>> ^Mikus_Aurelius:

Here's a teachable moment. Read it again.
"respect that makes them do their work"
Also, if you're going to begin your reply with "but," you should refute my position, not just some incidental semantics.
I'm teaching you all kinds of shit tonight, I should get an award.
>> ^Stormsinger:
But a good teacher doesn't "make" the students do their work...a good teacher inspires students to investigate by their own choice.



Perhaps you have some comprehension problems...you were saying that something, either the teacher or the "respect" for the teacher, makes the students do their work. I was calling bullshit on that statement. I think that qualifies for a "but". Never once did I do any work because of "respect for the teacher"...I did the work either because that's how you passed, or because I was genuinely interested. I leave it up to you to figure out which strategy the good teachers followed, and which lessons have stayed with me for 30+ years after school.

If you think that's just "incidental semantics", then I can only assume that you never had a good teacher. You certainly don't qualify as one yourself, based on this thread. Perhaps an award for most boneheaded douche. Although the competition for that title can be fierce around here, I'd say you've been making a pretty strong showing.

>> ^doogle:
This has to be a regular occurrence.
A regular after-school occurrence. Explains the backpack.

Yes, most people who can sing this well in public do it regularly.

hey, how much does she come to this mall? She's wearing a different top in this one.
And someone is videoing it.

This has to be a regular occurrence.
A regular after-school occurrence. Explains the backpack.

This doesn't look like it even honors the original. I'm just down on Burton. He used to make great movies. It bums me out to see him follow the career path of Sting and George Lucas. >> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
This looks awful.

My view is probably distorted by my love of the original soap-opera.
We used to never miss an episode (or the herbal enhancements we chose) after school.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

This looks awful.


My view is probably distorted by my love of the original soap-opera.
We used to never miss an episode (or the herbal enhancements we chose) after school.

@chilaxe, What is this inferiority complex you have against black men? Did some black man steal some girl you liked? Did some kid beat you up after school? Did some thug steal your car? Or do you have yearnings you can't fulfill?

Frankly, I don't have time to teach you statistics or probability. Suffice to say that the paragraph you posted is full of fallacious uses of both. If this drivel were submitted to me, I would give the writer an "F", based on the math alone. For you, someone who claims to use statistics in his job, to trust this sophistry, makes me question your credentials.

You are the only one making light of your friend's assault. You are the one using your friend's experience to peddle your racist theories. I don't see how she is more safe by avoiding all black men. Using your fucked up reasoning, the AG of California or the President of the US is 1200% more likely to murder your friend or take their iphone.

>> ^tymebendit:

How would it be cheaper?
They're paying the teachers more (upper middle class), providing free meals, free school supplies, and more personal attention to those in need.
Maybe it would cost less to the society in the long run, but I think the initial cost of the system would have to be higher. It would have to be a serious commitment by whoever wants to try it.
>> ^CreamK:
>> ^tymebendit:
i wish we can try the finnish system.
pick a state, or a city, and try it for 10-15 years.
everyone says out current system is terrible and not working.
how much worse could it be than our current one?
it will cost a bit more than our current system, but probably not that much more...

Actually, Finnish system is cheaper than US and by a large margin... Schools that don't have to make profit are much more cost efficient..


The meals you are served at school are typically cheaper than the equivalent meal you would get at a cafeteria anywhere else, they are subsidized or cost mitigated at some point. Plus they provide meals to many kids already free of charge.

School supplies, a school would be able to buy supplies on the whole cheaper than an individual parent x however many students.

And the US schools already provide smaller classes and special buses and/or vans to get handicapped children to and from school. Plus they provide bussing to private schools in my area, I am not sure if they do that at a nominal fee or do it as part of their mandate to provide transportation to these kids.

On top of these things, schools also have sports programs which are astronomically expensive since they require maintaining tracks, fields, and stadiums within the budget of the school. They also pay teachers to be coaches or have an separate coach, all transportation to and from "away" games, uniforms, equipment and the additional parking and safety requirements needed to have games on their premises.

