And just as inevitably, your father would show you how to defend yourself in those situations. Those things happen with with older kids, but in kindergarten? That's absurd. If the teachers allow this to happen in kindergarten, if they can't control the kids there, they have no business being teachers. But maybe the teachers just don't care. But what do you as a parent do? Where do you go to complain? The principal is in on it as well. They have your money. The money has been divided among their cronies. You have no choice. You are nobody. My friends whose kid is afraid to go to the kindergarten are poor, and there is no way for them to afford to send their kids elsewhere to school. They have no choice. However to permit the wholesale abandonment of our public schools will, to me, be just the beginning of the wholesale abandonment of any institution, or city for that matter, that encounters difficulties. Furthermore it runs counter to my upbringing where I was taught to face a problem, rather than run from it......and overtime, I have learned it to be true; that running from a problem only makes it worse. I am not advocating any of that. Abandonment of the public schools is the current policy. And I don't mean monetary abandonment. The money keeps flowing in. The abandonment is in the mindset of people. The ruling majority, the middle class that votes have taken care of their own. They moved to suburbs, they make sure that the schools there are good. The rest of the people? The ruling middle class just dumps a load of money to hyenas running the urban school districts, and they feel good about themselves as a result. If they want to feel better about thmselves? They dump more money on the problem. BTW, just because the name remains the same "public school" as it was in the past, don't make a mistake that this is the same entity. It is not. It has degenerated in many places to something horrible, something that has very little to do with the old public schools that you may be familiar with. Joe