I'm a fan of the point in the last quote. Too many of our kids can't possibly perform well in, no matter how good the school, because they suffer too many deficiencies elsewhere in their lives.
The thing is that with out the support of parents, with out the parents being involved, there is only so much you can do in the class room to help a child
You want students to perform better get better parents. No amount of social work or wealth redistribution can compensate when the parents suck. On the other hand, good parents can compensate for damn near everything else.
You know who makes good parents? People with jobs that pay a living wage for a reasonable number of hours worked. People who don't have to move away from their friends and family to find such jobs because their local job market is so miserable. People who don't have to worry that the next illness in the family means bankruptcy. People who have secure housing. Bad parenting is, all too often, primarily the result of poverty and not the result of some great character flaw of the parents. Yes, people can beat the odds, but expecting them to do so is mere cruelty.
In other words, if people just had plenty of money they would be better parents Complete BS. You don't need to make lots of money to stay married, stay committed, make time for your kids, avoid drugs, avoid alcohol, defer gratification and all that.
Bad parenting primarily the result of poverty? No. Bad parenting is bad parenting regardless of the size of a bank account. Of course it's to be expected that a leftist...fuck let's just call you what you are.....a fucking communist......would say it's primarily because of poverty. Of course being a communist your solution is no doubt to "equalize" everyone's bank account and solve the education problems of America in one fell swoop. God. Damn. Liet. You. Are. A. Fucking. Genius!
Not all education woes are due to bad parenting, though it surely can have a large effect. I'm not sure how you make bad parents into good parents, or prevent bad parenting from happening. But I do feel that kids with uninvolved or "bad" parents have a better chance to overcome it and succeed, if there is a mechanism in place to help them. Does this mean the countries listed above just have better parents than the others?
Start with shooting all the lefties who spread bullshit like Liet. Then shoot all the lefties who want society to raise children in a "village" instead of the parents doing it. Then shoot all the lefties who make a parents job harder then necessary. Sometimes a kid needs a good spanking. Oh and start hanging bad parents in public. The rest will quickly shape up.
It is damn near impossible from a government policy standpoint. You can penalize people who fail to be good parents. For example relentlessly enforcing truancy laws with serious fines for parents who do not force their children to get to school. But that is simply chopping at minor branches of the whole problem. For one thing society as a whole. From the churches to the schools to the media to popular entertainment needs to change radically. Deemphasize the importance of individualism and rights and promote the value of self sacrifice, deferred gratification, and taking responsibility. Emphasize that choices have life long consequences and encourage young people to take the long view of those choices. I think society, media, and the entertainment industry would have to go back to where they actually ostracized people in their industry who had (or fathered) children out of wedlock for example. Eliminate disgusting reality type shows that cater to the lowest common denominator of the viewing audience.
This debate always goes wrong when you confuse causes with excuses. Is poverty an excuse for bad parenting? No. Will we get a lot better parenting when we have a lot less poverty? Yes. If you disagree with the second point, choose any of the following couples of statements and tell me which one you disagree with. 1a. Addicts are more likely to be bad parents. 1b. A greater percentage of poor people are addicts. 2a. Untreated mental patients are more likely to be bad parents. 2b. A greater percentage of poor people go untreated when mentally ill. 3a. People without a home are likely to provide a worse childhood for their kids. 3b. Poor people are more likely to be homeless. 4a. Dead people can do less for their kids than alive people. 4b. Poor people die at younger ages.
Parenting skills are not equal to your level on the economic ladder. You could eliminate poverty and still have the same amount of bad parents as we would have with the current rates of poverty. Only leftists would would say bad parenting is primarily the result of poverty. Quite racist as well. Basically condemning the whole third world as bad parents.
Actually this isn't necessarily true. I seem to remember a study a few years ago about the effects of not having a father in the family has on the kids. The study found that if a father had been present in the family....and then the father died, the effects on the children were LESS severe than if the father simply left but was still very much alive. In other words, simply having the IDEA of a committed loving father (who was not there simply because he was unfortunate enough to die) was BETTER than having an actual living father who walked away from his family.
My question is this: Why are those on the left here (and elsewhere) so reluctant to admit that in the United States today we just have one hell of a lot of bad parents?
