<p>
</p>
<p>Were they forced to do this by the government or was it voluntary?</p>
<p>Lax I am an immigrant, think would you be abale to speak any other language that you started learning at age 40 and never gone to school because of lack of mpney then talk to me.</p>
<p>If you have no logic in debate and try to mock fun of my language skills, and try to be personal attacks - then you are just a book worm, whose grade school has failed him or her. What a waste of resources</p>
<p>Lax - my ideas does not make sense but how many ideas you have to solve problems and send poor kids to fight in Iraq</p>
<p>“It will be be far beneficial to educate the poor AFro Americans, poor whites and poor lations. If you tecah them, they will provide social secuirty, taxes in coffer and will take less money - thus way to capitalism.”</p>
<p>Our current public schools don’t prepare them for college by and large so giving free college to those that can’t use it is a little cruel. The schools need to be fixed.</p>
<p>“Why Warren Buffet and Bill gates are keeping only $100 milllion and giving rest to world education and other programs - are they stupid?”</p>
<p>1"Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.</p>
<p>2"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (NIV Matthew 6)</p>
<p>BC:</p>
<p>Thanks for not attacking my communication skills</p>
<p>Yes that is where money in grade and junior high school needs to be spent and hire qualified tecahers without union shoving your throat. In addiiton, parental respobibilty can not be over looked. Parents are need to to be told that if they do not respect education, there future generation will be having limited upward mobility.</p>
<p>If you read the most conservative economist, Milton Freidman who I admire for his emphasis on education - but we have failed as a nation on good educational policy. THis no chilld left behind policy is garbage. US need to try to improve educational standard otherwise we may not be able to compete with the rest of the world. Imagine a poor AA inner city suddenly find himself empowered with education and he is the one innovating new technologies and making a breakthrough in fundamental science or nano technology.</p>
<p>BC Being a non christian person, I am not sure about Bible - but I think religion is a private thing.</p>
<p>“BC Being a non christian person, I am not sure about Bible - but I think religion is a private thing.”</p>
<p>The words are fairly plain. People that donate large amounts of money typically get their names in the news, buildings named after them and foundations named after them. So they get a reward, even after they are dead. If one wanted to give altruistically, they could donate anonymously which many do.</p>
<p>If you look a poor inner city minority kid, you have same intellegence like any other human being. Unfortunaely TV, not emphasis on education, lakc of morality, parents not having foresight to sacrifice themselves for the kids betterment, hopelessness and many more factors contribute to loss of human capital and thus deprive USA its economic might that may come from these kids and taxes and less demand for future services and problems associated with crime. This prevention by educating them early on is way too chepaer than a cure at later stages in life.</p>
<p>BC:</p>
<p>people who donate are at least way better than one who pretend to be good citizens and do nothing to solve problems. Imagine the people who have donated for education at least have helped one less person to waste the kids intellegent mind.</p>
<p>On other hand most of the people who just criticze any idea are impediment in the progress of human kind. They want no chnage for being feraful of loosing their imporatnce or money or whatever drives them</p>
<p>aapride: Warren Buffet and Bill Gates donated a huge amount of money. I admire them more than I can ever say for doing so. However, that does not necessarily mean that taxing the rich to force the equivalent amount of redistribution is a good idea. For example, it is well known that the effect on marginal income of high taxation results in significantly less productivity in the upper brackets, and resulting losses of economic activity, causing society to be worse off as a whole.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that every policy has a cost, and your posts smack of not at all considering the costs, but merely the benefits.</p>
<p>aapride, I admire your ability to learn a second langauge at a later age, and your courage to come here to openly voice your opinion, even when you know your language skills are slightly less than many of the other posters here, something that can be taken by someone against your opinion as a sign of a weak arguement. I commend you on both accounts.</p>
<p>But I think I can understand some of the other posters points when they say that the answer does not lie only in throwing more money at the problem. This has been our answer for two generations now (to continually increase education spending), and the results have been less than stellar. In fact, education levels have DROPPED in the lower economic percentiles, and the ever decreasing numbers of AA males entering our colleges is close to becoming a national tragedy.</p>
<p>You ask for us to post other possible solutions. Well, I think we do need to increase education budgets, especially in our lower income areas, but it needs to be done smarter than we do now. One possible solution: increase the time our children are spending in school, either through longer school days or increasing the number of days the kids are actually in school (I mean, most districts still use the traditional fall to spring schedule, giving summers off. A neccesary time table when this country was mostly agricultural, and kids needed to be home during the summer to help plant and harvest the crops. Not so much now). The problem with that solution is that it is opposed, sharply, by the teachers’ unions, who don’t want to add any more hours to the current schedule. Another possible solution, mandatory pre-school for all children starting at the age of 4. Let’s get our kids started on the road to success earlier. As to No Child Left Behind, a noble cause to ensure standard levels of learning are met by certain age groups, but without the appropriate amount of funding it fails to meet it’s noble goals.</p>
