Socialism... the dumbing down of the American student.

Capitalism does not try and fix poverty. Capitalism believes it's your job to fix your poverty. It's not a system to fix failures. It's a system that allows you to fix your problems. You have to find something to do that has value to other people. You to learn a skill, learn something of value that you can sell. Capitalism isn't a helping hand to go around fixing your problems. Socialism, is the slavery. Socialism is government says you can only do this, and this is all you can do. Socialism, is you work this job, and this is how much you get paid, and you have no choice in the matter. What's wrong with the American educational system is that parents do not get involved into their children's education and expect government to raise and educate their young ones. Well yes.... and no. If your kid is stuck in a bad school, there is nothing you can do about it. The government tells you where your kid must go to school. Like I said before, socialism is government telling you what you can do, and what you can't do. Parents have no ability to change where their kid goes, what subjects he learns, what teachers he has. Our school system has teachers that teach nothing. Some teachers just put a video on, for kids to watch. And that's it. That's all they do. But you have no control over what kind of teacher your child has. No control. What's that? Slavery. And we have to pay for these bad schools no matter what.

My son's sixth grade science teacher makes $95,000 per year. I met him, he looks like he is still in middle school. He's very nice and he was receptive and helpful to me as a parent in conference, but that isn't the most important thing in determining salary. My guess is he has more education than the other science teachers. More education that he'll never use in a sixth grade classroom. He's going to teach them about ecosystems and why recycling is going to save the planet. When I was younger, teachers were older. Now, I defy you to find an old teacher. They are all spry twenty-somethings out to save the world one child at a time. They all want to be the kids' friend. No one learns anything, they just have fun. My son has one teacher he says "yells at him". She yells at other kids, too, mostly when they don't do their work or don't pay attention. Funny thing, this is the class where he has the highest grade average and the teacher says he is a "good worker". Other, nicer teachers give comments like "inconsistent effort" and he has lower grades. I know he doesn't get smarter when he walks in her class. What he gets is discipline and an education. I wish people would realize that kids work harder when they are pushed to work harder but if you throw a party every day, they will party rather than learn. They may end up uneducated, but they're not stupid. Higher salaries don't make teachers better. If there's a party they will party instead of work hard, too. They aren't stupid, either.

LOL Did you read about the guy who made his son stand on the street corner? Maybe you were the one who posted that. But this guy's son came home with lousy grades, and he got tired of grounding him (which my father would have done more than that anyway. Grounding? Really?), but he said you can either be grounded for another 2 weeks, or you can wear a sign on the street corner in the middle of town. The son choose street corner. The sign read something to the effect of "I don't work hard in school, so I'll end up impoverished". Or homeless or something. After 2 hours on the street corner, he started doing his homework, his grades improved. Does anyone remember the Asian lady that wrote are newspaper column saying that the reason Asians do better than white Americans is because they simply force their kids to work hard? She was attacked from all sides for saying that, and yet.... it's true! Asians kick their kids butts, if they don't work hard. They don't have a choice. You sit at the piano and you play boy, you play till you have it done right. Hello?! Motivation.... (gasp) works! :) Seems so obvious doesn't it?

We put a lot of emphasis on kids being in sports and it really does not do anything to promote lifelong fitness.Or collaboration, or independent thinking, or honesty. It also still creates a "let it slide" attitude when the star athlete is not achieving well. It presents a venue where trusted adults can molest children, or get their jollies by ogling them. My kids had problems in school because they were actually smarter/more intelligent than their teachers. . . I had teachers tell me this, things like "your kid should be teaching my class" and "I thought it was all going over his head but he has a 107 GPA" although I will also say that grades do not really represent learning. Just how well does this student take a test. How well can this student regurgitate what they have been given. Sorry, I am on a soap box. My daughter wants to homeschool and her husband will not let her. Kindergarteners have no business going to magnet schools for the arts or sciences, they need both.

Socialism: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods Government ownership or control, administration of a means of production and distribution. Government owns and controls and administers K-12 education in America today. For some reason people, there is this strange idea that socialism, is a plaque you put on the top of the door, or some title you pass in congress that says "We are now socialist!" That's not right at all. You are not what you say you are. You are not a vegetarian because you said "I am a vegetarian" while you were chopping down some spicy chicken. You are a vegetarian if you don't eat meat. Similarly, we are not capitalist because people say we're capitalist. We are capitalist if we allow free-market capitalism, to direct the economy. In some areas, we are capitalist. For example, food. We pay less for food, and have more food available to us, than almost any other country in the world. In some areas, we are partly socialist and partly capitalist. 50% of health care is controlled by the government. In some areas, we are completely socialist. K through 12 education is completely controlled by the government. There is socialism in the US. And has been since the 1930s at least.

Ey. Whether or not "socialism" plays a role in public schools, Wiki is the worst possible source to use to define it. That page has changed about 12 times in 4 years. People can throw out their own guesses as to why it has. But take a SS of it today. Check it in a couple months.

If I use Wiki to source anything I write about, my editor has a fit. There have been more complaints about the accuracy of Wiki over anything else I've ever used.

