<p>“I don’t care what your right wing message machine, historical revisionists think.”</p>
<p>Gee, I didn’t know that James Webb was part of the “right wing message machine”. I’ll bet he doesn’t know that either. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What would happen if I went back to college to get “smart” like you and I ended up with this professor:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m sure that people with closed minds will never “reopen the debate about the meaning of the Vietnam War.” But perhaps real historians may.</p>
<p>“Yes, you can mini. PM me the link if it’s not to much trouble, or just the web address is fine.”</p>
<p>Happy to oblige! Maybe we’ll start a movement. Something Dems and Reps and folks like me can agree on, and can act upon!</p>
<p>“How are we getting somewhere when 72 families in July welcomed home their loved ones in body bags?”</p>
<p>Could have said the same thing September 17, 1862 only the US Army lost 2,000 dead and 10,000 wounded that day in a war that would carry on for three more years. War is not a pretty thing and what did those men die for except somebody else’s freedom? Were they fools or heroes or both? It is always easy to know the cost and difficult to assay the value.</p>
<p>I can’t believe someone cited one of my history teachers.</p>
<p>I ask the question I asked before: What would winning look like? Why are these young people returning in body bags? To accomplish what exactly?</p>
<p>If Head Start does not succeed without parental follow-up, hey, let’s do that, let’s involve the community. I have no doubt that nursery school was quite advantageous for my children. I’d like to extend this benefit to others. </p>
<p>I won’t argue the success or failure of the program as it stands, nor would I discredit the research posted because I have not done the research. But I will unequivocally state my belief that involving youngsters in the learning process before kindergarten is beneficial. If these gains are short-lived let’s figure out how to make them permanent.</p>
<p>I spend my life working with kids who can’t write, and some, in a college classroom have never read a book. if kids are not read to at home than the pre-school classroom must substitute for this.</p>
<p>I was a Head Start teacher in West Virginia back in the early 70’s. If nothing else, those kids got fed breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack–some of them were very hungry on Monday mornings. Their parents came in for classes on nutrition and child development. The kids learned their letters and numbers and we taught them songs and read them books. I thought the outcome studies showed that more Head Start kids graduated HS. It seemed to be a very low cost program–I know I wasn’t paid much! </p>
<p>The war in Iraq was never about freedom. That’s how our government sells wars to get people to fight. This is what Cindy Sheehan is trying to say. She lost her dear son—for what?</p>
<p>^^I know that mindset very well. I was a VISTA volunteer back in the early '70’s. We taught child development and nutrition, and ran a fresh food cooperative. It made us all feel really good about ourselves, of course, because we cared. $55 a week was my “stipend.” Now I look back in shame that I, fresh out of college, had the hubris to tell 40 year old moms what they should be eating and feeding their kids. Of course, now we have the “fat police” patrolling our schools. Back when my son was in middle school, I received a note that his BMI was too high.</p>
<p>I guess I’m just too ignorant and naive to stop caring about people. I still find something to applaud in lower income parents trying to educate themselves and their kids. It felt more like a partnership to me. But I agree about the “fat police”. We surely don’t need to be creating more eating disorders.</p>
<p>Well, see, forgive me, but that’s really quite insulting. </p>
<p>It’s always the liberals’ way or the highway. Any different (read Republican) ideas are automatically dismissed as “not caring.”</p>
<p>Looking back, I think those “lower income parents” I “worked with” when I was 21, out of the goodness of their hearts, simply humored my good intentions. In fact, I’m sure of it. :)</p>
<p>What breaks my heart is the inner city parent who can’t get her kid out of the failing schools, because of our present system. In Philly, they’ve taken to holding prayer meetings each morning in the hope that that will keep their school kids safe. When Hillary gets the Philly schools straightened out, then we can talk universal pre-k.</p>
<p>HH, what would be your suggestion, for those inner city Philly parents, and their failing schools? If it is vouchers, please share how that would really be implemented for all those thousands and thousands of children, and their parents, many of whom have no transportation.</p>
<p>The candidates’ views on education:</p>
<p><a href=“http://pewforum.org/religion08/compare.php?Issue=Education[/url]”>http://pewforum.org/religion08/compare.php?Issue=Education</a></p>
<p>An excellent honest series of articles about the Milwaukee system:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=333144[/url]”>http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=333144</a></p>
<p>Opposition to at least trying vouchers boils down to two things, imo: 1) fear of giving parents control over what their children are taught and 2) fear of increasing religious influence.</p>
<p>I thought YOU were insulting ME, hh. Maybe you were being nice and I was too dense to figure it out. </p>
<p>I DO fear increasing religious influence, btw. A friend told me that the park rangers at the Grand Canyon can’t tell visitors how old the rocks are now. Scary stuff, imo.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If re-opening the debate means casting common sense and facts out the window, no, I am not for re-opening it. Critical thinking involves forming one’s own opinions, not granting that function by proxy to Senators or Vanderbilt Professors.</p>