The local school district to me, when they have to make cuts, they never threaten to cut sports. It's always threatening to cut building maintenance, teachers salaries, and buses. Yet sports have no impact on education or the future of about 75% of the kids going through those schools, it's usually a very small group of kids who get to even benefit from the sports programs the school offers but they maintain a stadium, a baseball field, soccer field, football field. Provide uniforms for volleyball, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and all the other equipment for male and female teams when applicable. I remember it being a big deal with the debate club of 5-10 people who used a small room after school to do their practices got shirts and they otherwise have no additional cost but a few lights and an hour of a teachers time once or twice a week plus debates against other schools...I dont even think they got transportation provided they were expected to be driven to these places by their parents.

US schools spend money on things not related directly to increasing knowledge and education instead preferring to spend major sums of their budgets on sports related costs. Then you have the extra costs associated with special needs kids, because it keeps them from standardized testing to have these kids separated from the regular kids. And yet the kids who are the bright but don't learn well in the traditional classroom get labeled as special needs or "difficult" and are essentially screwed unless their parents go above and beyond to provide them what they need. This is not a system that is designed with cost in mind, whether it be money or the cost of unknowable "future" issues either on personal levels for each student neglected or as a society as a whole as we become about only teaching subjects one way and only one way.

And this is ignoring college education costs and just looking at High School and below. College is astronomically expensive and yet again, they spend loads of money on sports programs but they MIGHT make some fraction of that cost back via ticket sales and such at a generic University and might actually be a profit center in big name University's like OSU.

I grew up in Finland and went to school there. Yes, some kids were bullied and none of the teachers ever noticed some of that. It didn't happen in the school, but when I was on the second grade n(elementary school), I definitely had two biys bullying me for a while. After school ended and we had to walk home, they'd follow me, push me around, scare the crap out of me. I was the only child and very quiet, timid, easy to scare.

Those boys really scared me, I remember just running off and grabbing the arm of a woman walking home from the store, to make the boys think I knew her. It eventually got bad enough that I just refused to go to school. My mom didn't understand what was going on, and she threw a frigging fit that scared me even more. But still, I refused to go to school.

Eventually it all came out. I eventually talked to my parents, and my mom came to observe this after one schoolday. She grabbed the kids when they started attacking me and scared the crap out of at least one of them. He was nice after that, he just said 'please don't tell my parents, I didn't know I was really scaring her!" My dad went to talk to the other bullys parents on one night, and they had no idea he was doing that. My parents had a talk with my teacher too. I was left alone after that (and luckily thye worse kid actually moved away before too long). It wasn't anything too bad, but at that time, it was awful. Some kids maybe just not realize what they are doing. And the parents really had no idea.

Teaching kids bullying is bad should really start at a young age. You have to make them realize what they nare doing is wrong, and how wrong it can be.

On junior high we had a girl who me and my friends made fun of. We thought it was just a 'fun' thing to make comments about her hairdo, or things like that. We were still 'friends' with her, but I bet she hated us. I myself never realized that little comments like 'your hair looks like a sausage roll', even when made in a 'friendly way' hurt her.

I didn't even realize that until I was way older! If I could go back in time, I'd never make those comments! We all thought we were just being funny, but little things like that can also hurt. I am not sure how one could deal with things like that, but we all should just be taught that little things can hurt. It doesn't have to be pushing and hurting, it can be just silly little remarks, and I know I will feel bad about all that for the rest of my life!

Bullying of even that kind usually stopped (mostly) after people graduated from Junior high, and went to either highschool, or vocational school. I went to highschool, so I have no idea how life in a Finnish vocational school is (we were told horror stories though, that vocational school woulod be really bad and everybody was being bullied to death, but I think it wasn't true, or at least not today).