<p>One other issue that MUST be addressed is the cultural aspect of the AA community where academic achievement is placed on a lower priority to define success. Rap stars and atheletes are the heroes, while the educated and successful businessman emphasizing education to his children is seen as “selling out”. IMO, the leaders of the AA community have failed in their responsibility miserably through their lack of making a top priority a community wide change in attitude and emphasis on education. </p>
<p>I’m all for throwing more money at the problem, if done differently than what obviously hasn’t been working. We have just realized that after too many failures in this strategy, increasing funding alone hasn’t been the answer.</p>
<p>BULLET:</p>
<p>read my post #48, I do agree that throwing money is not the solution as AA has many other probelsm. Policymakers needs to use a comprehensive policy and not money alone will solve problems. I know now at least more than 15 students who attend HYP on full aids and these are inner city kids, but their parents have made scarifices and have told the kids that education is a way out of despair and hopelessness. Some of them have done very well in life. Bookish knowledge is not going to solve probles, but thinking will solve many probelms. AA kids have same brain as many white or asians, they just need resources and need to be told that there is a hope in America.</p>
<p>Obama 08</p>
<p>I am glad you see that this needs a broader solution than just adding to the education spending levels. Perhaps you can see everyone else’s concerns now over your original 5 solutions, which all deal with just addig to taxes to increase funding, without a mention of other possible solutions. </p>
<p>And yes, there are hard working families who sacrifice to give their children a better opportunity at success through education. I applaud them all. Sadly, it seems this is the exception instead of the rule in popular culture.</p>
<p>“people who donate are at least way better than one who pretend to be good citizens and do nothing to solve problems. Imagine the people who have donated for education at least have helped one less person to waste the kids intellegent mind.”</p>
<p>You asked why they donate. I was merely answering that particular question.</p>
<p>“You ask for us to post other possible solutions. Well, I think we do
need to increase education budgets, especially in our lower income
areas, but it needs to be done smarter than we do now.”</p>
<p>One thing that eats up higher education budgets in inner city with
lower incomes is that higher salaries for teachers and administrative
staff are need to attract them.</p>
<p>“One possible solution: increase the time our children are spending in
school, either through longer school days or increasing the number of
days the kids are actually in school (I mean, most districts still use
the traditional fall to spring schedule, giving summers off. A
neccesary time table when this country was mostly agricultural, and
kids needed to be home during the summer to help plant and harvest the
crops. Not so much now). The problem with that solution is that it is
opposed, sharply, by the teachers’ unions, who don’t want to add any
more hours to the current schedule.”</p>
<p>There are many parents, students and legislators that oppose this
too. My state recently passed legislation to move the mandatory
schooling age to 18 from 16. Many students want to work or are so
frustrated with school that they want to leave, with their parents’
support. Putting kids in school that don’t want to be there results in
their disruptive behaviour to other students that want to learn.</p>
<p>The US still churns out a decent number of kids that are very
creative. Is that related to the long summers that they get off to
kick back and do nothing or to engage in free play time for creative
activities? Of course this time can be wasted by spending the whole
day watching the television but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be
used to good advantage by some.</p>
<p>“Another possible solution, mandatory pre-school for all children
starting at the age of 4. Let’s get our kids started on the road to
success earlier. As to No Child Left Behind, a noble cause to ensure
standard levels of learning are met by certain age groups, but without
the appropriate amount of funding it fails to meet it’s noble goals.”</p>
<p>The unschooling approach is to essentially let the child lead the way
while providing resources for them to learn what they want to learn.
It has produced some remarkable results but typically from parents
that are highly educated.</p>
<p>In the old days, there was a PBS commercial with a bunch of circles
that moved on an assembly line towards a machine that turned them into
squares. One of the circles wouldn’t become a square so it dropped out
of the machine into the reject chute. Perhaps children are unique and
have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. The approach of
pushing them through academic standards can be stressful and harmful
and may not even lead to good results.</p>
<p>The MCAS tests are supposed to be on the order of the most rigorous in
the country. But I’ve seen high school graduates from MA that I
wouldn’t call college material. How did they pass the MCAS? Well
schools have a metric for kids to pass MCAS so that’s what many will
focus on. Which is more important? Getting a good MCAS score or
learning the material?</p>
<p>“I’m all for throwing more money at the problem, if done differently
than what obviously hasn’t been working. We have just realized that
after too many failures in this strategy, increasing funding alone
hasn’t been the answer.”</p>
<p>The experiments with huge redistribution of school aid in New Jersey
decades ago show that money alone does not work. You need a lot of
money to compensate for families where a parent does not have to be in
the workforce. That parent can volunteer in the school, or in
after-school activities; can provide transportation for kids, can
teach their kids, take them to medical appointments, etc.</p>
<p>What I think is needed is to educate parents first so that they can
educate their kids and take a decent chunk of the burden off of the
school system. Hopefully that would fix any attitude problems too. If
the parent is educated, then they can spot problems that their child
is having in school earlier and can work to remedy the problem, either
at home or with the school.</p>
<p>Nothing will change much. That is my prediction no matter who wins.</p>