Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (212979)	12/29/2012 12:47:28 PM
From: epicure	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541519

There are gun fights now- that kill children in their homes. My father was a hard core alcoholic- but he could still work. And you HAD a father, as did I. Most of the kids in Richmond don't. It's completely different now. Just look at the statistics from the 60's and now (or maybe you're from the 50's, when things were even better.) There were still blue collar jobs. The downtown hadn't been killed. Families were still relatively in tact. Before you imagine your brave new world, you probably ought to check out how much things have changed. No one doesn't believe people can't benefit from education- but people who know the area know that social services, health care, and safety are probably a place to start, because without basic safety, and some social skills, education really doesn't work so well. You can, of course, believe a straw man argument that people who don't agree with you don't believe in "education", but that's not true. No one believes in education more than I do, but I also believe you can't educate a child when their most basic needs have not been met since birth.

To: koan who wrote (212979)	12/29/2012 12:54:40 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 541519

If your mother were to be a hard core alcoholic, especially while you were gestating - it would have been worse for you due to fetal alcohol syndrome. Many studies have shown that it is the mother and not the father that is the predictor of future outcomes. Had your mother been an illiterate multi-generational failure, it is unlikely you would have sprung from this environment as you did. Lead exposure, as one proxy for general toxin exposure, can not be minimized and is dependent of socioeconomic background because poor people live in older buildings with white lead commonly used in window casings (an attractive nuisance - children love windows and the chewy white lead is picked at and eaten). We did a full lead assessment of our older home - most people, especially those at the lower end of social function, don't do this.. There is a high correlation between heavy metal exposure and intelligence.