@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.

“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.”

Thank God for the Marines. “What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side,” shared Trump.

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.” - Donald Trump

That's the guy who says he'd run into a building with an active shooter?

@MilkmanDan

One big problem is that different states are passing different laws. Connecticut, after Sandy Hook, made it illegal to sell guns or ammo clips that can accept more than 10 rounds and required owners of guns that were semi-automatic and could fire more than 10 rounds to register them. Additionally you need a permit to purchase a gun and background checks are required for all private sales.

Contrast that with other states like Missouri where literally anyone who is not a felon can buy a gun, doesn't have to register it, and doesn't even need a background check if the sale is private.

Legislation on gun control needs to be centralized. Until the federal government establishes uniform laws about licensing and registering firearms, which should include mandatory background checks, training classes, and a federal database that tracks all guns sold in the U.S., it's just going to be too easy to head to a state that has lax gun laws and stock up on all the firepower you need to carry out whatever heinous crime a person has in mind.

And I'm thoroughly pessimistic about it ever happening. The NRA and gun "enthusiasts" as well as the gun manufacturing industry are just too strong as a lobbying group. These kids are absolutely doing the right thing by protesting and they'll get their time in the spotlight, but eventually that spotlight will shift to something else and it will be business as usual in D.C. with politicians taking political donations from the NRA to fund their never-ending re-election campaigns.

It looks like he's using a router. I think he's roughing it to a uniform thickness. It probably wasn't cut evenly when ran through whatever large saw they cut that wood with. Normally, a very large and very expensive planer would be used.

In Mexico, last I heard, it was mandatory for everyone to spend time in the Military/police force. There is no vetting, so these are everyday regular guys, in their appointed uniforms. This is where the corruption in Mexico stems from.
It's easy to pay them off to do your personal bidding, because they aren't there by choice, working for the good of the people.

Of course my info is old, it's what I was told by locals years ago when I lived there for a short time, years ago. It may have changed by now, though it doesn't look like it.

It looks fake. The Guradsman does not wear a belt, has no weapon, has no chinstrap on the bearskin, etc. etc.
By the grouping of the buttons on his tunic, he should be of the Coldstream Guard, their full uniform looks like this:
https://changing-guard.com/images/foot-guards/coldstream-sentry.jpg

It's fake.
That doesn't look like a real queens guard/royal marine uniform, no weapon, no verbal warning, he's standing in an open pathway 1/2 blocking people, and the overreaction to what would likely be a daily nuisance.
Also, it's from this "social experiment"....
https://youtu.be/vv007iMWRMY

There's a legal reason for that. In Germany, the law prohibits the distribution or public use of symbols of unconstitutional groups (flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting) as part of an effort to 'de-nazify' the national culture following the end of WW2. The Wolfenstein games are chock-full of these symbols. You can see the effects of the law on other WW2-themed games as well, like War Thunder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a

Fantastic! Now hurry up and slap a Nazi uniform on it so I can murder hundreds of him in imaginatively graphic ways.

Bob
You're so dishonest. You've said clearly that you go to bed hating me. ;-)

In the tape, I see the clear opportunity to plant evidence (with no other explanation for what he was doing retrieving something in his squad car after shooting him but before he's even removed from the car, and sitting in the victims car with his body camera off), which he hides from the cameras in his uniform instead of showing it off to bystanders in his hands, and when tested, the gun only had the officers DNA and fingerprints, and the victim wasn't wearing gloves, the cop was. No explanation given for any of that.
Edit: that's motive, means, and opportunity, and unexplained evidence with no other reasonable explanation.
Case closed.

EDIT: Given the exact same circumstances but a black citizen shooting another citizen, then performing the exact same hyper suspicious actions, you would absolutely, zero question in my mind, say it's incontrovertible that the black man murdered the other man and planted a gun and drugs to get away with it.

Funny, you and your side of the isle has spent at least 8 years in the streets over sour grapes, now you suddenly think you're reasonable and thoughtful....but you don't even understand the words.

If blacks were killing officers at the rate that officers are killing blacks, you would say they've declared open season on law enforcement...oh wait, you've already said that, even though cops actually kill 25 times more citizens than people kill cops, and by far most of those citizens are black.

Normally I 100% give the police every benefit of the doubt in these situations. I believe you are ignoring the important parts of this video though.

The kid didn't 'cop an attitude', refuse to comply, or 'flee' the scene. He was defensive from the start, and I don't think it's unjustified to be a bit put out to be interrupted from your work to be grilled about what your doing there and to prove who you are. The turning point you are missing is when the kid asks for supposed police officer to identify himself. The guy acting like an officer not only fails to do so, he immediately wants to handcuff the kid now all of a sudden. At this stage, the kid is supposed to back away. He has a guy in a uniform refusing to identify themselves, he shouldn't be expected to hang around.

It's not an offense or problem to 'refuse to comply' with someone that isn't a police officer.

It's not fleeing a scene when there is no police officer present, let alone an officer telling you that your being detained or under arrest.

The officer's refusal to identify himself should IMO mean that he isn't considered to be a police officer at all yet in how the public is expected to interact with him. That's a public safety requirement and the fact that the department PR video is lying and calling walking away from this interaction 'fleeing' is disgusting to me.

Oh, and for the record, if the officer DID identify himself, and then said the kid was being detained or under arrest then it all changes to me. Then the kid is 100% expected to comply, and the officer is allowed to use the force required to arrest and detain the kid. At the point if the arrest is an abuse of power or not is up the courts to decide. The important distinction is none of that actually happened, the PR meeting video acts as though the officer had identified himself and attempted to detain the kid. Fortunately the kid has video evidence showing that none of that actually happened. It is legitimately scary how easily and frequently an officer could do exactly this same stunt, and without it being on camera, he would get away with the whole thing.

Understatement on requesting the officer's ID not being an offence...

Without officer's being required to present proof of identity, what's stopping this 'officer' from being a white KKK nut that decided to keep a uniform around to harass kids.

This is not necessarily on topic, but good grief i never realised pictures of someone's face could look so different. The bit at 1:37 with the woman's face was a revelation! I didn't know that happened, and it kind of explains some pictures i've accidentally taken with forward facing cameras (and been horrified by). I always thought i must have good/bad days and look terrible sometimes, but that explains a lot.

In Thailand i had a picture taken on a tree-platform-zipline 80 feet in the air, sweaty, red, disheveled and sleepless... and it's the best picture i've ever seen of me, and my skin looked uniform and nice, not red and damp as it did in a mirror there. Sorry for off-topic, but how the feck does that work? It wasn't airbrushed or anything, they had very little time for processing. I feel like 50% of my mystery has been answered in that one moment of the video!

He's sarcastic, but not a douche. Douches are those folks who don't use their indicators. Plus this gentleman has a very sexy uniform, so. Er. I lost my train of thought