Experts are also quoted, including linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, who was reminded of Ronald Reagan's famous line: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’”:
“People tend to trace the demonization of government to Reagan,” Dr. Tannen said. “That’s kind of iconic, how he was using it. He set the government up as the enemy.”And I'm reminded of the 1923 Supreme Court case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, that said:
The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
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113 comments:
“People tend to trace the demonization of government to Reagan,” Dr. Tannen said. “That’s kind of iconic, how he was using it. He set the government up as the enemy.”
I think you could trace it to the Bill of Rights. Which also recognized the danger in government. Madison-Coolidge-Reagan. He didn't invent it, you non-historian!
Gummint schools; gummint cheese.
What difference at this point does it make?
Of course the article only blames Republicans and conservatives for manipulating language to frame issues. Meanwhile, the Left is so preoccupied with framing, they even change the label they use to refer to themselves, going for liberal, to progressive, to liberal and now back to progressive. Conservatives are fine with conservative.
The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
Good times, good times.
Separation of Church and State. It's possible, but unlikely. It all depends on how you frame the issue. People with a "secular" faith are resistant to limiting instruction to the scientific domain. People with an authoritarian outlook entertain the convenience of indoctrinating (e.g. Pro-Choice religious/moral philosophy) a captive audience. Wow, indeed. Pay your tithe to the government Church.
The democrat party is a criminal enterprise. And they LOVE government. Big ugly corrosive coercive government.
James Clark McReynolds, who delivered the opinion of the court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, was one interesting fellow.
The government pays for it; why not call it that? Gov't also pays for public libraries, but since no private option exists, we don't say "Government Library". I sure wish we would, though. Our municipal library is now offering mental health services for the homeless who shelter among the stacks. "Library" no longer adequately conveys the building's actual usage. "Government" conveys quite a lot.
Sorry Charlie; you suck on the government teat, you drink the government milk. For the last 30 years or so, I've sat on the Civil Service Commission for the local K-12 school district. It's one of the two or three largest (in terms of numbers of students) school districts in Los Angeles County. We deal with the non teachers in the district. The clerks, the secretaries, the educational assistants and such i.e. everybody who doesn't have a teaching credential. We approve various new positions. And one of the things that wee do when we approve a new position is note the source of funding. Some of it is state, some of it is federal. But some government functionary has decided that a particular kind of position is important, and they will pay for it. So we create or authorize a new position, and lo and behold we now have a transgender specialilst--or whatever the flavor of the day is in Sacramento or Washington D.C,.
I have enjoyed Tannen's books immensely. One of the things that she pointed out was that men and women tend to speak different languages, even when they use the same words. Until I read her, I never really understood where my mother was coming from when she would say that it would be nice if I did something. If she wanted me to do it, why didn't she just ask? I grew up in a family of all males (except for her), and she did the opposite.
The reality is that they are government schools. They are funded by money taken at essentially gunpoint, and run and staffed by unionized government employees. And, as with other government employees, their generous, typically defined benefit, pensions are bankrupting the cities and counties funding them. Moreover, they have become significantly politized in recent years. Or, maybe for a long time - apparently 20 years ago maybe 1/5 of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention were teachers on their summer leave. No wonder they seem more interested in teaching environmental activist on, multiculturalism, and gay acceptance than teaching their pupils to read and write.
Since there are schools that are funded and run according to government rules and other schools that are funded and run but non-governmental organizations, it's interesting that people should make a distinction.
The person who has a problem with the term "government schools" appears to feel that the government label is derogatory. Perhaps she should ask why this is so.
I believe that UW Madison is a government run school. Does Ann feel that this term is a negative?
A 3 - 5,000 pupil school certainly is not a neighborhood school.
And if your kid has a problem and you go to find out about it or protest, you will be told: Sorry, we must follow Government mandates or lose our funding.
"The government pays for it; why not call it that? Gov't also pays for public libraries, but since no private option exists, we don't say "Government Library". I sure wish we would, though."
>>>Have you ever heard of Carnegie libraries? And the philanthropist capitalist who endowed them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
"Our municipal library is now offering mental health services for the homeless who shelter among the stacks. "Library" no longer adequately conveys the building's actual usage. "Government" conveys quite a lot.
>>>Interesting, in that leftists were responsible for closing state and local government mental health facilities all over the country. (Leftists blamed Reagan, but he had nothing to do with it.)
Now that things have gone from bad to worse, "government" stepping back in , through the back door. Meanwhile ordinary library users have to tolerate filthy, deranged homeless people, in the name of "compassion".