<p>Case in point: last night I was talking to a friend who attended Kenneth Pollack’s small roundtable about Iraq at the Hoover Institution at Stanford held in support of going to Iraq before the Adminstration did. She confessed that she had believed him because he was a Democrat and worked at Brookings. That’s the kind of thinking we can do without. And it’s in line with what you are suggesting.</p>
<p>If it appeared that I was insulting you, I’m sorry, since I didn’t intend to.</p>
<p>I was defending against the idea that I don’t care about the plight of low-income kids because I’m a Republican.</p>
<p>I got disgusted with our district’s mo regarding both the curriculum and the pedagogy. I put my son in a parochial school. I can afford to pay the $6,000+ yearly tuition and fees on top of our school taxes. I can well imagine that many parents would like to do the same (in fact, I know they would), but they can’t afford to do so. Is that in their best interests and is that “fair?”</p>
<p>I am more than sure that many, many people disapprove of what my son is being taught in Catholic school, btw. ;)</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter to me what your child is taught in Catholic school, HH, and I wouldn’t dream of “disapproving”. Your child, your private school money.</p>
<p>Now, if what he were taught in Catholic school were being taught in public school I would do more than disapprove (since you aren’t sharing exactly what he is being taught, you are leaving this up to my imagination…but since I know your MO, I can guess ;)).</p>
<p>I think there is big reason to worry about religious influence in schools. My feeling is that if people want the instruction of an Islamic madras or Jewish day school/Yeshiva, or Catholic or Christian school, they are welcome to go to go there. </p>
<p>Charter schools, which were supposedly in response to the failing public schools are an abject failure. Those kids do even worse on state tests than the public school kids.</p>
<p>I certainly didn’t love paying a large private school tuition, on top of my large property taxes last year either. But I figure I wasn’t happy with the public school, so it was my choice to leave. Just as it was yours to leave your public school setting.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s terrific for us that we can get out for whatever reason (which for me includes my “MO” and for you includes your “MO”). What’s sad to me is that some people don’t have the school choice we are lucky to have.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The problem with that analogy is that the Civil War was fought by the North/Lincoln for the preservation of the Union (the “freedom” of slaves was a by-product - albeit an important one) - a clear stated goal from the start.</p>
<p>The original reasons for the Iraq War/invasion, otoh, was built on a “house of cards” rationale of “American security”.</p>
<p>As for the whole “freedom” thing - exactly whose freedom are we fighting for?</p>
<p>The Sunnis who hardly view a Shia dominated govt. as “freedom”?</p>
<p>The Shias in the South whose freedoms are increasingly limited by hard-line Sunni milititas?</p>
<p>The million and a half+ Iraqis who have fled the country are the most educated, moderate and secular citizens of Iraq - if anything, they have lost their “freedoms” - both in Iraq and in their new role as refugees.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you take a look at the piece I linked to: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_enriching[/url]”>http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_enriching</a></p>
<p>it discusses those studies in a great deal of depth. This would be a good starting point for anyone who really wants to understand the research. </p>
<p>The problem with the studies is they addressed only the question of whether the IQ benefit for Head Starters is maintained; not whether Head Starters have better school outcomes. IQ score is simply not the best measure of a program’s effectiveness.</p>
<p>And even then, the methodology was flawed. The studies omitted the special ed students (many of whom are in special ed because of their IQs). Since the non-Head Start population are more likely to be Special Ed, leaving them out skewed the results a lot, even on the narrow question of IQ. </p>
<p>Additionally, the studies treated all kids in the same grade as equals. Trouble is, the non-Head Starters tended to be older, since they’re more likely to be kept back a grade. So they’re really comparing children of different ages.</p>
<p>It’s pretty clear that Head Starters are less likely to be referred to Special Education, and that’s an advantage that benefits everyone in society (and persists well beyond fourth grade.)</p>
<hr>
<p>Back to the original topic, the authors of the op-ed seem to be backpedalling a lot. They admit that they talked to very few Iraqis and that they had no way of independently verifying the claims made to them by Army officials. </p>
<p><a href=“O’Hanlon, Pollack stop sticking to the president’s script - The Carpetbagger Report”>O’Hanlon, Pollack stop sticking to the president’s script - The Carpetbagger Report;
<p>At least one of them said that the security situation is better only by comparision to 2006, and that the political situation, which “trumps everything”, has not improved. He added that if the political situation continues to not improve, he would not be able to write such an optimistic piece in the future.</p>
<p>Mr. Gates himself is losing his optimism.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/washington/03military.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/washington/03military.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin</a></p>
<p>I think he just described the 4+ year campaign in Iraq in a nutshell: one administration misjudgement after another.</p>