I call bullshit. The people who represent your point of view are busy bribing legally elected representatives in Washington, rather than allowing the free market to settle the issue.
If every third advertising agency in America were to go bankrupt tonight, society wouldn't collapse. If along with those agencies, 1/2 of all the corporations doing the collection and correlation of data also collapsed, society wouldn't collapse. If, as a result of all those bankruptcies, advertising dropped off by 95%, society wouldn't collapse.
If the working class notified congress that they would no longer tolerate the shit forced on them by advertisers, and congress passed meaningful laws restricting what advertisers can do, society wouldn't collapse either. In fact, society would be much better off.
And, if you personally are put out of a job because of it, well, tough shit. You can go compete with all the Mexicans for a job digging ditches, or picking avacados.
Well - open mouth, insert foot. How does it taste?
I've been working for a living for more than forty years now. Real work, too, not sitting on my ass, playing mind games, and expecting working people to support me. I don't do a day's work, or a week's work, or even a year's worth of work, then collect wages for the rest of my life.
As I said earlier, you are the one with the entitlement issues.
"playing the roll" as you put it. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that anyone can do it, if they just spend the time - on the other hand, you seem to think that it's a major industry, deserving of high wages. You're confusing me, which is it?
Are you an advertiser, or do you work for advertising, or are you a web designer, an IT guy, or what? What is your stake in this issue?
I'll tell you flat out, I have nothing but contempt for the advertising industry as a whole, with even greater contempt for those portions of the industry responsible for all this invasive advertising.
Advertising presumes to have some kind of ownership over the web, and it presumes to have some authority over how the web should be regulated. Presumptuous cocksuckers are deserving of no respect whatsoever.
Always remember - business - ALL BUSINESSES - exist on sufference. The public tolerates a busienss so long as that business benefits the public more than it pisses the public off. When you overstep your bounds, you WILL be put out of business.
IMHO, you have overstepped your bounds. Keep watching, and wait for it. More and more people are beginning to think like me. The evidence is available in the download counts for all the ad blockers.
Keep running at the mouth - you cannot justify the worthless shit being forced on the people who finance the web - the very customers that the advertisers are milking.
So, it appears that you are just one link in the chain intended to bind "consumers" into acting as you wish them to act - that is, to provide you with ever more money.
Funny thing - despite the fact that I don't see a single ad on your website, I'm not "infringing" upon your ability to milk the advertisers of revenue. So, you missed out on.003 cents because I blocked the ads. The millions of sheeples who didn't block your ads still gave you a nice payday, didn't they?
You can call it shoplifting if/when I figure out how to intercept those people clicking your ads. When I actually cash a check paying for those millions of clicks, thereby preventing you from cashing the same check, then you can whine, snivel, and cry about me depriving you of income.
Of course, at that point in time, I will have the cash necessary to retain some shyster lawyer, and you'll be up shit creek without a paddle, LMAO!
So - shut up and get to work. BTW - WTF have you produced that I might be interested in? Anything? Gimme a link, and I'll tell you what I think it is worth.
Oh - the voting and reproducing? Please don't. Your attitude need not be passed on. YOU are the one with a sense of entitlement.
Spot on, AC. I have redundant blocks in place, and MVPS is part of that redundancy. And, yes, putting the hosts file on your DNS server, your modem, or your router makes it work for all the traffic on your network.
They are "providing" nothing. The money that we, subscribers, pay our ISP's and carriers pays for the internet. The content is provided by - surprise! - the CONTENT provider. Advertisers choose to sponsor the content provider, offering him some meager percentage of the money they expect to earn with their advertisements. If the advertisers weren't sponsoring the content provider, then the content would either go away, or the content provider could ask for donations, or sell subscriptions, or find some other way to finance his content. But, ultimately, advertisers provide NOTHING.
Never thought of it in that light. If a person had a genuine interest, he could probably find who sits on what boards, which corporate officers hold positions in seemingly unrelated companies, etc. I've been shown before how some corporations are entwined with each other - like a bunch of snakes copulating. That may well be the case here.
