The President addresses the Nation

by designs 257 Replies latest social current

• 

  Glander

  charter schools, typically can do a better job on a fraction of the unionized public school system. This is the uncomfortable fact that Obama pays lip service to but politically is in a corner with another giant union breathing down his neck. The losers are the kids being churned out of public schools with third world educations.

  The union teachers are well paid and get Cadillac benefits and pensions. Every election, local, state and national puts more funding for public education at the top of the list. They appreciate the money. The kids don't learn to read, etc. so that on graduation they can get a job or go to a community college.

  This is a shameful, rotten system. In Detroit,MI, Stockton, Ca, Jefferson County, Ala. Orange County Ca. San Bernardino, Ca. ad infinitum, the public employees unions have been a major part in the raping of the taxpayers with not even a kiss on the back of their neck. Illiterate kids being graduated that cannot read? " You cheap bastards didn't pay enough!"
• 

  Violia

  just look up Emmit Till on Wiki. Yes it was a shameful time in us history but that is not what happened to TM. Trying to gin up racial hatred due to some sad terrible things that happened so long ago, well, it is just not the responsible thing to do. This is why we call Jessie Jackson and Rev AL Sharpton race hustlers and baiter's.

  H*ll, my own family picked cotton right next to blacks and migrant workers ( mostly Hispanics but lots of poor whites too) many years ago. I recall the whites only signs and no colored allowed. I recall getting a malt at a Woolworth diner ( age 13-14) 1965 and a black man in his mid 20's sat down to order. They refused his order. I ask why he could not order. They informed me that he knew perfectly well why he could not order. I asked if I could order. They said yes, if you have money. I ordered my malt and then asked the man what he wanted to order. I told him to give me the money and I'd pay for it and give it to him. I did just so. The waitress made us both leave but before we did I was told I appeared to be a properly brought up Christan girl ( white) but perhaps not. I told her that the Bible said all men were created equal . The manager now says that I should read my Bible closer as one nation was cursed and that was the black man. The black man asked me if I went to church and I said I was one of jws. He said he had heard about them. I told him people of all races went to our KH. I have never forgotten that b/c several people including my folks told me I should have minded my own business. That is all that is required for evil to flourish, people who wont' get involved. I have been an activist since i was that age and have seen racism , bad racism. it is ugly and no it is not gone but it is not like it was in 50-60. We have moved forward. btw, I also told that black man that I knew these people looked awful but they just did not know any better. he said " I know"
• 

  Simon

  You are allowed to think there is a connection but likewise, I am allowed to believe that you have been fooled by propaganda and that the comparison is a sick insult to a poor kid who died a horrible death at the hands of racist thugs and now get's the added injustice of having his death used for race-politics.

  Please go read the account and look at the pictures of him in the casket. TM is no Emmett Till.
• 

  skeeter1

  To get a child into a charter school, the parents have to pick it. That child will get in, if the parents are lucky enough. I think charter schools do better, not only because of the non-unions, but becuase it is comprised of children who are backed by their parents.

  And, I think public school teachers care about the kids. Unions are not hte greatest, and neither is this standardized testing that makes kids into parrots. But, I think it's easy for teachers to get burned out and focus on what he/she can salvage from the kids who have the parental backing to make it. Teachers can not fight the child's situation at home.

  When a father is in jail, it takes an extraordinary strong mother to hold the family together. I think the kids feel like losers when dad's in jail. Crime is all around the family, and it's easier to join a gang for family protrection then to hit the books. Start going into petty theft, burglary, drug dealing, and then advance to illegal gun running. Drop out. I've run rap sheets, and it's the same scenario over & over & over.

  I came out of the worst of the worst elementary schools, public. An F school. I made it. I believed I was different and my parents, even though they were JW, were interested in me being literate. They would have beat me if I did poorly in school. I would have been dead if I joined up with a gang.

  Skeeter
• 

  Simon

  I don't know what a charter school is but I'd be surprised if the type and funding mechanism of the school system (as it sounds) was the real issue here.

  It sounds more like an excuse for peple who don't like unions to hijack or take advantage of an issue.

  Can people never just address the immediate issue? Is this just what US politics has become?
• 

  designs

  The President encourages mentoring as a aid in helping young people to better themselves. One of the aspects of mentoring is that you can give your pupil a world view different from what they have known but it does not by necessity limit the pupil's vision or inhibit them from developing a comprehensive vision of their own.