7/9/16, 8:24 PM
Ask yourself why our kids only spend maybe 180 days a year in school, when comparable Japanese kids sped maybe a third again 240 days). Or, why high schools often start at maybe 7 am, when teenagers are well known to do better with a later schedule. The answer is mostly, I will suggest, the unionized teachers. Summer's off is a perk that they don't want to give up, and they get their late afternoons off with schools starting so early.
Not that teaching in govt schools is that great of a job. It is government work, and governments tend to be both mindless and soulless. No wonder so many government school teachers tend to burn out so early. It was interesting when my kid was in a private prep school. Several of their teachers were refugees from the government school system. They may not have been making as much money, but it was far more pleasant and rewarding teaching at a private school.
What's the problem? They are government schools, especially now that so much of what they do is dictated by the government.
Are they not government run schools?
"The person who has a problem with the term "government schools" appears to feel that the government label is derogatory. Perhaps she should ask why this is so."
It's remarkable to read on this blog a question like that.
Go google "decline of American education".
You'll get 86 MILLION hits. Take yer pick.
As for UW Madison: a general complaint is not negated by a single counter-example.
You'll find the general complaint amply discussed and supported on google.
Bill wrote - "James Clark McReynolds, who delivered the opinion of the court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, was one interesting fellow."
Yikes!
Well, he was a Woodrow Wilson appointee...
Bruce Hayden said...
Or, why high schools often start at maybe 7 am, when teenagers are well known to do better with a later schedule.
You may be correct about the reason for this, but I've always thought it was to accommodate after-school activities, especially sports and sports practices.
Schools have seriously deteriorated since the Feds got involved. They have become laboratories for social experimentation and engineering [and just plain brainwashing], which is bad enough, but very little real education is going on. Gifted children are no longer allowed to forge ahead but are left to stagnate with the lowest common denominator of the class. The 'No Child Left Behind' principle has been a dismal failure for everyone concerned. Back in my day, children were left behind if they couldn't keep up. Not all children are capable of high academic achievement.
Why have schools with 3,000 to 5,000 students? Yes, the athletics - except that means fewer kids can actually compete. For example, my kid was JV in three sports their freshman year, despite being not that athletic. Friends in a large public school made JV their junior, or maybe even senior year, in sports (like soccer) that they had played since 5 years old. By that time, my kid was playing varsity in one of those sports. It all comes from going to a school with maybe 90 in your class, as opposed to one with over 1,000. Study after study have shown that kids do better in smaller schools. Maybe not a dozen in their class, but a couple hundred versus over a thousand.
If my kid had gone to a public high school, it would have been the next one west of Columbine, and they knew kids who went there (I think Columine had the IB program for the southern part of the school district). I was always struck by how the two shooters there were bulled by the jocks, who could get away with it because they made the school proud. They would apparently bounce the two guys against lockers as they walked by. This was tolerated. And partially because of it, kids died in their rampage. These two couldn't thrive in that environment, but that wasn't important to the government employees running the school. They weren't important. They were just numbers, round pegs that couldn't fit in the school's square holes.
In comparison, my kid was bullied a bit in lower school in that private school. In response, the school took both kids aside, gave counseling to the bully, and bully proofing training to the bullied. Because the teachers were on a lookout for it, there was almost none, all the way through. Private school versus govt schools.
The problem with the public schools has to do with more interference from the state and federal governments over time. The more the government insists on things like national standards, testing, and curriculum, the more the schools are going to resemble something produced by HUD - ugly, barely adequate, and something used only by those who have no other choice. As in housing, those who can afford to go elsewhere both should and will.
There was a poster on my school wall once upon a time that displayed The Six Steps to Critical Thinking. Much of the problem with modern education is that there is no effort to bring about critical thinking, merely to deliver value judgments already decided upon by those at the top. It has the function of turning education into a kind of secular catechism class in which reasons are not offered, merely the pieties to be repeated. It should hardly be surprising that this kind of education creates hostility on the part of some of the parents.
Just like with Trump, Reagan didn't start it---his comment about the scariest words in the English language worked because it accurately expressed the experience of many people. If it weren't true, he wouldn't have said it, and if he had it would have fallen very flat.
As far as the schools--my take is that the creation and elevation of Schools of Education in large universities was utterly fatal, as theory replaced practice. the old "normal school" model of 2-4 years post-HS to get some subject matter mastery and learn things like classroom management, followed by several years of a virtual apprenticeship working with experienced teachers to see how to apply it all, and learn the real ropes, worked just fine compared to the ghastly mess we have now.