Agreed. What is "immoral" is, advertisers expecting to use most of my bandwidth, FOR FREE! Take a typical page full of content, and use some network analyzer while it loads. The actual content might amount to a few hundred k, but the damned advertising can amount to multiple megabytes.
Fuck 'em all. I have limited bandwidth, which I have to pay for, each and every month. Not one of those advertisers is entitled to any of it.
"It's amusing to read such utter bullshit generated by a clueless fool like you who has never done time in prison."
No, I've never been to prison. But, I've watched the youngsters grow up, and go off to prison. Some little numbnuts gets in trouble for something extremely petty. He gets some probation, and sent home. He figures he got off lightly, so he continues doing what he got in trouble for, and maybe something a little bigger. He does thirty days in jail, gets more probation, and community service. During his thirty days, he makes some new friends, and those freindships are cemented with meetings at the probation officer's office, and community service time spent together. The knuckleheads dream up bigger schemes to do together, and steadily get into more and more trouble.
FINALLY - these airheads do something serious enough that the judge decides to throw the book at them, and two, three, six of them go off to prison, one after the other, as rapidly as the local court system can run them through.
And - here, they make NEW friends, and dream up new schemes - ad nauseum.
I've watched this shit happening for the past forty years. I've witnessed it. Not up close and personal, like the kids who are part of the system, but from front row seats.
Stupid punkass fool, huh? You figure that men only become men in prison? Really? How would all your prison buddies stack up against me and my buddies? Did any of your prison pals go into Beirut City in 1978? Did any of them ever quell a riot? How about hiking across the desert, just six men and an officer, through No-Man's Land?
"What's No-Man's Land" the boy asks. Well - that is the area BETWEEN two opposing armies. And, me and my pals weren't friendly to EITHER of the opposing armies.
Punk-ass.
I would define punk-ass as wasting years in prison over genuinely stupid fucking shit. Pot, meth, a few hundred dollars, maybe fighting over some skanky whore, armed robbery - stupid fucking shit. THAT is punk-ass.
I do manage to maintain some minimal respect for some convicts. But, when some dumb fucker pops up and starts putting me down because I never spent time in prison? Insulting me because I "don't understand"?
Fuck you, chump.
Want to know what MEANINGFUL punishment would be?
The first time some dumbass kid gets caught shoplifting, he's strapped to the flogging post in front of the court house, and given five lashes. Publicly. His mama can watch him take his whipping like a man - if he's capable of doing so.
Second offense? Double the punishment, plus a couple weeks community service.
Third, and greater offense? Double that punishment AGAIN. How many hard headed little punks are going to last to commit a fourth offense? He'll remember those last twenty lashes half killed him. He's going to be thinking that he might not live through forty lashes. And, instead of a few weeks of community service, he'll be facing a year on a road gang.
Punishment. Fuck sitting in the corner. No air conditioning. No cots. No television. Harsh fucking reality, sucking the life out of him.
Get serious, and stop whining at me about some missing time out of your life. I GAVE eight years out of my life, so that whining pussies could complain about THEIR years sitting in an air conditioned prison. How many years of your life have you given to your fellow man?
Never read the book - I think I'll go looking for it.
I have noted that prison sucks for many reasons, and a lack of genuine punishment for crime is one of the reasons. Prison does little more than serve as a criminal college and finishing school. Petty criminals enter the system, only to become professional criminals. There is something drastically wrong with that picture.
It isn't the execution that is expensive. It's all the appeals. The courts will collectively spend a few hundred million dollars before this pig fucker is finally put to death. The execution might cost a few thousand dollars, when accounting is done with it, but the real money goes into court accounting for lawyer time, judge time, yada yada yada.
Screw that. Sometimes, you gotta do what's gotta be done. Septic systems need to be cleaned out, criminals need to be executed - stuff just has to be done. If you want to walk around feeling superior by not getting your hands dirty, go right ahead, but don't expect to win any arguments on morality.
AC hasn't exactly justified Tsarnaev - he has given food for thought. He last sentence, "Just something to think about." He makes it pretty clear that if we weren't such arrogant bastards ourselves, then we may have had more sympathy from the world at large when the terrorists hit us. And, there is some suggestion that if we were less overbearing overseas, then just MAYBE the terrorists wouldn't have hit us.