  Today's milestone speech was not an all-encompassing tome on every race and situation but an overarch of an ideal much like the Kennedy brothers speeches in the 1960s. Again I bring up our own past and the indoctrination we received, we were mentored with a bad and improper vision of how the world is and functioned (Satan and devils rule this world) you hardly can imagine a worse education. We eventually used that bad setting as a springboard to a new life.

  I hope this speech and the aftermath will help us in finding solutions to race on race violence, crushing poverty and ignorance. If a kid from a broken home and a few step-fathers, who smoked pot and got into trouble can rise to become President, well its hard to fault the ambition in today's speech.
• 

  Berengaria

  charter schools, typically can do a better job on a fraction of the unionized public school system. This is the uncomfortable fact that Obama pays lip service to but politically is in a corner with another giant union breathing down his neck. The losers are the kids being churned out of public schools with third world educations.

  The union teachers are well paid and get Cadillac benefits and pensions. Every election, local, state and national puts more funding for public education at the top of the list. They appreciate the money. The kids don't learn to read, etc. so that on graduation they can get a job or go to a community college.

  This is a shameful, rotten system. In Detroit,MI, Stockton, Ca, Jefferson County, Ala. Orange County Ca. San Bernardino, Ca. ad infinitum, the public employees unions have been a major part in the raping of the taxpayers with not even a kiss on the back of their neck. Illiterate kids being graduated that cannot read? " You cheap bastards didn't pay enough!"

  Here is the thread you are looking for http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/politics/257370/1/Utah-Senator-wants-to-end-the-compulsory-education-of-children
• 

  Glander

  I don't know what a charter school is but I'd be surprised if the type and funding mechanism of the school system (as it sounds) was the real issue here.

  Prepare to be surprised.

  No, I'm not a union hater but I know what is going on. It is not rocket science.
• 

  LogCon

  Truth seeker 674 said ‘I think Martin Luther King's" I have a dream speech" is probably one of the best speeches of the 20th century…’

  Here’s one better. Thanks Charlie.

  I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

  Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

  Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

  Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

  Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.

  Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

  Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
• 

  skeeter1

  Simon, the US Public Schools can sometimes be very bad systems. There are documentaries on it. One of the worst is District of Columbia. The central administration becomes this large rulemaker that sucks alot of the classroom money. Teachers in NYC accussed of really bad things (like rape), get paid for years & years & years, at (near) 6 figure incomes to boot! Alot of corruption and wastefulness. All, protected by Unions. I had to complain about two bad teachers, one teacher was touching my child without my child being his student and without my child (or my) authorization. While I raised hell at the school and school board, this teacher remains. Why? The Union. There to protect the teachers. The school systems are for the teachers, first and foremost. But, the difference is that kids in places where the parents care about education (like the "white" suburbs) have great middle and high schools. I think this is becuase a majority of the parents take the child's schooling seriously when they get to these grades. Charter schools do well too, becuase the parents are backing the kids. But, inner city schools (especially middle and high) are notoriously bad places where the majority are going to drop out. It's the environment the students live in and, most importantly, the lack of parental support in the middle and high school years that play a large role that no one wants to admit. It becomes very easy to blame the teacher, who only has the child for 8 hours out of 24 hours a day.

  Charter schools in my area are funded in part with federal and local taxes. The kids wear uniforms and one has to sign up by lottery, usually, to get into these schools were education is touted and rules are stricter. But, our public middle school has an almost uniform (collared shirts, belts, slacks) too and it touts education, computers, strict rules, etc. The Charter school got a B for the first time a few years ago, but our public middle school in white suburbia gets A+'s based on student testing. The black middle school downtown got a C, which is really an F.

  Mentors for poor, black children? Is this an admission that the current generation of black parents can't do it? If I was a black person, I would be pissed off. Or, is this reality? Think about it.

  Anyone ever read the book, The Giver? There, the Society decided that one had to apply to be a parent. Only those deemed capable of raising a child were paired for the purpose and given a toddler to raise. Others were breeders and then became hard laborers, and a few were chosen for trade/profession. Elders determined each person's life path upon the 12th birthday . The reasons for this Society's rules are given in the book. And, it starts with the concept that birth parents may be inept at raising their children to be gainful children, so the State took over in that decision making by uprooting the child to a home with a stable mentor. Think about it.