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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere's how the US education system is failing
Other countries might be making big investments in education... who cares.Can their kids walk around Chipotle with assault rifles?
Enough said.
sailfla
(239 posts)and have their head in the sand
YvonneCa
(10,117 posts)whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)Igel
(35,320 posts)showing slums and homeless in the other country and a high-tech gentech-related company in the US, would it make the opposite point with the same amount of reliability and accuracy?
Nobody would like it. But it would be just as accurate and reliable.
Countries with far lower investment get far greater results for many of the kids. That's the great secret that everybody knows and nobody wants to discuss, because it leads to non-PC conclusions. We're forced to blame the victim in many cases, because the victim is also the victimizer (or the victimizer is the kid's parents). While we privatize success, we socialize failure and claim that the victim is victimized by society; if the parents are at fault, then it's because of society. Whatever it takes to make sure that somebody else is responsible--to ensure that we, their saviors and messiahs, have to carry their burden. And if we fail, then we blame others because having assumed the burden, we delegated all responsibility to other people but reserve all of the authority for ourselves.
Like this isn't an apt description of an inherently dysfunctional system.
We insist on "we built that" when business owners claim hard work and talent is primarily responsible for their business. It's also true for American education. We focus on charter schools and privatization, but the problems in K-12 ed have been around for 40 years while charters school and most of the testing movement are recent. In other words, we say that the conditions 40 years ago are the effect and the cause is only 5-15 years old. (Got TARDIS?)
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)Millions of dollars to Congress.
$229 calculated cost of gun violence in America.
It isn't any more complicated that this.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)The proliferation of anti-intellectualism goes hand-in-hand with the right-wing and neo-liberal privatization/corporatization agenda, and that's what is killing America's public education system.
The "failure" belongs to those who vote for and support politicians who have enabled the destruction of our system. And that includes Democrats as well as the rest.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)you've identified. The end product of our nearly $300 billion dollar a year investment to support gun culture is wasted lives and opportunities. With education costs putting opportunity more and more out of reach, we are creating the society that leads to poverty and extremism.
Opportunity has become measured in the accounting of bullets, not jobs.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)with the claim that the gun problem is the failure of the U.S. education system, or that the "failure" of the system has anything to do with guns.
Gun culture, as you just pointed out, is another symptom of the U.S. disease that is killing education and so much more.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)the gun problem would solve itself. But we value a right to any gun more than we value a right to a solid education.
Few are complaining about $100K a year college and jobs to Asia. But subject internet gun buyers to background checks and waiting periods for guns and ammo, and my god the apocalypse is here.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)That, though, is a failure of American culture, not the education system.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)you come to the conclusion that I blame teachers or schools? I blame the NRA and uneducated gun nuts and greed and indifference to human life in America.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)you started talking about the failure of the system, not the failure of investment.
I blame neo-liberals. Not only have they destroyed our economy, neo-liberal control of education has seriously degraded our education system.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)that initiated the war (the battle of Lexington and Concord, in case you didn't learn that in school).
Education was provided primarily at the local level, generally through churches. Schools provided by the state government did not appear until the 1820s to 50s. The federal funding for the education system didn't appear until LBJ's administration.
If guns have been around since the nation's founding and the federal education system is post-industrial revolution and post-World War how is it that you blame gun culture over a national education policy?
Some people will blame education and teachers for everything and anything. What irks me is that good progressives think it's okay to bash education too. Maybe they're just trying to be hip when they have no clue what they're talking about.
QED
(2,747 posts)I know of no school that teaches love of firearms.
Don't blame this on our education system. It is the direct result of family and community teaching, not those of professional educators.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)of an education system neutered by No Child Left Behind, charter schools and unrestrained corporate influence where, for example, in Texas, they have tried with some success to eliminate slavery, Thomas Jefferson, etc from classrooms. The political class would like us arguing in the trenches about guns rather than arguing for holding the rich accountable for poverty, job loss, etc.
The NRA and their message on guns is far more successful than the message that a strong education system is a better investment than a system of guns and gun violence.
I know this is true because the political class in America don't give a damn about taking education and opportunity away from millions of people. That is a fact. They don't. Or we'd have fewer guns, fewer gun deaths.
But discuss gun regulations and suddenly the shills come out of the woodwork.