Food for thought, assuredly.
Is he right? Is he wrong? I can't say for sure. But he does offer food for thought.
Yeah, I'm aware that Muslim terrorists are waging war on three continents already, against people who ARE NOT arrogant, overbearing bastards with military bases located around the world. Maybe the terrorists would have hit the Twin Towers anyway, and maybe the Tsarnaev brothers would have bombed the Boston Marathon anyway. I can't say for sure.
You should read the prophet's words. Really, you should read his words. Jesus is a forgiving God. Jesus wept. Mohammed never forgives, never forgets, and the only weeping he ever enjoyed was the tears of the widows and orphans as he raped them.
Islam is the religion of peace! Well, except for a few radicals, maybe 2 or 3 percent, which would only make about a million radicals. And, maybe except for their supporters, maybe 20 percent or so, which would make about 200 million. Other than that, it's mostly moderates, who won't actually go out and jihad, but they'll cheer the jihadists on. You've nothing to fear from Islam, there's just no way that there are more than a three or four hundred million activists and jihadists combined!
My thoughts, almost exactly. Now and then, Anonymous allows one of their attacks to become public knowledge ahead of time. I've kinda sat in on the forums while the attack was being waged. Yeah - members of anonymous have command of botnets. Maybe not the largest, maybe not the most sophisticated, but, individuals might have ten, a hundred, a thousand bots under their control.
It takes no great leap of intuition to realize that "anonymous" might have thousand, or even tens or hundreds of thousands of shoddily secured routers to work with. Agree with them or not - they aren't stupid just because they're anonymous!
I think that we have all had an individual in our schools who just could not, or would not learn. Special ed types who are also discipline problems. The schools spend ten times as much on them, as they spend on kids who might want to learn.
At some point, you have to say enough is enough. There are hard cases that you are not going to educate, no matter how much effort, no matter how much money you throw at them.
I say, stop wasting time on them. Put them out of school, let them try to work for a living, let them learn how harsh the world is. Maybe next year, they'll come back pleading for another chance. If that happens, I'll be okay with that. If not - well, good riddance.
We don't need disruptive students in the class rooms - that much should be obvious.
There are a number of problems with our Common Core. The most publicized, and most criticized thing about it is, the teachers teach to the test. Recitals are nice and all - but if the student knows nothing more than what he is reciting, there's a reasonable chance that he can't use that knowledge. In effect, the teachers are helping the children to cheat to pass the tests!
Another problem is, those "common core" requirements are pretty lame, in and of themselves. They amount to the "lowest common denominator". The tests don't distinguish between high achievers, low achievers, and failures. Instead, everyone is tutored toward that LCD.
And, finally, parts of that "common core" are political goals, rather than educational goals. The "left" or "liberal" agenda is being pursued through the schools in this country. At the same time, the schools are intentionally being "dumbed down" by the global economy crowd. They don't WANT high achievers graduating, who might disrupt their global economy goals.
It's a very complicated thing - you could spend months researching it.
Have you read Abraham Lincoln's biography? How about Thomas Edison? History is replete with examples of outstanding people who suffered hardships due to their station in life. If those two examples aren't good enough for you, then nothing will convince you.
You will please note, that I have made absolutely no justification for the banks exploiting kids who want an education. There is no justification for impoverishing college kids for life. Actually - that situation helps to justify my position. Education is overvalued, and over priced today. The economy does not support the prices being put on education. It's an insane situation.
Most of those kids can get an equivalent, and maybe a better education, if they just say screw it, and hit the books on their own. That scrap of parchment with a college seal on it is simply not worth the asking price.
How about we go back to something called "Vo-Tech"? There is a rather large percentage of students who just don't give a damn about higher education. Many of those students want hands-on experience in the trades - auto mechanics, computer repair, industrial maintenance, construction. We aren't all cut out to be brainiacs. Give those kids the education that they are INTERESTED in, give them the training that they DESIRE. And, cut them loose when they are ready to earn a living.
