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.

Don't most of you know that Christians are required to murder you if you don't worship properly, or try to leave Christianity?

How about Deuteronomy 17:
Deuteronomy 17
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; 17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
Or Deuteronomy 13:
6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt.
Or Numbers 31, where God commands the Israelites to attack Midian and kill all the men, all the married women and all the male children but to keep the virgin females as the spoils of war and distribute them among the soldiers. The reason offered for that barbarism? Two Midianite women had allegedly “tempted” two Israelite men to worship other gods.

Christians consistently ignore the inconvenient parts unless they work to further their current prejudices. I've never heard of a Red Lobster or Gap being firebombed for selling shellfish or mixed fabrics, but gays..stone em, burn em, bomb em, and stone them some more over the same instructions they otherwise ignore. Mowing your lawn on Sunday is actually worse than homosexuality by my reading, but no one gets harassed for that.

I don't get the rent-a-cop thing... in other similar videos where one or more folks are protesting silently or sitting in the audience with signs (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s2dm2AuUr0) uniformed police are asked by Trump to remove the trouble makers, or the disturbance is large enough that the police intervene and again, remove the troublemakers. Are these guys on the clock or are they off duty paid goons? The fat boy in the cowboy hat should have been arrested for his actions, no?

The brown shirt reference is well chosen. Don't know about others, but this is some scary shit, and the asshats that are following Chump have zero appreciation for both the freedom to vote and the responsibility to the country in doing so.

As for me being a bullying hypocrite..

Bullying.. yes.

Hypocrite.. no.

I intentionally give you and lantern shit for two reasons:

1. You deserve it cause you're bigoted, jerkface, racists that don't bring anything to these discussions but hatred for minorities of any kind.

Taste of your own medicine, as it were.

2. To attempt to create a paradox SOO befuddling for your conserv-o-brains.. it's causes a major reset where you finally realize..

"Wow, okay. Everyone here DOES want to have an honest open debate with me.
One where they consider my difference of opinion to be yet another spice in this weird discussion gumbo we're all apart of..

And the only thing I have to do is remain civil, logically consistent, and admit my biases when I'm completely off base/out of my element.

Wow.. that sounds SUPER easy and a much more enjoyable way to live my life!"


...buuuuut..

Since that's 2nd bit's NEVER going to happen.

And you're only here to stir shit.

No it's not hypocritical to want you removed from this particular society.

Just like any other troublemaker in the large society.

You know, like how people who break the social contract get ostracized, marginalized, ridiculed, imprisoned, etc. etc.

I know it's tough to comprehend that liberals feel and behave similar to you WISE conservadudes..

But we do. Cause we're all just humans

Well, it appears to me that there has to be a better way of handling things than that two-striper decided.

I do know that people complain when outsiders crash their 'territory'.

I thought most of the black kids did do as they were told, which was to sit on the ground. Some of the black girls got mouthy or something which led to physical force.

Too many people now are being taught to disobey the cops, so the verbal escalates to the physical and everyone loses. White people do it too..."I know my constitutional rights!" etc etc etc

And Genji, I don't know if Bob was being racist to you, I'm sure you'll be the arbiter of that, regardless. If Bob wasn't being racist, then I'm sure you'll find someone who will, or has, or will be.

Bottom line is, the cop was suspended because he made a bad situation worse. The other cops don't like that shit either because they have to deal with it too.

But I'm not going to paint all cops as racist just because one might be, as opposed to you guys, who like to paint all cops as racist, just as I don't consider all black people to be troublemakers, just because a few are.

Also, not all black people consider themselves victims as GK does.

Update: the officer who pulled the gun has resigned.

I came back when I saw @speechless's comment. She is exactly right. Ignore does not work. It is a poor substitute for moderation.

Ignoring only works if everyone does it...and possibly not even then. It only takes one person to take the bait to make a troll thrive. If everyone actually did ignore, then it's no different from booting the troublemaker so quit beating around the bush and just boot the troublemaker. One method shifts the burden on the community members who many have given up after seeing how ineffectual ignore is and left, the other method shifts the burden where it should be, on those who run the site.

This site has been going downhill for a long while now because problem members have not been kicked out. It has been noted that the #1 video now only requires 40-ish upvotes where in years past it needed over double that.

I think I even recall @lucky760 voicing his concerns about the continued existence of this site in Sift Talk a while back.

All it takes is a short glance at comment histories to see who is here to contribute to the community and who is here only to incite and rile up and do not contribute to civilized discourse. Most people who read this will know who I am referring to. Dissenting opinions are still required to back their points up. Simply dissent by itself doesn't make the viewpoint valid or else you've just lowered yourself to the level of youtube comments, at a minimum, ad hom attacks and the bigger more well known logical fallacies should not be tolerated.

A good community requires moderation. All the strong forum communities out there depend on moderation to lay down the law on a regular basis...not just when one feels like showing up on the site once every month or so.

seriously dude, you're sometimes worse than both of them.

because you enable them. you defend known racists and trolls. you come in here with your fake-conciliatory "lets all be friends, everyone's opinions are valid" bullshit. It's like you come into every sift, pick out the worst posts..and start defending them.

you're like the media. you take absolutely indefensible arguments of others and try to pretend they're equally valid to stoke the flames. What? you didn't think we noticed you working overtime to defend ching lately during his latest off his meds episode? not surprised at all that you're now swooping in to defend another shithead of the sift.

it's so fake and so transparent.

you're another bad symptom of a site that refuses to have moderators and lets known troublemakers back on that's devolved into just noise and incoherency

@G-bar
agreed.

just because @bareboards2 is happy that MITT is not our president does not automatically translate that she is happy with our current president.

@VoodooV is right.MITT is just spouting vapid,meaningless politician speak.
obama was just better at it.

but the end result would have been the same if MITT had won.

our democracy is broke and dysfunctional.
the inmates are running the asylum.
and the american public has become aware of this fact.

things are building up to maximum nasty.dont know where or when...but the balloon is about to pop.

@BoneRemake where you been ya lil troublemaker?
making gay porn in thailand again?
good to see ya brother!

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