To me watching American TV shows about high schools, and seeing kids bullying, being bullied and so on, was awful. To me, high school was a whole different planet. Kids were trying to be nice, or at least more adult-like, and bullying wasn't there. At least according to the TV shows, High school is bullying heaven! And all about cliques! Maybe because we really didn't have jocks or cheerleaders, it was better? No drama clubs, glee clubs.. You might have bene classified as a 'nerd', or a 'good girl', but at least not too many peoiple were outcasts in my school. And if they were, it was because of their personality, not because of what they wore or were interested in.

It really breaks my heart to know kids are bullied so bad they feel like the only way out is to kill themselves.

People will need to care more, to put themselves in anothers' shoes. When you are a kid, it can be hard. But I think it should start from the home, and schools should try to do whatever they can. People just need to understand how it feels, and how you'd feel if somebody did that to you, or to your loved one.

Excuse the rant, my dog has gotten me up at wee hours (around 4:30am, though this morning she graciously let me sleep until 5:15am) every night for quite a while and I am seriously lacking sleep and can be emotional and/or weirdy irritated and grumpy, not to mention insane.

As a freshman at Wilmington's Laney High School, Jordan tried out for the varsity basketball team and was cut. The next year he was cut again soon after the season began, while his best friend, Leroy Smith, made the team. Jordan told Reader's Digest that when he discovered he had been dropped from the varsity again, "I went through the day numb. After school, I hurried home, closed the door to my room and cried so hard. It was all I wanted--to play on that team."

He added: "It's probably good that it happened. It made me know what disappointment felt like. And I knew that I didn't want that feeling ever again."

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^NetRunner:
Did their teacher not teach them anything about science in their science classes?
Bingo! School is not about learning; it's about memorizing. If you can regurgitate the teachers' talking points, then you can pass the teachers' tests.
Outside of math class, where they pretty much have to teach you how things work, I learned almost nothing in school. The vast majority of what I know, and I'm a pretty knowledgeable person, is stuff I learned on my own after school was long over.


That gives me hope that the human race can survive the idiot onslaught, if only we can improve education.

On second thought, we're all doomed.

>> ^NetRunner:

Did their teacher not teach them anything about science in their science classes?

Bingo! School is not about learning; it's about memorizing. If you can regurgitate the teachers' talking points, then you can pass the teachers' tests.

Outside of math class, where they pretty much have to teach you how things work, I learned almost nothing in school. The vast majority of what I know, and I'm a pretty knowledgeable person, is stuff I learned on my own after school was long over.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich
I'm talking about north-east Asians (Chinese/Hongkongese/Chinese-Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese). Other Asians don't have the same significantly consistent high performance.
Increases in school spending don't significantly correlate with increases in student performance. You can't change someone's nature to make them like to read, and bad teachers & old textbooks can't turn a driven person with a good attitude into someone who doesn't like to read.


Praising athletics while scorning academics is a common trend in the US. It is most definitely disheartening to see the programs that only a small fraction of the student body participate in getting the lion's share of the budget. And increases in school spending also tend to get funneled away from the absolute educational needs and maintenance of the buildings to large projects such as a new school being built or new sports complex. It happens time and time again that the money ends up being spent on things that fall under the umbrella of "school budget" but are not directly related to education.

And I would agree that you can't change someone's nature, but you could spend time trying to identify their interests and fostering those. Math and Science are great, we need more but as you said you can't change their natural inclinations. Bad teachers are notorious for forcing material by the standard means rather than try to find out what would best suite them. Perhaps you need to see things written to retain knowledge, but you write slowly....and the teacher continues to throw a lot of information at you faster than you can write. That is not serving the purpose of education, and it is no big inconvenience or time sink to the class for the teacher to hand out a basic packet to follow along and add additional information to allow people to keep up. Hell I had college professors do this, so you could make your own notes on the subject but still have an organized list of topics pertinent to the lesson.