We also have a a percentage of people who cannot and will not EVER actually earn a high school diploma. Forget about "No Child Left Behind". Stop the nonsense with Common Core, or "Lowest Common Denominator". Flush those people out of the school system, and let them either fend for themselves, or subsist on the dole.
In effect, I want to change the structure of the education system. Stop teaching down to those who aren't interested. Reinstate the differences between vocational education, and academic education. And, when we have done so, then we begin raising the standards.
For as long as I have been alive, a high school diploma has meant little. It is merely a formality, a slip of paper with which one can open the lobby doors at a business, so that he can fill out an application.
A high school diploma should MEAN something. It should represent a considerable effort on the part of the student. It should be something he is proud of, not something that he had to get out of the way before he could begin a career - or before he could begin getting a real education.
Worse, that diploma has been further cheapened by the GED program. Employers today advertise for high school grads, or GED equivalents. Every dead beat loser in the country now gets a GED in prison, if he doesn't already have one.
Bottom line in my post was that throwing good money after bad isn't going to improve the situation.
I say that we return the school administration to the local communities, and get the feds out of the schools. The feds have usurped local authority time and time again, always through the immoral and unscrupulous use of money - and at every turn, they have screwed things up.
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I call bullshit. The people who represent your point of view are busy bribing legally elected representatives in Washington, rather than allowing the free market to settle the issue.
If every third advertising agency in America were to go bankrupt tonight, society wouldn't collapse. If along with those agencies, 1/2 of all the corporations doing the collection and correlation of data also collapsed, society wouldn't collapse. If, as a result of all those bankruptcies, advertising dropped off by 95%, society wouldn't collapse.
If the working class notified congress that they would no longer tolerate the shit forced on them by advertisers, and congress passed meaningful laws restricting what advertisers can do, society wouldn't collapse either. In fact, society would be much better off.
And, if you personally are put out of a job because of it, well, tough shit. You can go compete with all the Mexicans for a job digging ditches, or picking avacados.
Well - open mouth, insert foot. How does it taste?
I've been working for a living for more than forty years now. Real work, too, not sitting on my ass, playing mind games, and expecting working people to support me. I don't do a day's work, or a week's work, or even a year's worth of work, then collect wages for the rest of my life.
As I said earlier, you are the one with the entitlement issues.
"playing the roll" as you put it. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that anyone can do it, if they just spend the time - on the other hand, you seem to think that it's a major industry, deserving of high wages. You're confusing me, which is it?
Are you an advertiser, or do you work for advertising, or are you a web designer, an IT guy, or what? What is your stake in this issue?
I'll tell you flat out, I have nothing but contempt for the advertising industry as a whole, with even greater contempt for those portions of the industry responsible for all this invasive advertising.
Advertising presumes to have some kind of ownership over the web, and it presumes to have some authority over how the web should be regulated. Presumptuous cocksuckers are deserving of no respect whatsoever.
Always remember - business - ALL BUSINESSES - exist on sufference. The public tolerates a busienss so long as that business benefits the public more than it pisses the public off. When you overstep your bounds, you WILL be put out of business.
IMHO, you have overstepped your bounds. Keep watching, and wait for it. More and more people are beginning to think like me. The evidence is available in the download counts for all the ad blockers.
Keep running at the mouth - you cannot justify the worthless shit being forced on the people who finance the web - the very customers that the advertisers are milking.
. . . clients . . . customers . . . cultivate . . .
So, it appears that you are just one link in the chain intended to bind "consumers" into acting as you wish them to act - that is, to provide you with ever more money.
Providing content, and providing monetary incentives for providing content are not one and the same.
Funny thing - despite the fact that I don't see a single ad on your website, I'm not "infringing" upon your ability to milk the advertisers of revenue. So, you missed out on .003 cents because I blocked the ads. The millions of sheeples who didn't block your ads still gave you a nice payday, didn't they?
You can call it shoplifting if/when I figure out how to intercept those people clicking your ads. When I actually cash a check paying for those millions of clicks, thereby preventing you from cashing the same check, then you can whine, snivel, and cry about me depriving you of income.
Of course, at that point in time, I will have the cash necessary to retain some shyster lawyer, and you'll be up shit creek without a paddle, LMAO!