Some people blame the teachers' unions, some blame bureaucracy, and there is some truth there, but I really think that the University-level schools of education (largely taken over by Bill Ayers' acolytes, btb), coupled with Federal funding and control, are the biggest problems.. and they would be easy and inexpensive to roll back if we had the will to do so.
Anyone who has read Tom Brown's School Days knows that bullying is nothing new, nor is it confined to government schools. Some of the worst, in fact, occurs in private boarding schools. But that's another topic, IMO.
I just want to enter in to this conversation the idea that it is not so much the "government" that is dictating to the schools but the over-involved parents who are contributing to the problem. They are the ones who insist that the school year cannot be more than 180 days because that doesn't leave enough time for them to have their vacations and for their children to have their down time and their "me" time. I have seen homework go from 1-2 hours a night (when my daughter was in school in the '90's) to no more than 1/2 hour per day because it is too taxing on the child or the parent to do that much work. These parents want everything to be "fair" and "Equal" for Buffy and Sam. What a shock when these kids grow up and realize that the "real World" isn't fair or equal.
This "AYSO'ing" of America is disgraceful. Not everyone deserves a trophy for simply being there, not everyone deserves anything because they are participating in school. That's their job, to get an education. It is their job to do homework to perfect their skills. They take tests to reinforce that they have learned something. Testing is not bad, it is good. Homework is not bad, it is good. Failure is not bad, you learn as much (some say even more, from your failures as your successes. You learn to pick yourself up, figure out a way to go forward and you go forward.
These problems were not started by the "Government"
I went to my grandson's little league game today and, even when the pitcher threw a ball(too many to count) they were cheering him on ... Good pitch, good pitch. It wasn't, it was terrible.
Just venting.
Stop blaming the big bad government for everything. Strap on a set and get going.
Vicki from Pasadena
Not that easy with all the investment in these medium security state prison-like facilities, fleets of buses, etc., etc., and so on.
Lots of paychecks, lots of special interests, and opportunities for graft here.
Ask yourself why our kids only spend maybe 180 days a year in school, when comparable Japanese kids sped maybe a third again 240 days).
That is a legacy of our nation's history, and all attempts to change it are resisted by parents.
Or, why high schools often start at maybe 7 am, when teenagers are well known to do better with a later schedule.
Mainly becaause parents rely on school for babysitting while they are at work. There are a lot of teachers who want to start school later...we tried for 9:00 AM...not a chance.
The answer is mostly, I will suggest, the unionized teachers.
Teacher's unions are responsible for a lot of evils, but not these two.
This "AYSO'ing" of America is disgraceful. Not everyone deserves a trophy for simply being there, not everyone deserves anything because they are participating in school.
This idiocy was not invented by parents but by the California Department of Education. Their theory of achievement by increasing self esteem was adopted in the 1990's, I think.
well they don't teach reading, writing or arithmetic, three skills the other 1.5 billion we are in competition with, put a premium on,
They are Government Schools in many places, especially the poor areas of large cities. There are still some places where the people run the schools, using the government with its taxing power as the means. Vast numbers of parents and children do not have that arrangement. They have to take what the government gives them. Indeed, the Democrats--the party of the government in this era--strenuously oppose programs that would give poor children and their parents an option.
It is chilling that this nitwit from Kansas can not grasp that in the slightest.
"To Kansas Conservatives..." HA! How about to all conservatives? The expression "government schools" has been in use all over the country for many years. Another rube self-identifies.
Out West, Reservation schools are also known as Government Schools
not favorably
"Why have schools with 3,000 to 5,000 students? Yes, the athletics - except that means fewer kids can actually compete. "
My son went to a private school and his high school graduating class had 25 students. Everybody played on the teams.
I once tried to enforce my rule about his grades. I told the vice-Principal that he was not to allowed extra-curricular activities until he had a B average.
That was a waste of breath. They needed him in the school play and the football team and he played.
I wouldn't let him have a drivers' license without a B average so, when he as 17, he had girls picking him up for dates in BMW convertibles.
Did I mention that he was 6 feet three and handsome ?
Anyway, he out-waited me and I gave up on the DL. He is now 47 and happily married with three great kids.
I wish I could afford private school for his kids but they have gotten very expensive and I am retired.
Vicki - the over involved parents aren't really the problem. In many/most schools, they are a small minority. They aren't the ones setting curriculum, or doing the hiring and (rare) firing. And for most parents, finding something for their kids to do during the long summer break is a yearly pain. Most parents of kids in government schools can't afford long vacations, and most don't get more than a couple weeks leave themselves. And if they can afford long vacations in exotic places, they can afford to double pay and send their kids to private school instead.