So short version: School spending does not mean spending toward education. Bad teachers can stunt progress of students through a number of means. Hell a person with a heavy foreign accent can make it hell on earth trying to follow along or do the required homework if they never write it down. A person who can learn in spite of all of this, probably has parents who've given them the time and means to do so or may even know much on the subjects themselves. An immigrant with uneducated parents who may only speak but not read or write English is going to find this much more difficult.

If my parents had taken me out of the US and into Mexico where very little was taught in English, and my parents spoke rough Spanish and couldn't read or write in Spanish....I'd find myself struggling as well. Especially if there was no time to tutor after school because I had to be home for chores or an after school job to make ends meet. Only an extremely exceptional person could prevail through that, and I refuse to believe that all Asians of the categories you mention have no additional help outside of school. And that may be where the focus should lie immigrants not of those categories, helping establish this foundation for their cultural groups and filling it with people who are familiar with their common backgrounds and beliefs to help them adapt. If they are naturalized, you are stuck with them now.....and just throwing them under the bus because they aren't the Asians types you hoped for as immigrants is not going to solve it. If they are willing to work and not undermining society through malice...they can be worked with to find a place for them. This goes for both natural born citizens and former immigrants.....ignoring huge swathes of your population is not a good idea.

Anyway, I don't view immigration as a national problem. Sure it has some influence on the overall problems the country faces, especially illegals. But the core of our problems are related to greed as has been stated, but policies that ignore the people and favor the profit machines whether they be individuals or corporations in spite of the people. And that's where the favor towards Socialism is springing up in the young, Capitalism may have worked but it is no longer allowing the young to establish a life that would even come close to that of their parents. They are reducing the opportunity chance as time goes on for each new generation by these choices. So I don't blame anyone for wanting to throw out what these decision makers cling to as sacred in favor of trying something else that may restore a little sanity into the system. After all, your citizenry needs a way to support itself without being a member of the armed forces, born wealthy, or just plain lucky.

Contributing to Society is being able to take care of you own shit. The rich kid should work also as it builds moral fiber. As for kids social development working would be better that doing nothing, playing video games and staying on the streets all hours of the night. Work is good for ones sole. It builds self esteem, good character and you makes some money.

Oh wait that's it. If little Johnny learns the value of work he'll probably turn that little skull of his into a capitalist. Liberals can't have that, no fucking way will your ilk let that happen. Keep johnny stupid, dependent and feed him liberal lies that the world "OWES" him a better life. >> ^packo:

>> ^bobknight33:
Its call WORK. Get a job. Contribute to society not take from it.

contributing to society would be helping the poor wouldn't it?!?
how come that contract you make from society to a poor kid doesn't equate to the contract from a rich person to their child? ie, to pay their way in school, why shouldn't a rich kid be required to do the same thing?
let alone, this doesn't even touch on a child's social development, and the importance of after school activities, or a life outside school
honestly... we are talking about children in elementary school to high school here... not adults
grow a heart
contribute to society != contribute only to oneself

>> ^bobknight33:

Its call WORK. Get a job. Contribute to society not take from it.


contributing to society would be helping the poor wouldn't it?!?

how come that contract you make from society to a poor kid doesn't equate to the contract from a rich person to their child? ie, to pay their way in school, why shouldn't a rich kid be required to do the same thing?

let alone, this doesn't even touch on a child's social development, and the importance of after school activities, or a life outside school

honestly... we are talking about children in elementary school to high school here... not adults

grow a heart

contribute to society != contribute only to oneself

Totally agree!

In reply to this comment by wax66:
I don't like Newt, wouldn't vote for him if you paid me tons of cash.

However, this isn't as bad of an idea as it may seem. You don't mandate it, you ALLOW it. Allow students to sign up for janitorial duty, pay them a decent minimum wage, even give them an hour during school with which to perform their duties, or an hour before or after school. Allow the head janitor to also fire them if they suck, and hire outside help if resources are low. Make it a maximum of 5 or so hours a week per student.

I see nothing wrong with this.