So - shut up and get to work. BTW - WTF have you produced that I might be interested in? Anything? Gimme a link, and I'll tell you what I think it is worth.
Oh - the voting and reproducing? Please don't. Your attitude need not be passed on. YOU are the one with a sense of entitlement.
Spot on, AC. I have redundant blocks in place, and MVPS is part of that redundancy. And, yes, putting the hosts file on your DNS server, your modem, or your router makes it work for all the traffic on your network.
They are "providing" nothing. The money that we, subscribers, pay our ISP's and carriers pays for the internet. The content is provided by - surprise! - the CONTENT provider. Advertisers choose to sponsor the content provider, offering him some meager percentage of the money they expect to earn with their advertisements. If the advertisers weren't sponsoring the content provider, then the content would either go away, or the content provider could ask for donations, or sell subscriptions, or find some other way to finance his content. But, ultimately, advertisers provide NOTHING.
Never thought of it in that light. If a person had a genuine interest, he could probably find who sits on what boards, which corporate officers hold positions in seemingly unrelated companies, etc. I've been shown before how some corporations are entwined with each other - like a bunch of snakes copulating. That may well be the case here.
Agreed. What is "immoral" is, advertisers expecting to use most of my bandwidth, FOR FREE! Take a typical page full of content, and use some network analyzer while it loads. The actual content might amount to a few hundred k, but the damned advertising can amount to multiple megabytes.
Fuck 'em all. I have limited bandwidth, which I have to pay for, each and every month. Not one of those advertisers is entitled to any of it.
You're pretty obviously not Canadian. Real Canadians won't own bieberhead as their own.
"It's amusing to read such utter bullshit generated by a clueless fool like you who has never done time in prison."
No, I've never been to prison. But, I've watched the youngsters grow up, and go off to prison. Some little numbnuts gets in trouble for something extremely petty. He gets some probation, and sent home. He figures he got off lightly, so he continues doing what he got in trouble for, and maybe something a little bigger. He does thirty days in jail, gets more probation, and community service. During his thirty days, he makes some new friends, and those freindships are cemented with meetings at the probation officer's office, and community service time spent together. The knuckleheads dream up bigger schemes to do together, and steadily get into more and more trouble.
FINALLY - these airheads do something serious enough that the judge decides to throw the book at them, and two, three, six of them go off to prison, one after the other, as rapidly as the local court system can run them through.
And - here, they make NEW friends, and dream up new schemes - ad nauseum.
I've watched this shit happening for the past forty years. I've witnessed it. Not up close and personal, like the kids who are part of the system, but from front row seats.
Stupid punkass fool, huh? You figure that men only become men in prison? Really? How would all your prison buddies stack up against me and my buddies? Did any of your prison pals go into Beirut City in 1978? Did any of them ever quell a riot? How about hiking across the desert, just six men and an officer, through No-Man's Land?
"What's No-Man's Land" the boy asks. Well - that is the area BETWEEN two opposing armies. And, me and my pals weren't friendly to EITHER of the opposing armies.
Punk-ass.
I would define punk-ass as wasting years in prison over genuinely stupid fucking shit. Pot, meth, a few hundred dollars, maybe fighting over some skanky whore, armed robbery - stupid fucking shit. THAT is punk-ass.
I do manage to maintain some minimal respect for some convicts. But, when some dumb fucker pops up and starts putting me down because I never spent time in prison? Insulting me because I "don't understand"?
Fuck you, chump.
Want to know what MEANINGFUL punishment would be?
The first time some dumbass kid gets caught shoplifting, he's strapped to the flogging post in front of the court house, and given five lashes. Publicly. His mama can watch him take his whipping like a man - if he's capable of doing so.
Second offense? Double the punishment, plus a couple weeks community service.
Third, and greater offense? Double that punishment AGAIN. How many hard headed little punks are going to last to commit a fourth offense? He'll remember those last twenty lashes half killed him. He's going to be thinking that he might not live through forty lashes. And, instead of a few weeks of community service, he'll be facing a year on a road gang.
Punishment. Fuck sitting in the corner. No air conditioning. No cots. No television. Harsh fucking reality, sucking the life out of him.
