I dunno? When I was 19-20 and we used to steal food, it was usually night time garden raids for a couple tomatoes or something to keep the perma-stew going. Maybe a can or three of something from 7-11... If we got caught, we ran It was lame enough to be thieving from gardens or swiping ramen packs, but it would've been unforgivable to clean someone out or injure them over food.
Is there really an American "culture"? Should we all be painted with the same broad brush? For one, America is a melting pot with too many cultural varients to say there is definite "culture."
I ask again, do you think it is a roll of some dice that decides whether someone is a good parent? (Btw, I'd go on record saying that most US childhoods in the 1990s were probably a lot better than most of those in the 1930s. But neither means a lot of this argument.)
I think the main function of government in this area is to adopt/implement policies designed to equalize opportunities. Most of the other shit (like throwing money at pet causes) is power play and strait up politics, not even genuinely believed by the proponents to help the purported cause. But by far the largest impact on the next generation's capacity to succeed is not economic circumstances at home (except in the extreme cases) but the values, and things like worth ethic learned at home from ages 5-15. Dayton Hitchens is a scum-sucking piglet.
Getting back to the OP, I'm wondering what practical solutions, if any, the author would offer to solve this. “Throw out the Common Core” and –? Replace it with something, and if so, what? Or abandon current structures entirely and turn every public school into a Montessori school? More to the point, if there’s to be a nationwide standard, how do you herd the cats vis-à-vis setting an overarching policy for every school district in the country? The author seems to be suggesting – rightly so – that learning difficulties begin well before the kid starts school, but her suggestion seems to be "fix it," without any parameters for how. Aenea, can you give us an idea of what sort of feedback you’re getting to this on FB?
Agreed. So how do you inculcate a work ethic? I’d see it as only part of a need for comprehensive training in How to Be a Parent. When you leave the most important job in the world to amateurs with no training and no past experience, the outcome’s going to be sketchy at best. Add to that the Calvinist mindset that “some people are just born lazy/evil” and “spanking makes a bad parent into a good parent” and the kid is boxed in from the get-go regardless of income status. That doesn’t even address pre- and post-natal conditions that weigh against optimal physical and mental development, and the largely unrecognized fact that the predominance of learning occurs before age three, and parking the kid in front of the morning talk shows is not going to help him become a Rhodes scholar. So how do we fix it? Or is this one of those "not my kid, not my problem" situations?
On the contrary, I do recognize that the predominance of learning occurs before age three. If you dispute that as fact, refute it.
You don't. Why? Because you can't. You can have every educational session on how to be a good parent. You can fine parents for the truancy of their kids. In the end though, you cannot force bad parents to become good ones. Again, parenting and the bank account have no correlation. I've known parents living in a shack in a swamp in Mississippi who raised children who were outstanding citizens and gave to their community and got good graders. I've known parents in south Tampa with more money than brains who raised moron shit bags. It all comes down to the parents and what they are willing to do for their children. Selfish parents, regardless of income, who see kids as a burden will produce another generation of them. Parents who realize their job is to raise children to surpass them, that will take pride one day that their children will be better than them, those are the ones who do the job right. Parents who sacrifice for their children are doing it right. Living in a shit hole, then your job is to bust your ass to get out of there so the kids can grow up in a better environment. Barring that then work to make your community safer / better. Parents set the example. Kids learn from them and eventually emulate them. Be a good standard, hold your children to those standards, and you have a given them the base tool and therefore a high probability of them being a success. I say high probability because there are other factors outside the control of the parent and some kids in the end are just bad seed
Okay, Miss Cleo. I'm not posting this for you, because you'll dismiss whatever sources I provide, so this is for anyone who's actually interested: There are thousands more, but go ahead and dismiss that one and wonder why your disdain is so often reflected back at you.
If you want to go to the Bible for some examples look at the Old Testament and the Kings of Israel. There were good kings that had sons who were good. There were good kings that had sons who were bad. There were bad kings that had sons who were good. There were bad kings that had sons who were bad. In my own community, I have seen people with nightmarish family situations in all respects turn out to be fine parents. I've seen those with the most stable and normal background possible turn out to be nightmarish parents. In my opinion Each person has negative and positive parenting traits and which one comes out can be the ones that society and culture tends to reinforce. Personally, I think our current culture with an emphasis on instant gratification and a snarky dismissal of responsibility, noble self sacrifice and self denial reinforces some of the most negative parental traits.
