Originally Posted by smooth

except that schools are funded locally, so the school kids who are most likely to need a program like Head Start are the least likely to receive it if you leave it up to local funding.

likewise, if you see providing textbooks, pencil/paper, and adequate desks to schools as "throwing money at the situation" then the children who are most likely to be attending schools without them have no chance of obtaining them.

I don't understand how you lay that responsibility at the feet of either the children attending or the parents sending their kids to public schools. Does your version of rugged individualism include 10 year old students buying their own textbooks and standing in the back of class or else they aren't availing themselves of the opportunities given to them?

in towns like you described, populations around 3,000, schools don't have the funds to keep their doors open without outside money.
do you realize this is the current state of our public education system?

kids today do not have the same opportunities you did or I had growing up.
the economy has changed significantly. many small towns depended on factory labor, mills, assembly jobs, which are quickly evaporating. even among the parents who have the personal drive to work three jobs, there aren't three employers to hire them. even if it wasn't illegal to hire 10 year olds so they could pay for their own school supplies, how can they compete against adults who are currently seeking employment?

paper routes and mowing lawns is not going to earn enough for one $70 dollar textbook, let alone six of them. schools are not equipping their students with the bare essentials needed for basic learning, regardless of any poor choices they will make when they're teenagers.

many of these changes were happening when I was leaving high school, and I think I'm at least a few years younger than you. I don't understand how you can be aware of these issues and then argue it's primarily the kids' fault for their own failed education.


and here's the weird part to me: you're arguing that local funding should be the answer to this when the thread is about what happens when California (where I grew up and still reside) focuses its budget on prisons at the expense of education. so what exactly is your position? that eviscerating education funding at the state level to fund prisons is acceptable or stupid? I don't really care about your tax dollars, I want my state tax dollars to go toward education rather than prison, not the other way around.

Originally Posted by smooth

edit: and btw, you have a lot of nerve as a Texan to say anything to a Californian about the War on Drugs and abiding by the feds controlled substance regulations. We, along with Alaska, Colorado, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, and Oregon decriminalized marijuana possession since the 1970s. I can't remember if Nevada recently joined us, but last I heard Texas was still off the charts punitive for even minor possession charges...as in decades in prison. We have a large system of alternative sentencing for drug abusers, what do you guys have? I don't know of anything... Unless you haven't been attention to any news or political talk shows, I can't understand how you'd be unaware that California is under heavy national scrutiny for it's current stance against the government's war on drugs in regards to medical marijuana.

I think you need to tone your rhetoric down when you're talking to Californians about drug laws and sentencing.