One of the more depressing things I saw with government schools was the experience of my secretary with her three kids, none of whom graduated. Why not? Turns out that the school system got their funding based on head count at the beginning of the school year. After getting the funding, they would dump the troublemakers within a couple weeks, pocketing the money. The depressing thing was that she tried to be involved. But the educrats would flash their credentials, and carefully explain why she was wrong, and they were right. Which they weren't. She was very bright and well educated in this area. But didn't have a degree, which is why she was a secretary. Point is that the govt educrats are able to intimidate most middle and lower income parents. And routinely do. It is really only those of us who are probably brighter and better educated (I.e. Have advanced degrees that aren't awarded just for showing up in class as so many advanced teaching degrees are).
If every high school in America adopted the models used by the Society of Jesus and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, education would be way better. Take the religion out of it and it would still be true.
Small classes.
High standards.
Discipline.
Single sex schools.
Lots of activities.
No bureaucracy. No central authority.
When people talk about not liking the government, they usually are refering to the federal government -- except in California :)
When in doubt, look at the data:
Americans' trust in the federal government, 1958-2015 (I wish it went back a few more decades).
http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/
There are some interesting peaks and valleys. There was a collapse from '65 to '79, the era of the Vietnam War, Nixon, and the expansion of federal government we call the Great Society. Even landing a man on the moon couldn't stop the decline. The bottom was reached just when Reagan was elected, and recovered, some what, by the middle of the Reagan administration, then hit bottom again in '94, when the GOP was swept into congressional majorities for the first time in decades. Then you have a linear climb that peaked around 9/11, then a linear drop until 2008, when it flat lined at record lows, presumably due to the financial collapse and the Obama economy.
If you want an excuse to call Obama a miserable president, it is a good graph for you.
You know, the Brits use the term "public schools." It means something entirely different there. Arguably, theirs is the correct usage. Why is "public" synonymous with "government" in so many (but clearly not all) uses of the term here? I don't know. Is it possible it has its roots in the belief (whether justified or not) that we are a self-governing nation? We generally take "private" to mean the opposite of "public," but is that always true?
News Flash: Daughter finds Mother's opinion objectionable. Film at 11.
Prof. George Lakoff is upset that the right has taken ownership of words like "freedom"and "liberty." I don't quite get why that should be the case. It's not as though the Left has any use for them.
Dr K - athletics was one of the things that I loved about private school. My kid's school had mandatory athletics starting in 6th grade (when they entered middle school). The interesting thing for me is that the gym seemed to be the social center of their afternoons, with everyone meeting up after they were done for the day with practice, and were waiting for their rides home. They had buses, and my kid rode them through high school. But for the middle and esp high schoolers they had a "late bus" that picked them up after practice. (I gave my kid the same choice my father gave me - private college or a car. We both picked private college). They also fielded enough teams that most everyone could play a sport every trimester. I found it interesting that they would field more volleyball teams than government schools more than ten times their size.
Bruce Hayden said...
Ask yourself why our kids only spend maybe 180 days a year in school, when comparable Japanese kids sped maybe a third again 240 days).
US Asians score better on PISA than Japanese in Japan do.
There's a lot of noise about "failing schools" in the US, but what they're really talking about is failing students in certain demographics (guess!). Educational performance of US kids is quite comparable to that of the kids in other civilized countries.
But we pay close to twice as much.
That really is a fascinating article on Americans trust in the government over the decades.
“People tend to trace the demonization of government to Reagan,” Dr. Tannen said.
So we have a credentialed idiot. The graph clearly shows that the peoples' trust in the federal increased with the election of Reagan, and stayed at a higher than 1979 level until the end of his term, though it began to decline a bit from its highest level towards the end of this term.
The data also shows that levels of distrust and trust in the feds is similar across party lines, ethnic lines, age lines, and education level lines.
It is normal to distrust the government. large majorities of people throughout history and around the world have distrusted their governments. It is the people who have warm, happy thoughts about government and its power that are the outliers.
"The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only." Funny stuff. Of course, he vainly fought the New Deal. We are so much more enlightened now.
The term "government school(s)" has been around since about 1820 and reached peaks in about 1960 and 1975.
Of course, RR was wrong with his government quote. In the Nation of Takers, most people are perfectly happy to get "help." Next up: "free" public, make that: government, college.
The Mad Global Marxists are steaming.The collectivization of Education is into its latest Stalin 5 year plan; and those damn Kulaks are still around daring to cling to their private property, their kids's futures and, OMG, their guns and their religion.