Yeah as for one minute I seriously entertained that you of all people would suddenly be willing to actual debate instead of your usual DD&B bullshit passive aggressive mental illness routine. I'd have a better chance of winning Russian Roulette with a semi-auto gun then that......
Surely it doesn't have anything to do with the United States' unique income inequality, unique lack of national health care, unique lack of law to protect workers' rights, or unique gun culture. "Bad parenting" in America exists ex nihilo, all possible contributing factors rationalized away in an orgy of right-wing righteousness.
Oh and if all you lefties want to claim that poverty is primarily responsible for bad parenting then the blame for that can fall on Obama. Almost six years and he's just making more and more poor people.....
LMAO!!!! Look at that bullshit!!!! Bad parenting is because of income inequality, lack of national health care, lack of laws protecting workers and GUNS!!!!!!!!!!! I'm a bad parent because I have guns!!!!! (I don't meet the other requirements) OMFG I so seriously hope you get AIDS and die in a fire Liet. And I hope hell is real because you need a good long burning........
Lower-income children, on average, do not do as well in school as higher-income children. This is a statistical fact. While Liet may have overstated the connection, Packard's post earlier was right on the money. Consider: Parents with good educations are likely to have higher incomes. They are also more likely to be able to provide academic support at home. Parents who work white-collar 9-to-5 jobs are, due to the finite number of hours in a day, more likely to be at home and accessible during the hours when kids are doing their homework than parents who work lower-paying blue-collar service sector jobs. Parents whose jobs don't leave them physically exhausted are more likely to be able to provide effective help for their kids. White-collar employees tend to have higher incomes; they also tend to have the flexibility in their schedules that makes it possible to get to parent-teacher conferences without risking their jobs. Parents who make enough money to own vehicles are more likely to be able to get to conferences and other school events than parents who must rely on public transportation or getting a ride from friends or relatives. Higher-income parents are more likely to be able to provide extracurricular enrichment activities. If a kid has learning difficulties and needs an IEP, parents with more education are more likely to know their rights, and thus their kids are more likely to get what they need. Kids who face economic insecurity at home -- particularly food or housing insecurity -- are less likely to be able to focus on their schoolwork because of the much more immediate problems in their lives. The list goes on. Of course it's not absolute. There are plenty of low-income parents who manage to provide everything their kids need for success, and plenty of high-income parents who fuck up. But on average, the correlation is unquestionable.
Blow your whole response right out your ass! 99 percent of the "poor" here in America are better off than most of the "Regular Joes" of yesteryear - yet they kept their families intact somehow. Maybe if everyone is poor nobody realizes they should give up hope. Not having money/good housing never twisted one arm to do drugs, spread your legs for/stick your dick in half the city, or rob a store. Those things sound like "character flaws" to me.
I didn't really say anything all that specific about the strength of the effect beyond the fact that it's really important. I mostly expressed my utter contempt and scorn for anyone stupid enough to think that you can discuss bad parenting results in America without focusing on poverty. Yes, there are other issues with regard to shortfalls in American child-rearing, but if you're not making poverty a priority then you're a grandstanding righteous douchenozzle who simply is not serious about the issue.
So if addiction is more prevalent in lower income brackets, you believe this is a complete coincidence? You believe that there is no causal reason why people who own stores are less likely to rob them? All just the draw of some lot?
Who is reluctant to admit this? Of course there are bad parents. And yes, that's difficult if not impossible to fix. But why conflate this with the other negative externalities that we can actually work on? It's easy to ensure that students aren't hungry, just as an example. We should do that.
If poverty makes for bad parenting then the 1930s (Great Depression) should've been hell on Earth for EVERY possible category relating to American families and culture as a whole and the 90s should've been paradise. Neither of those things are true so where does this "poverty makes for poor parents thing" come into play?
GUN CULTURE? Holy fucking god, where to begin? Nearly EVERY FUCKING PERSON I work with or personally know owns a gun or at least has in the past, or will in the future. EVERY FUCKING PERSON is a law abiding citizen/good parent. Please explain in a semi-rational manner why in the fuck the negative aspects of being swept up in the "gun culture" hasn't hit these families yet? Hmmm......maybe because the term gun culture is all hype and misinformation on the part of the anti-gun crowd? And if it's not too much trouble explain why being poor/hungry makes you commit armed robbery versus just breaking a window and just STEALING THE FUCKING FOOD without terrorizing someone!
