President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

As my son approaches kindergarten, I’ve taken his education on as something that must be managed à la carte, marrying public education with outside resources and experiences from us as parents. I don’t know how someone with less education, a single parent or parents with less access to technology or social connections would ever be able to do that at this point. I had parents who were C high school students who realized I needed to have access to a good library, take trips to museums and historical sites, to go to camps during the summer, to look at people who knew more than us with some sort of regard, inspiration and not disdain.

It is okay to question our culture’s views of education AND believe more funding is part of the answer. Some things can be papered over with money, like making sure every kid has a full stomach to learn and a building warm or cool enough to concentrate, and there are some things we can’t fix by doing anything other than changing.

I married into a family who all teaches. My wife and I sit there and nod our heads at half of what they complain about and the other half wonder if these people have ever existed in the real world, how they’d ever survive out in the real jungle outside the glass walls. I feel like Charles Swann sitting at the table seeing both sides of the divide worry more about their status and cultural beliefs than the basic issue of learning.

We’ve witnessed every single damn thing in this country be turned into a dichotomy. Money will provide results in every school district. Show me the rich school district that is a complete failure. It comes down to that paternal, tribal instinct: “Can we trust those people with our money?”

At this point I’d rather they just come out and say it, say what they mean out loud rather than couch it in terms of money not actually fixing anything.

My views also need to be checked and questioned, because my wife had to suggest to me that my five-year-old son was not, in fact, interested in or learning a quote ‘new vocabulary’ by having Don DeLillo read to him as he played with Numberblock toys.

 

Ugh

 

"Solves" what, exactly?

What do you think the problems of public education are?

How about restoring arts education?

Raising salaries? Extending school hours and school meal programs?

School supplies? Sports?

Assuming inflation touches everything, why would you think an education budget - local, state, federal - remains static?

 

That is the most perfect and succinct explanation of vouchers I’ve seen.

 

I agree.

 

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is sports - and I think you could make an argument (perhaps not a great one, but one) that it's time to take competitive sports out of the public school system. They cost a lot of money, they're exclusionary to a handful of "best" irrespective of proficiency - imagine not being able to take the school's hardest science class because there are 12 students who got better ACT scores - and, in all sports but football, there are good club options college coaches recruit off of anyway.

I think my point is "more money for public education" is just a thing to say. Many - not all, but many - of the worst disparities have been reduced. I'd support the restoration of arts education in places where they've been diminished, because I think there's a corollary, but I'm not sure if that's just me playing out my own biases of what's important or affirming some universal.

 

If say Fox News and other media outlets received a verified message - a recording or whatever - from Hezbollah or ISIS saying this - would that not be deemed a credible threat of terrorism? But when Trump does it on live TV - it's cool? Seriously? It's a textbook case of using the threat of violence for political gain - the very definition of terrorism.
Trump Promises There Will Be ‘Bloodbath For The Country’ If He Doesn’t Win Against Biden

 

One day, I’d like a Republican to articulate why Biden is such an awful President other than “crisis on the border” and “inflation” (which is actually far better here than nearly all of our peer countries).

 

Everyone defending him on Twitter is saying he means “an economic bloodbath “

Kind of like the one we had with his botched response to the Covid pandemic, I guess.

 

Those budgets are already being cut.

But I wasn't necessarily referring to big-ticket varsity athletics, like football.

A whole range of recreational sports, beginning in middle school, and the budgets to fund them, sound like a common sense reply to rising adolescent obesity.

 

https://x.com/dreamweasel/status/1769361926943907934?s=46&t=f1bCJ9Ncf7mPQzqE8-YWxQ