Man you and this Miss Clio kick you're on. What, you hate historical fact and observation so you try to dodge it this way?
No. You’re the one on the Miss Cleo kick, foreseeing the future in post after post. The post you quoted was based on a decade-long observation of Dayton’s posting history. Something the goldfish in this forum constantly forget, because so many of you fall for his nonsense. Now tell me I’ve misread Dayton’s intentions.
You seem rather fixated on statements against interest. This is a narrowly defined legal term that has few if any applications outside of a court proceeding. A statement does not have to be against interest in order to be true.
In my opinion, the credibility of a statement against interest is immensely more credible that one made in advancement of previous existing interests.
Garamet - are you telling me that it's a common situation in America for parents to not be able to get enough nutritional food for their kids that it physically slows their brain development? Color me skeptical. We have had numerous threads on WF about people CHOOSING to eat (or to feed their kids) sweet/fattening/just plain bad for you food because it was convenient versus traveling to an actual grocery store and preparing meals at home. And it was proven that you could feed a whole family on beans and rice cheaper than stuffing their faces with snacks and other high calorie/low nutrition foods. Since you are obviously reaching, grab some fruit out on that limb and give it to the Hostess Fruit Pie eaters.
You believe you are superior. In my opinion you are immensely inferior, my statement is more credible than yours.
The credibility of a statement depends on many factors. Simple noting that it is in a person's interest to make a statement in no way renders that statement devoid of credibility. The art of persuasion in large part consists of making true statements in one's own interest. One would tend to lose credibility for making false or misleading statements in one's own interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_against_interest http://federalevidence.com/node/290 Even in a court of law, statements against interest refers only to the admissibility of certain kinds of testimony and has no bearing on credibility.
Incorrect. Your opinion has no credibility because it simply serves to further and advance your dickheadedness. My belief in my own superiority has no personal bearing on you or anyone else here.
http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/Malnutrition.aspx http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/famil...ys LSU AgCenter Food and Nutrition Expert.htm
Be careful what you wish for! she thought, undulating carefully to fit the full length of her pale, streamlined body between the sharp shapes of rocks in the cool waters in the dark. If she was blind, how did she know about the rocks? How did she know it was dark? It feels dark, she decided. What else she felt was that the water was the same as her internal temperature, or perhaps the other way around. In the event, comfortable enough not to have to think about. She also knew what she looked like, could see herself, as she said, in her mind’s eye, a ghost-pale, slender form perhaps ten inches long, suggesting snake or fish or merely a very large worm, but nothing so mundane. The palest albino pink, given color only by the blood beneath the skin, she was pallid to the point of luminescence, her face all but featureless, save for the nareless, spatulate snout, the prenatal eyes atrophied to two small protuberances beneath the skin. Eerie, unfinished, a suggestion of a face, prototype awaiting the artist’s hand to provide eyes, nostrils, something other than the trapdoor of a mouth, as if it were less a face than in fact a mask, a shield to be pulled aside, revealing the real face, winsome, blink-eyed and smiling, underneath. “Dragon’s young” some had called them, others “human fish.” At first glance, a mutation, a mistake. On second thought, a marvel. Vestigial lungs, seldom used. Instead, gills, bright red with suffused blood, fluttering feathery behind where ears might be, small puffs of feather boa or tiny earmuffs where a neck that was not so much neck as just a continuation of the spine attached the domed head to the body. Lungs, gills, and a third option, the ability, like an earthworm, to breathe through the skin. What extraordinary planetary circumstances had bereft these beings of vision, but given them three ways to breathe? Were there more, she wondered, or was she the only one?
Already did. Gerald Jonas was quite taken with it. The answers are in the articles I posted for oldfella that you're either too lazy or too ignorant to read. Do you really not know the difference between poetry and prose? Oh, I bet you could!
