Ok, Walker. I'm Charlie, you're Lucy, and I'm going to go into this one more time, believing you will consider everything I say, and not just revert to sarcasm, off-handed dismissals, and an over-reliance on the political philosophy of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Don't get me wrong, I greatly admire their attacks on liberalism, Saddam, and Satan. But let's try to be serious, I mean Serial!
1)We do all care about the environment. Agreed. I will agree to not force everyone into driving a Prius and destroying the national economy (while we give China a blank check to pollute the earth as much as they want.) You, in return, admit there MAY be a global problem, and SOMETHING may need to be done. Then we get down to the hard work of figuring out what kind of threat exists, and how quickly we have to change course, if at all.
2) Nafta is another issue which is incredibly complex. Let's agree that some basic regulations are necessary, because we don't want 6 year olds in Chinese sweat shops making lead-covered toys for our six year olds, who will break those toys in about 3 days, which is good for China, because then we can buy more 3-day-lead-toy-landfill, which we will have of course financed through the bonds that China bought! See how complicated it is? But just agree that there are problems that need to be solved, and then we can get to solving them.
3) Look at Obama's record on education before you start making blanket accusations about him being "beholden to the Teacher's Unions ....they are unable to deal seriously with failing schools."
The teacher's unions are not totally down with Barack. After you check out his record, we can discuss not putting more money into education. As a former teacher, I'd like to respectfully disagree.
2 comments:
Makers Mark,
Wouldn't you rather of had a bigger salary as a teacher instead of funding free lunches/breakfasts year round for HISD kids?
My wife, Mrs. Famoso, worked at an inner city Elementary school in HISD. Her kids were REQUIRED to apply for free meals. Every single one of them. They were REQUIRED. It wasn't offered on a true needs basis.
After the school year, letters were sent out announcing that free meals would be served throughout the summer..EVEN FOR KIDS NOT IN SUMMER SCHOOL. In other words, drop your kids off at lunchtime and we (the taxpayers) will feed them so that you don't have to!
How much does THAT cost??? How about giving assistance only to families that actually need assistance and taking that $ and giving teachers raises?
In addition to that blatant waste...my wife was FORCED to accept a lap top computer from the district that she never once turned used. It sat in a closet in our house for two years. She had a computer at work as well.
The problems with education won't be helped with more money. They will be helped by properly appropriating the money that is already there.
Pay teachers more and offer incentives to professionals in the private sector to teach. Empower teachers in the classroom. Allow teachers to discipline kids instead of putting the fear of God into them by threatening law suits if a child gets their feelings hurt.
Stop wasting time with Political Correctness crap. Do you have any idea how much time my wife had to spend in seminars paid for by HISD that had literally nothing to do with teaching kids how to read???
Get rid of bad teachers. (Which means giving a collective "F*$& You!" to the teachers unions). There were teachers at my wife's school who were TERRIBLE! They would pop in a video and pass out a worksheet every stinking day. Their kids did horribly on standardized tests and hated coming to school. I can't blame them. But those teachers couldn't be fired. They instead collected their $50K/year for sitting on their collective asses all day. Let’s fire them and pay good teachers more.
I can go on and on....
The US spends over $11K per student per year, tied with Switzerland for the highest per student spending average in the world. How is it, then, that students in Russia, Thailand, Croatia, etc. all test way, way, way better thn in the US when they spend a third per student than we do???!!!!!
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