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Wages Aren't the Only Reason Teachers Are Striking (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Schools in 39 of 50 states have seen decreases in funding for instructional materials for their students, according to data from the Urban Institute. These conditions have sparked a wave of teacher activism across the country. Educators have had to pay for supplies themselves to provide new materials for students at times. Teachers' salaries aren't enough to pay for materials, either. In some cases they have to pay for materials for dozens of children. Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.
after many years living in a borderilne slum (cheap rent from relatives who owned the place). The first thing he noticed is he didn't have to buy nearly as many school supplies as he did when his kids went to a poor district.
In America we use property taxes to fund individual school districts. This means we've got nice, rich districts and lousy poor ones. This is by design. I've read one of the Scandinavian countries has laws about schools being funded equally to prevent just these kind of shenanigans. I'd love to see those kind of laws here in the States. As an added bonus it'd make forced busing pointless outside of specialty magnet schools.
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A well-run democracy requires educated citizens. The state of school systems in poor neighborhoods is by design. Those in charge want only the "right" kind of voters to be educated.
It is likely that your quality of life would improve if you paid significantly MORE taxes. In addition to you paying more taxes the rich would pay more taxes. That additional tax would outweigh your contribution. And then you could get roads, bridges, working schools, police, etc.
When everyone is supported by proper public funding, everything works properly. You would prosper despite your selfish inclination.
This idea that everyone should pay nothing in taxes is why we can't have good things. If we pay too little tax, the system decays and we get nothing. If the roads work and the trash system works and the air is clean and the schools are well supplied and safe then the world is great and everything improves. And paying tax does that.
So the solution is let the kids remain ignorant? Do you suppose not teaching them a lesson will teach the politicians a lesson?
That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
In the islamic world, it's not considered necessary to actually speak arabic in order to memorize the koran - you can memorize it just fine without understanding a word of what it says. And the goal is really memorisation, and not reading, in order to make a difference between in-group and out-group people, not to actually gain any kind of knowledge or wisdom.
Sheesh... Talk about completely un-productive voting habits...
If you vote out your politicians regardless if they do a good job that doesn't exactly promote responsible government as you don't have the chance of being voted out if you do a bad job driving you to actually do a good job. Instead you have the certainty of being voted out ensuring that you really don't need to give as damn as any issues you end up causing, like say a serious budget shortfall due to excessive tax cuts, is going to be the your replacement's problems.
As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters). The only options that leaves you with are cutting down on essential services, taking on debt or moving around money in the budget like how they move away money that's supposed to go to education into other essential services when lottery money starts coming in.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
that the pay is for only about 9 months per year of work
If you think all teachers are just idle during the school holidays you're either surrounded by shit teachers or know nothing about teaching, I wonder which it is.
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Muslim here. I don't know why Joannesg got voted Troll because what he said is 100% accurate. If you go to any non-Arabic speaking country and talk to the Muslims there, very few of them will be able to speak Arabic or translate it for you.
I have nephews and nieces in the UK who have all read the Quran. A couple of them have memorized it, but if you ask them to translate a random verse into English, they won't be able to because they don't really understand what they're reading. It's a big thing in my family when someone has memorized the Quran - parties are thrown, gifts are shared etc. but no-one really cares about if the person actually understood any of it. It's just memorization.
I read the Quran when I was younger and even memorized half of it but I couldn't tell you what any of it meant until I got my hands on a version that hand Arabic and English translations side by side. That was considered 'cheating' back in the day so my parents and the local Imam were really disappointed I had to resort to finding an English translation version.
This is one of the great dangers of preachers/Imams etc. They ask a child to read some text and then tell the child what the text is saying rather than let the child figure it out themselves. What doesn't help is that most religious texts are kinda ambiguous - if you're a pacifist you can read one sentence a certain way and think, "OK, that sounds entirely reasonable. I should look to help others" whereas a maniac would read the exact same words and come to the conclusion, "God is telling me to kill infidels".
Incidentally, it was after reading the English translations that I moved away from religion.
Because this nice table convincingly shows, that the per-pupil spending in America's public schools has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted).
There is amply enough money being spent. We are just doing it wrong [TM].
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.