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Originally posted by TristanBW9456
Everything directed at we children brainwashes us, the school system, the media, pop culture, and eachother. I write this literally with tears in my eyes, because I can see how Even I have been marred by it, we get kicks out of bullying eachother, we judge eachother solely on whether we have had an intimate (not neccesarily with any meaning) relationship with one of the opposite sex, we have become monsters, feeding off of eachother, even when one of us rises above, he/she is quickly dragged right back down into the septic tank which is the bulk of our youth, most dont even know what the word morals means anymore much less have them, even then it would be near impossible to enforce them upon oneself...
Wow I get really charismatic when I'm depressed... I dont know whether to cry or laugh... hell why not laugh so hard that I cry but I'm kinda sad to do that meh...
How public education cripples our kids, and why
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The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover that all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, I had more than enough reason to think of our schools - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.
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Cafferty on All the children left behind
CAFFERTY: Remember "No Child Left Behind"? Well, according to a new study, we're leaving behind 7,000 children every school day in this country. The 1.2 million students, who should be graduating high school this spring most likely won't be. Translation, 7,000 kids a day in the United States are leaving school. That's according to an alarming study sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the state of education in this country. Last year Bill Gates called American high schools obsolete. Based on these numbers, he might have been on to something.
The big cities are the worst; 14 urban districts places like Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Cleveland, Dallas, Milwaukee. They have an on-time graduation right of less than 50 percent. In New York City the on-time graduation rate is just 38.9 percent. In Baltimore, Maryland, it's 38.5 percent. And in Detroit, Michigan the on-time graduation rate of high school students, 21.7 percent. That's disgraceful.
The nation's overall graduation rate is about 70 percent, so the question is this -- what does it mean when 7,000 students are dropping out of school every day?
BLITZER: Jack, did I understand you right, that in Detroit only 1 in 5 students in high school actually graduates?
CAFFERTY: On time.
BLITZER: That's pretty shocking.
CAFFERTY: It's disgusting.
Video Link
Children arrested, DNA tested, interrogated and locked up... for playing in a tree
To the 12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den, the cherry tree seemed an inviting source of material.
But the afternoon adventure turned into a frightening ordeal for Sam Cannon, Amy Higgins and Katy Smith after they climbed into the 20ft tree - then found themselves hauled into a police station and locked in cells for up to two hours.
Their shoes were removed and mugshots, DNA samples and mouth swabs were taken.
Officers told the children they had been seen damaging the tree which is in a wooded area of public land near their homes.
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www.wsbtv.com...
A mother accused of cutting off part of her son's tongue with hot scissors avoided a 5-year prison sentence and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
But before going on probation, Samantha J. Davis, 33, will serve 60 to 180 days in a detention center.
Judge Wade Crumbley also told Davis to complete a 26-week parenting class, a nonviolence class and have only supervised visits with her son.
Seeking straight A's, parents push for pills
A 15-year-old girl and her parents recently came in for a chat with Dr. James Perrin, a Boston pediatrician, because they were concerned about the girl's grades. Previously an A student, she was slipping to B's, and the family was convinced attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was at fault — and that a prescription for Ritalin would boost her brainpower.
After examining the girl, Perrin determined she didn't have ADHD. The parents, who had come in demanding a prescription, left empty-handed.
Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other physicians say this is an increasingly common scenario in doctors' offices around the country, though there are no hard statistics on it.
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Defender Opposes Shackling Kids in Court
The public defender's office is trying to convince local judges and the Florida Bar that forcing child suspects to appear in court in handcuffs and leg shackles is inhumane and should be banned.
"One would never expect that in 2006 we would see daily reminders of when human beings were kept in bondage," said Miami-Dade County Public Defender Bennett H. Brummer.
Brummer's office filed a series of motions Monday with Juvenile Court judges seeking an end to the practice and on Thursday will seek support from the Florida Bar for a statewide prohibition.
At least one judge agreed. "I have always said (juveniles) should not be chained in my courtroom," Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Johnson said.
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Originally posted by loam
Another interesting article:
Defender Opposes Shackling Kids in Court