Global Marxist's Lives Matter. And apparently nobody else's lives matter.
I've never understood why anonymous people go on the net and brag about their kids or discuss how tall or rich or smart they are.
Who cares?
I started using the term after I read that the Poles closed all the government schools once they escaped the Democrats (oops, I mean the Soviets).
I think that there was general sense in the US, beginning around 1880, that we were in competition for resources with the Empires of Europe. That was the era when people were taught to value their American-ness more than their being a Hoosier or a Badger or whatever. It was when national standards were all the rage. National time zones were established in 1883, for example. That era of the 'Americanization' ended around 1920. No one had a good opinion of empires, American or otherwise, after WWI.
There still seems to be an idea that the government is supposed to educate the children in order to make the nation stronger. If the government thinks we need mechanics and engineers, the school system will churn out mechanics and engineers, This a notion that does not go much further back than the late 19th century.
I know many parents who chose public schools over the clearly better private options. They used the savings for luxury cars and bigger homes and second homes.
RR: "Government's view of the economy: it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. "
It was true then, and it is true now.
Michael
The two best Catholic high schools in Omaha spend half of what the public high schools do.
rcocean said...
I've never understood why anonymous people go on the net and brag about their kids or discuss how tall or rich or smart they are.
Who cares?
Sigh.
Life was so much better when widespread ignorance and illiteracy reigned supreme.
ACK! it found us.
Kate said... Gov't also pays for public libraries, but since no private option exists, we don't say "Government Library". I sure wish we would, though.
They're rare, but they exist, Kate:
Wiki: Subscription Libraries in USA
NYTimes article, 2006: Libraries of Gracious Reading, for Members Only
In fairness, public schools have to educate all kids and private schools can kick out the bad kids.
The public schools are also tasked with teaching kids who comes from sh#tty families. Families with no fathers (fathers in which the children have never ever seen) and where the concept of marriage is as foreign as being an astronaut. Families which are in the third or fourth generation of public assistance. Families in which the providers have never held a steady job. Families with multiple members involved in the criminal justice system (and not in a good way). Families with drug and alcohol problems. All in all, they have to educate children who are set up for failure because their parents are idiots and government policies have eviscerated the family.
That doesn't excuse the government schools from doing a good job but it does create some context and shows that it is unfair to compare the government schools with Catholic schools.
Kate said...
"The government pays for it; why not call it that? Gov't also pays for public libraries, but since no private option exists, we don't say "Government Library". I sure wish we would, though. Our municipal library is now offering mental health services for the homeless who shelter among the stacks. "Library" no longer adequately conveys the building's actual usage. "Government" conveys quite a lot."
Kate, I am the director of a private library. There are lots of private libraries.
"Life was so much better when widespread ignorance and illiteracy reigned supreme."
No wonder they're so happy in the inner-city.
The old days are back. Public Education has once again become a choice between a literate or an illiterate population. And basic Reading skills are down and out in Dem controlled Big Cities and the plague is spreading by Common Core sabotage..
This is a big deal. The assassins of phonetics teaching have killed off our country's skill set. I want to know why!
Look up "public school" on Wiki and you'll see how its meanings vary from country to country. In the US, "public" has long been a magic word among liberals, much like "progressive," and I can understand why they don't like to see it losing its cachet. But "government" or "state" more accurately conveys the character of schools whose curriculum, schedules and staffing are governed to a large and increasing degree by authorities remote from local control in Washington or the state capital. Back when two sections in every midwestern township were earmarked for support of education, and when country schoolhouses with locally hired teachers dotted the maps every few miles, "public" may have been the appropriate adjective. Now, with the children being bused for hours to bureaucratically administered schools in centralized locations, "government" conveys the flavor better.
Jon Ericson said... [hush][hide comment]
rcocean said...
I've never understood why anonymous people go on the net and brag about their kids or discuss how tall or rich or smart they are.
Who cares?
Sigh.
I have never understood why grown men sigh Kind of feminine, or Al Gorish
It was dismay, macho man
A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion. It is voiced pharyngeal fricative, sometimes associated with a guttural glottal breath exuded in a low tone. It often arises from a negative emotion, such as dismay, dissatisfaction, boredom, or futility
Jonny Ericson is a little pussy.
Jon Ericson said...
It was dismay, macho man
A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion. It is voiced pharyngeal fricative, sometimes associated with a guttural glottal breath exuded in a low tone. It often arises from a negative emotion, such as dismay, dissatisfaction, boredom, or futility
Yeah, according to Wikipedia. Urban dictionary describes it as "feminine attribute generally used as substitute for lack of imagination or coherent argument" See"Valley Girl"//
PUSSY!