Even in this discussion you can see that instead of focusing on the original premise "guns take investment away from education" my premise was twisted and manipulated into something I clearly did not say.
Guns do that. They take value away from meaningful discussion and opportunists will exploit every opportunity to distract and deflect and score a few personal political points.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)and the instruments of government power being the force of the police state -- are actively working to the detriment of the people, driving the people into ignorance and poverty in order to facilitate maintaining control over the people.
And your solution to this is to disarm the people and solidify the political class' monopoly on force and provide them an unchallenged police state with broadened powers.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)on political corruption is absurd and has no basis in fact. In fact it is demonstrably the opposite. Our gun polices and gun owners are pouring gas on the fire. It is an arms race between gun owners and police/military with demonstrated slaughter as a result.
The NRA is brainwashing with neo-confederate messaging and at the same time demanding everyone get a gun. They crank out racist, paranoid anti-government propaganda and tell people to get a gun to protect against liberals, communists, blacks, hispanics, aliens, etc.
Your "education campaign" that guns equalize citizen power is exactly the bullshit America is investing in instead of quality education system that can teach the facts about guns and gun violence in America and the agenda of those who support it.
QED
(2,747 posts)And no way does your premise hold water. But by all means, blame education. Everyone else does.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)analysis with other nations? Starting which grade?
Trick question. No. It doesn't. It would get you fired.
The NRA makes sure of that. In fact, they flood schools with gun propaganda and will soon be successful in forcing teachers to carry guns in classrooms. Then they'll demand students carry guns.
UT now allows students to keep guns in dorm rooms. Education policy. What could go wrong?
Those issues are dominating our conversation on education these days.
That's where America is spending its education dollar. Our education system is bought and paid for by the NRA and conservative interest groups. The same ones who insist religion is science.
America is becoming a very ugly nation of violence, cowards, guns, corruption. It's a strategy that keeps us busy while Wall Street sends all the jobs to slave labor in Asia.
Shove words in my mouth and I'll spit them out.
QED
(2,747 posts)Seriously? What is your evidence of this happening? You are making a number of statements that have no basis in reality. Cite evidence.
"Our education system is bought and paid for by the NRA and conservative interest groups. The same ones who insist religion is science."
No. There is a crisis in education due to a deliberate lack of funding and absurd emphasis on unvalidated standardized tests that are often detached from curriculum, i.e., students are tested on content that was not taught. That is the overall plan of ALEC and its ilk: starve schools, set them up to fail, then close them down and replace with for profit charters.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)that taught in schools. As for NRA school outreach?
NRA directly and indirectly funds local elections including school boards. They influence text books and curriculum.
Want to make a dent in gun violence? Start teaching the science behind access to guns and gun death instead of the bullshit ideas that the 2nd amendment means everyone should be able to buy a machine gun without any controls.
South of mason dixon line, schools teach the 2nd amendment just like that.
The science of gun violence is well understood. There are comparative systems all over the world.
Teach kids the truth about access to guns and gun violence and gun control measures will get passed.
Teach kids the lie that more guns make the world a safer place and gun violence will remain relatively unchanged.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)Flee, hide in place or fight. I will be the one in the parking lot calling 911. And if I don't pay for my interrupted meal, too bad. Time for the rest of us to put a stop to this menace from gun bullies. No way am I going to return to that restaurant. I might even sue for trauma.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)If you can't read at a 9th grade level you can't graduate the 9th grade.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)Unless you want to own a revolutionary war flintlock.
NRA should step up and lead by example and take the test.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Mother Jones should step up and lead by example.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)A well functioning education system would present the facts about gun violence being directly related to lack of gun control.
It is surprising that some educators take this fact personally.
Just like NRA is pushing, with considerable success, to have slavery removed from text books, they have enormous direct and indirect influence about whether the roots of gun violence can be discussed in the classroom.
Want to end gun violence in America? We can start by teaching the cause (too many guns) and the effect (violence).
Egnever
(21,506 posts)I have the strongest urge to beat their ass and take the guns away. I am so glad I haven't run into any of these idiots.
I am older and slower now than I used to be and the outcome likely wouldn't be what I would hope for but man every time I see it I get that urge.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)use the threat of violence to advance their goals.
Just look at their war on women and their religious views. American Taliban. Extremist bastards.
pediatricmedic
(397 posts)Just as well pick up a firearm, still plenty of jobs in security, police, and the military.