10 days without a cell, fast food, bed or a toilet.

Let's call them what they are.

Concentration camps.

The first stages of Ethnic Cleansing.

I'd like to point to the following article via Slate.com

"As one of the few journalists permitted to tour the government’s new internment camp, about 40 miles from the southern border, the New York Times correspondent tried to be scrupulously fair. Forcing civilians to live behind barbed wire and armed guards was surely inhumane, and there was little shelter from the blazing summer heat. But on the other hand, the barracks were “clean as a whistle.” Detainees lazed in the grass, played chess, and swam in a makeshift pool. There were even workshops for arts and crafts, where good work could earn an “extra allotment of bread.” True, there had been some clashes in the camp’s first days—and officials, the reporter noted, had not allowed him to visit the disciplinary cells. But all in all, the correspondent noted in his July 1933 article, life at Dachau, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, had “settled into the organized routine of any penal institution.” "

Yes... he did it. If there were any doubts left, this should remove them. Trump officially put the United States on the same path as Nazi Germany.

What are you going to do about it?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

-Niemöller

People in Canada ARE talking about it for the first time.

First Nations people had their entire culture turned upside-down by the government of Canada and the Catholic Church. They were torn from their homes, raised in abusive conditions in institutions that expected them to conform to European norms, and even when they met those norms they were mentally and physically abused.

Now people are surprised that a generation of abused children makes for poor parents? The criminal problem with First Nations people is one that European Canadians created. It is a problem that's been ignored for far too long.

People like this need help. They do not need to see the inside of yet another cell.

Personally, the only one I care about is Weinstein, because he indirectly had a hand in some of my favourite movies.

Gibson, meh... I can happily go the rest of my life without seeing anything he's done again.

Louis CK is a comic genius, but I won't be giving him any more money and Cosby....well, you're perfectly entitled to do that... although why you'd want to submit yourself to actually watching the Cosby show is beyond me. Either way, it won't do Bill any good while he's dying in a prison cell.

I think it can be linked more to tobacco being a carcinogen. While smoking 'anything' may cause other issues with your respiratory system (bronchitis, emphysema, COPD, etc), smoking a carcinogen means you are exposing cells to a substance that can alter their genome.

An easier comparison would be chewing gum and nicotine gum. Since nicotine is a carcinogen, you run the risk of developing cancers of the mouth, throat, and gums by chewing the gum. Regular chewing gum does not contain a carcinogen, so it wouldn't affect you in that way.

As far as the smoke itself, I know that cigarette smoke has additional carcinogens other than nicotine. I do not know if these transfer to weed simply because it is smoked as well. One would assume you could bypass this, just in case, by vaping or using edibles.

@Mordhaus I agree with you, and I didn't mean to say that was the ONLY pinpoint that was worth noting. But as someone who graduated in 2002, I've seen a steady gradation of change over the past 16 years that can in a large part be traced back to those policy changes.

I'm also not blaming the textbook companies for being for-profit companies. But, much like healthcare in this country, education is something people NEED. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. I'm of the opinion that it should be treated like the social service that it is and the blame rests with lawmakers that force schools into patronage of testing producers with little or no oversight written into the law.

On your 1-5 list:

1) That can be a difficult subject, you're oftentimes doubling the cost of wardrobes for poor families, and it's the kid who can only afford 1 uniform that's full of tatters that gets bullied anyway.

2) I'm not anti-standards, but the way that those standards are assessed are not reflected in the tests the students take. Moreover, VERY FEW jobs (if any) require a person to answer A B C D over and over as a way to make a living. In other words, answering multiple choice questions is not a skill most people need.

3) Yes. My average classroom size is 28. 50 minutes with 28 kids in a room, you do the math on the individualized attention they get.

4) I've seen some counties near my locale that have instituted a no cell phone ordinance, banning them from the campus. It's possible, but one needs the support of the community.

5) Send your kid where you want, but I don't think my tax dollars should go to pay for Johnny to go to religious institutions. It feels, in that circumstance, that the government is endorsing a particular religious viewpoint to do so.

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

*quality
*promote
Finally a good use for cell phones.

Footage retrieved later from a CCTV installed in the car wash showed more of the footage not seen on the cell phone video.

also @eric3579

To clarify a Thousand Year Storm isn't only going to happen once in a thousand years. There is always a probability that it can happen. Some of this could easily be 'bad luck'.

The phenomenon that created this situation is known as cell training, and happens all over the place. However, it is worthwhile noting what else they say, "...scientific studies have shown a statistically meaningful uptick in the frequency of extreme rain events over the eastern United States. Statistically, over the long term, these types of extreme floods are probably becoming more common, in areas that are normally rainy as a result of global warming."

What this means, at least the way I understand it, is that statistically in this region we can expect a higher probability of these 'xxx year storms' every time conditions are favorable for cell training style weather.

We can expect more of these types of storms, simply because the climate is in a format that creates more ideal conditions. These ideal conditions are not limited to just this type of weather, either. Gulf hurricanes, tornado alley tornadoes, and other 'regional' weather patterns are also experiencing 'ideal' conditions to allow stronger, more damaging storms to develop.

We havent lost it, we are just not looking for it hard enough sometimes. Too damn distracted by cell phones and religious books.

Please do not use religion to excuse you for being immoral.

No cell phone???

Please. I'm a Luddite, not a damn hippy.