I see a pattern here.
URBAN DICTIONARY!
Another scholar!
Blogger Jon Ericson said...
URBAN DICTIONARY!
Another scholar!
Wikipedia!,without attribution ! Your an orginalist.
Your an orginalist.
You're an originalist.
I already said you were a scholar.
Haha! That was too easy...May not be a "scholar". but I am not as gullible and as easily fooled as some geni'
What's a "geni'"
Plural form of genital, dummy.
GENITAL!
Definite pattern.
A "geni " is a person fooled by intentional misude of your/you're who doesn't learn anything from the obvious deception and continues to unwittingly play along.
A drunk is a person who can't proofread.
Jon Ericson said...
A drunk is a person who can't proofread.
Jesus! Your a regular Oscar Wilde.
you're both doody heads
All the proponents and supporters of public schools a/k/a government schools in the US conveniently overlook that the schools are primarily the result of the Blaine Laws.
We try.
The Bernie Sanders and Trump movements, BLM, Brexit in the UK and so on are a direct result of growing inequality and decreasing tax income for local government to directly solve the problems for their local communities.
This downward spiral started with Reagan's cut the taxes for the rich and government is the enemy policies. These two policies have become sacroscant to both Dems and Reps to our detriment. It has led directly to the inequality we see all around and in wages for the past 40 years.
The real enemy have been politicians promoting tax cuts for the rich and government is the enemy policies.
As an example, George Dubya Bush fought two multi-trillion dollar wars and at the same time making the biggest tax cuts for the rich in history. We then wonder why we have structural problems.
Unknown - obama had the biggest tax cut in history backbin 2009.
Ask yourself why our kids only spend maybe 180 days a year in school, when comparable Japanese kids sped maybe a third again 240 days).
A big reason for this difference is that Japanese (like Chinese) is an ideographic language. Basic literacy requires knowing 3,000 or so kanji characters, none of which give the reader any clues to their proper pronunciation. A person who has graduated high school is expected to know 12,000 or thereabouts, and a scholar at the doctoral level needs 20,000. Educated Asians make a game of using obscure characters in settings where their friends and colleagues are reading aloud, in hopes of forcing them to admit they don't know an unfamiliar ideogram.
A child in Western countries, by contrast, learns all the characters he will need for the rest of his life in first grade, as well as the usual sounds they make, which will help him sound out unfamiliar written words phonetically when he encounters them. From the point of view of adding to intrinsically useful knowledge, the tens of thousands of extra hours that Asian students spend learning their ideographic written languages are entirely wasted.
There are a couple of juveniles who are making this blog's comments unreadable. They need to be made to disappear so the rest of the readership doesn't.
Hi there Jaydub!
Be cool.
Poof!
The Times continues to use linguistic formulation to smear conservatives. Rather than admit the obvious, that the phrase "government schools" is not so much a calculated insult as short-hand for the myriad problems of public schools - indoctrination in current progressive thought, unionized and unaccountable teachers and administrators, lack of anything resembling rigorous education, etc. - the Times treats it as more evidence of self-identifying rubes attempting to sabotage education. The Times does not misunderstand, but to speak accurately of the reasons that ordinary people refer to "government schools" would grant agency to these people, something the Times is steadfastly opposed to doing. This is of a piece with the consistent approach of the left, going back at least to the sixties, and part of their contempt for ordinary people which has given rise to, among other things, Trump.
Mobyism abounds.
I was in High School in the 70's Small rural school. Way back then the teachers, (transplants, not locals) were the norm in the high school halls, the elementary was filled with wives of farmers and business owners. But way back then the high school teachers were young and just out fo college and the consuled that we as students needed to listen to the teachers and not our parents. While they are fine folk, salt of the earth, smart and hard working, they were behind the times and ignorant of the world and its new ways.
Govt schools have been brainwashing like that for a long time.
The simple fact i, leftist in general, and those that define and direct the education in this nation, know, whithout doubt that parents are idiots and the govt is the answer to rearing children. NOT just educating, but rearing.
That why 1/4 of 3rd grade readers are reading bellow an already pathetic lowered standard for 3 graders. Teachers are busy today explaining to the kindergarten class why Jennifer now wants to be called John and use the boys bathroom. That is way more important than learn what the B b looks like.
And from that early brainwashing it just balloons into graduates that believe separation of church and state is written in the constitution. And complimenting a girl on her blouse is sexual harassment, but the President getting a blow job from an intern, is not (if they are Democrat.)
