To: T L Comiskey who wrote (271811 ) 4/29/2015 1:30:19 PM From: epicure Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 540696 There is no one answer. If it was simple, we'd have found the answer by now. Some kids are stupid- and even more of them don't start out stupid, but are poisoned by their diet, or their homes- Freddie Gray was apparently poisoned by the lead paint in the old home where he lived. You don't get over that- it leaves a lasting imprint on a young brain. It retards a kid. So now you've got a retarded kid- and for all the PC stuff, and all the special olympic stuff, we don't want retarded kids- they will never be able to achieve what kids of normal intelligence can, so we certainly don't want to manufacture retarded kids, and do it in a place where parents have the fewest resources to care for these kids. Then there are the dysfunctional parents. Plenty of them out there. And the violent parents- and family violence travels with socioeconomic distress. Is that the "fault" of the 1%? Not really. It's all of our faults. Why did we let the 1% capture so many bennies in our system? Why didn't we try for a less economically unstable and unequal system? Why aren't we Scandinavia? Because we're 'Murricans. And a lot of 'Murricans like the dysfunctional system we have. You only need to look at the absolute cretins who seem happy with the way our society deals with guns to know a huge portion of our electorate, and it's not the 1%, are batshit crazy. So when you look at the schools what you see is a mirror of our society, and you won't "fix" that until you fix society. I am amazed every day that schools do as well as they do considering the society we live in. We're fucked up- but the schools still function. Imagine that. Even with all the extra stuff heaped on them. Day care for the disabled until 21. Emotionally disturbed classes. Speech therapy. Adaptive PE. None of this stuff was around to help kids who were different when I was in school. If you were very retarded, you stayed home (or your parents put you in an institution). If you were weird, you got the shit kicked out of you and not even your teachers were nice to you. Do the schools get credit for the heavy lifting they are doing wrt America's disabled youngsters? Nope. Thank you right wing nutters. Thank you very much. But I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if they have disabled kids they're milking every service they can from the public schools.