Actually wiki is remarkably accurate, and you can check the changes. Not a big deal. I'm an editor on wiki. Regardless, "social ownership of the means of production" is accurate. Social means government. What other version of social control, doesn't include government? Government owns the schools, and education is a product or service, or both. It is in fact a socialized system, like any other. if your schools are failing you need to seriously ask yourselves why, one possible reason may be an culture of anti-intellectualism, that is much rarer in countries like sweden and switzerland. I don't know what anti-intellectualism means, or refers to. Because I know tons of intelligent people on all sides of the ideological spectrum. The reason for failing schools has to do with three very simple reasons. First and most obvious is that we have bought into the idea that people have to 'feel good' about themselves, and that it's more important to have self-esteem than actually know anything. Second is because of teacher unions, and third is about making the public happy. Both of which are tied to government run systems. Government is more interested in making all the voters happy, than making the voters educated. Hard subjects with tough teachers make for good education. But they also make for lower grades, and unhappy teacher unions. Lower grades because some students simply won't do the work. That makes the school look bad, which makes parents unhappy. Unhappy parents, unhappy voters, and politicians lose. It's easier to dumb down the system so the lazy students pass, and everyone is happy. Unhappy teacher unions because bad teachers would have to be removed. Unions protect their union dues paying teachers. So they call strikes, which again makes everyone unhappy. Its much easier to just let the bad teachers stay, and everyone is happy, and the politicians keep their jobs. Watch the movie Lean on Me 1989, about principal Joe Clark. Although obviously a dramatic retelling of the story, the basic concepts are completely right. Joe Clark cleaned out the bad students, and cleaned out some of the bad teachers, and everyone was pissed off about it. But he turned around a failing school. Another book to read is Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell, where he details the destruction of good schools by government. just blaming socialism is not intellectually sound, as you only have to read a victorian novel to learn about the horrors of the sorts of school provided by the private sector. The problem with such one-sided accounts is that only bad schools are reported. It's the same with any media, in that the new caster will never come on saying "nothing bad happened today, some women planted a flower bed, and there were some puppies at the park". Inherently, bad news is repeated. Yes there were bad private schools. But how many good ones were there? On the other hand, in America today, the private schools routinely smash public schools on everything but sports. Think about that alone. The private schools are losing horribly in sports, but not academics. Somethings wrong with the priorities. your analysis is also not intellectually sound, as you ignore the fact that there are countries that educate children successfully where education is provided by the state, and in blaming the failure to educate your children properly on socialism you are just turning to a convenient scapegoat that fits in with your political prejudices, and solves nothing. That's possible. I do believe that in a more homogenous society, and in a smaller society where the government is closer to the people, the results are inherently better. The state institutions of Sweden for example, are more likely to have better results, not JUST because they have a more open, more free-market system, but also because they have a very tiny population of minorities relative to the number of born and bred swedes, and have only 9.5 Million people instead of 307 Million, and cover 173 thousand sq miles, verses 9.8 Million sq miles. It makes sense, and is undeniably true that the Swedish governmental system is better than the American governmental system. Our system is more comparable to the Russian Federation, and we all know how efficient and effective their government is. To my point. Maybe you might convince me that socialized education does work *better* in some areas of the world. Perhaps. But nevertheless, in our system it is in fact socialized education that is the problem here in the US. There's just no rational way for me to conclude otherwise.

It's actually quite interesting. In 1990 (or near there) there was a massive public school reform. This reform allowed absolutely anyone to open a school. A group of mothers could open a school. A company could open a school. A union or social group could open a school. A religious organization could open a school. Anyone anywhere could open a school. You could either operate on a for profit basis, or you could get vouchers from the state per student. Equally, all students have unlimited choice in school, but you as the parent had to get them there. None of this bussing across the planet at tax payer expense. If a school lost too many students, the school would close. Even the publicly run schools. As a result there is tons of competition. You don't keep incompetent teachers, because you could lose students, and if you lost too many, your school was closed. Better to lose one failing teacher, than your whole school. Very different from the "we keep everyone, and screw the tax payer" system we have in the US.

On the subject of the young man from Mexico, chances are he was in California public schools. A million years ago when I was in school, in a state that is not noted for being high in education, I would get so frustrated with the kids that transferred in from California, and told me to my face that they were smarter and better educated than I was and they were still a year behind, and dumber than rocks. I often tutored as a young to middle teen, students in their shoes. I still consider the state where I grew up not to be well educated and not to teach well, but my experience was that California was worse. I was in San Diego as a young married and had a lot of non school contact with teens, and it was the same. I worked in early education for a number of years here in Kansas and my director once asked me "If Oklahoma (where I grew up) was so poor in education, how did you become so intelligent?" I told her I did so in spite of the schools. It comes down to my really strange parents who were interested in lots of things and never stopped learning themselves. They did what they could to make sure I could pass the tests, they also made sure I ate meals and slept at night. Parents have to be involved in their kids lives, and in their education. They do not have to take the party line, however. My folks let me quit school with all my credits a semester before I graduated. I got a job then, and went to college the next fall. They did not pay for it, I went on my own savings and my own merit. My brother finished a whole year early. By the time my little sister came along they had filled the loopholes that allowed that. So she went to vo tech half the day and school half the day.