She got that from Neal Boortz who sent his (Insanely hot) daughter to Chamblee High School while savaging the public/government (Doesn't really matter to me) school systems the entire way. My just retired, republican SIL had a real big problem with his blanket condemnation of every single person that sent their kids to her class room.
Hmmm. My father was a teacher, both in "private" schools and "public" schools, in the United States. There's some difference between private and public schools in the United States. Can't quite put my finger on what it is...
"They need to be made to disappear so the rest of the readership doesn't."
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I would suggest that there is a definite effort in the public schools to indoctrinate the children in what is leftist philosophy and theory of government and life in general. Some of this is no doubt unconscious and merely reflects the personal feelings of the teachers, but much is a conscious, deliberate effort to shape the students in a direction and politic not necessarily in harmony wth the family's way or life or general political or religious thought. This is intentional social engineering.
I assume most here have 1st or 2nd hand anecdotal evidence of this, but I would suggest we think about who represents mainstream thought at such as the Univesity of Illinois, Chicago Department of Education. (Bill Ayers, former terrorist bomber)
The grandchildren tell us that they are made to feel they are bigots if they refuse dates with other ethnics groups, as an example.
A friend asked his 13 year old daughter about a young man he had been mentoring but who was MIA. Oh, he was in trouble for some sexual misconduct in a bathroom at school. Shock! Oh Daddy, it was just a blow job. From his 13 year year old. That's how he learned that his kids were being taught - at public school - that oral sex was a legiitimate outlet and it's casual use OK among friends. At age 13.
Kids (grandkids) come home and suggest a vote for anyone but Sanders is somehow unpatriotic and synonymous with World's End. Add in transgender bathrooms for all, legalized marijuana, murdering cops, racist Israel, more...you get the picture. These are not subjects for middle school, say, and certainly not suitable for value judgements taught at this level, even if they are being reviewed. This is political and social indoctrination. It's just smoother than, say, North Korea, but just as pervasive.
This from one of the largest school districts in the nation. So, do you know what your children and grandchildren are actually learning at that school?
Precisely because of the lack of discipline in the public school, i opted to have my daughter educated in Catholic Schools, discipline, high standards and zero (and i mean zero) tolerance. But this was in 1991 some 25 years ago. It was bad then, worse now. I see some of it creeping in to some catholic school;s, but the majority of them still believe in the basics in education and in discipline. No corporal punishment, thank god, but strict. Loved it. My daughter, at 30, sees some of the loosening of standards and even she is disheartened. I believe, when she has children, she will opt for the private school education. Let me tell you, 12 years of catholic school was expensive, we both worked hard and did without for a long time... even till the present. It was totally worth it.
Vicki from Pasadena
I have read that the most assigned book in high school is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States......Lots of people find that book slanted and simplistic in its facile condemnation of America. It nonetheless remains the most assigned book in high school, and teachers wonder why they are losing support among the populace.
We.might be calling "government schools" something else now if their mission hadn't metastasized into "bureaucratic self-perpetuation" from "educating children".
"I have read that the most assigned book in high school is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States......Lots of people find that book slanted and simplistic in its facile condemnation of America. It nonetheless remains the most assigned book in high school, and teachers wonder why they are losing support among the populace."
Do you really know it is the "most assigned book in high school"? You move in two sentences from saying you "have read"it is the most assigned book to asserting "It nonetheless remains the most assigned book in high school." I'd be honestly surprised if many schools at all assigned it.
Have you bothered to confirm this information?
This is weird. Liberals claim that private businesses are providing "public accommodation". Doesn't it make sense to call government-run s hooks "government schools" in order to avoid confusion? Why do liberals want to erase the line between government and private enterprises? Isn't what Mussolini tried to do?
Schools aren't really public like libraries and parks. You can't simply walk into them. If you want to use their services, you can't decide which one you'd like to use or what parts of their program you'd like to use.
It is weird how people would view with suspicion an organization with thousands if not millions of armed enforcers and which claims the right to plunder you at will and kill you if you resist.
And the linguistics professor mused about replacing public library with government library (actually they are not all entirely owned or operated by governments) and public parks with government parks.
"The child is not a creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."
Which is why both my parents sat me on their laps and read to me. And it wasn't "See Spot run and jump and play" it was their college textbooks. With big words.
Several years ago my brother was complaining about government employees.
Wait, I said, you are a public school teacher. That makes you a government worker.
He was furious.
I laughed.
"And the linguistics professor mused about replacing public library with government library (actually they are not all entirely owned or operated by governments) and public parks with government parks."
Another linguistic professor mused about liberal claiming that private businesses provide "public accommodation", even though, aha, these are private businesses.
Unknown: USG receipts historical charts here: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_history. You will see no apparent material declines from the so-called Reagan tax cuts, or the John Kennedy tax cuts for that matter. It's all uphill at a non-trivial rate during the progressive era until 2000. Decline / and real volatility in revenue started in 2000 and looks to be getting more and more unstable looking at the last 100 years with each larger and larger credit-induced bubble leading to collapse (2000, 2008). The Reagan tax cuts theory of inequality doesn't hold any water. I trust your reference to inequality compares pre-tax earnings against pre-transfer payments receipts of the persons under evaluation, and assume no income quintile mobility over a lifetime. If so, it's a hollow analysis.
Unknown: USG expenditures historical chart here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=W013RU1Q027NBEA,
If you look, you will see that "Reagan tax cuts" (and Kennedy tax cuts) had no apparent impact on the spend, again which during the progressive era increased at a non-trivial rate until ca. 2000, with the first "wealth effects" easy-credit-made bubble collapse. What caused these things? Your theory is just a hater's theory designed to create a wedge and cause you to vote against your perceived enemies.
A better theory of observing the current state of things you apparently decry as inequality goes thusly: Inequality could be defined as a perceived lack of sharing of apparent prosperity. (Equality as a political goal enforced by threats of violence is of course a revolt against nature and its pursuit is immoral and harmful).
One must ask whether there is prosperity or just the illusion of it. Building things only for the sake of building them and engaging in consumption without savings using unsustainable debt loads or immoral transfer payments does not create prosperity.
Is the perception of "inequality" correct? There is evidence that the middle class has been "disappearing" into the upper middle class (since the supposedly good times ca. 1971). (I think you have to assume the dollar equivalencies are valid to do this and they are based on government-supplied inflation data which have undergone numerous methodical changes over time which always somehow benefitted government). See, e.g., http://cafehayek.com/2016/04/some-links-716.html. Chart uses 2014 dollars.
Another issue which fuels this perception would be unemployment of persons who learned skills further to past malinvestment, namely the real estate and housing trades, which are no longer needed. The depth of the displacement comes through in the chart here: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/chart-of-the-day-the-real-story-behind-the-true-magnitude-of-the-new-home-sales-collapse/.
Fourth, what fueled the malinvestment, which ended in collapse and the current malaise? Not Reagan or Republican voters. It was the central bank created by the government, using tools it has only by government coercion to manipulate downward short term interest rates and increase currency unit production in hopes of "stimulating the economy" throughout the early part of the twenty-first century.
What financed George W. Bush's wars? And those of his father? And of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and Hillary too even as a scheming and killing SOSOTUS)? That same central bank. It is the enabler and financier of permanent war, because it is - of late - authorized to monetize the debts of the United States Government. It also blatantly engages in manipulations of all prices. By destroying the validity of price signals through its bogus "wealth affects" policy - which amounts to nothing more than boosting stock prices by any means necessary no matter the cost - it is sowing the ground even greater malinvestment, collapse, and tepid recovery if any than ever before. Its (with other central banks in the global cartel) current round of financial repression against savers is transferring hundreds of billions from savers to borrowers, many of whom are irresponsible and should have their debts liquidated.
“People tend to trace the demonization of government to Reagan,” Dr. Tannen said
I'm shocked he didn't blame Nixon.
Or HUAC.
Reagan reflected reality. True statements tend to stick with people. If he said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I despise unicorns'", it would've had dramatically less impact.
That doesn't excuse the government schools from doing a good job but it does create some context and shows that it is unfair to compare the government schools with Catholic schools.
...except no evidence exists that the Catholic schools DO kick out the bad kids. Everything I've read from Catholic schools is that it is a failure if they have to expel a child.
"That doesn't excuse the government schools from doing a good job but it does create some context and shows that it is unfair to compare the government schools with Catholic schools."
No, I think it illustrates yet another problem with public schools. Most people would rather send their children to a school where the bad children are kicked out and sent to alternative or reform school.
They are not only Government Schools, but FEDERAL Government Schools. By any definition. Funny how former 60s "revolutionaries" are surprised when they discover they are the pigs and their parents are now the revolutionaries. To modernize a theme from the Weather Underground: KILL YOUR KIDS!
Freeman Hunt wrote: No, I think it illustrates yet another problem with public schools. Most people would rather send their children to a school where the bad children are kicked out and sent to alternative or reform school.
I agree. That is one solution to the problem.
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