Get serious, and stop whining at me about some missing time out of your life. I GAVE eight years out of my life, so that whining pussies could complain about THEIR years sitting in an air conditioned prison. How many years of your life have you given to your fellow man?
Never read the book - I think I'll go looking for it.
I have noted that prison sucks for many reasons, and a lack of genuine punishment for crime is one of the reasons. Prison does little more than serve as a criminal college and finishing school. Petty criminals enter the system, only to become professional criminals. There is something drastically wrong with that picture.
It isn't the execution that is expensive. It's all the appeals. The courts will collectively spend a few hundred million dollars before this pig fucker is finally put to death. The execution might cost a few thousand dollars, when accounting is done with it, but the real money goes into court accounting for lawyer time, judge time, yada yada yada.
Screw that. Sometimes, you gotta do what's gotta be done. Septic systems need to be cleaned out, criminals need to be executed - stuff just has to be done. If you want to walk around feeling superior by not getting your hands dirty, go right ahead, but don't expect to win any arguments on morality.
AC hasn't exactly justified Tsarnaev - he has given food for thought. He last sentence, "Just something to think about." He makes it pretty clear that if we weren't such arrogant bastards ourselves, then we may have had more sympathy from the world at large when the terrorists hit us. And, there is some suggestion that if we were less overbearing overseas, then just MAYBE the terrorists wouldn't have hit us.
Food for thought, assuredly.
Is he right? Is he wrong? I can't say for sure. But he does offer food for thought.
Yeah, I'm aware that Muslim terrorists are waging war on three continents already, against people who ARE NOT arrogant, overbearing bastards with military bases located around the world. Maybe the terrorists would have hit the Twin Towers anyway, and maybe the Tsarnaev brothers would have bombed the Boston Marathon anyway. I can't say for sure.
Think about it though.
Regardless - it is an existential war against those radicals, and Brigitte explains exactly why that is.
You should read the prophet's words. Really, you should read his words. Jesus is a forgiving God. Jesus wept. Mohammed never forgives, never forgets, and the only weeping he ever enjoyed was the tears of the widows and orphans as he raped them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Islam is the religion of peace! Well, except for a few radicals, maybe 2 or 3 percent, which would only make about a million radicals. And, maybe except for their supporters, maybe 20 percent or so, which would make about 200 million. Other than that, it's mostly moderates, who won't actually go out and jihad, but they'll cheer the jihadists on. You've nothing to fear from Islam, there's just no way that there are more than a three or four hundred million activists and jihadists combined!
My thoughts, almost exactly. Now and then, Anonymous allows one of their attacks to become public knowledge ahead of time. I've kinda sat in on the forums while the attack was being waged. Yeah - members of anonymous have command of botnets. Maybe not the largest, maybe not the most sophisticated, but, individuals might have ten, a hundred, a thousand bots under their control.
It takes no great leap of intuition to realize that "anonymous" might have thousand, or even tens or hundreds of thousands of shoddily secured routers to work with. Agree with them or not - they aren't stupid just because they're anonymous!
I think that we have all had an individual in our schools who just could not, or would not learn. Special ed types who are also discipline problems. The schools spend ten times as much on them, as they spend on kids who might want to learn.
At some point, you have to say enough is enough. There are hard cases that you are not going to educate, no matter how much effort, no matter how much money you throw at them.
I say, stop wasting time on them. Put them out of school, let them try to work for a living, let them learn how harsh the world is. Maybe next year, they'll come back pleading for another chance. If that happens, I'll be okay with that. If not - well, good riddance.
We don't need disruptive students in the class rooms - that much should be obvious.
Your TL;DR is off target.
The second part of your post is on target, but why wait until the BA is meaningful, before fixing the high schools?
There are a number of problems with our Common Core. The most publicized, and most criticized thing about it is, the teachers teach to the test. Recitals are nice and all - but if the student knows nothing more than what he is reciting, there's a reasonable chance that he can't use that knowledge. In effect, the teachers are helping the children to cheat to pass the tests!
Another problem is, those "common core" requirements are pretty lame, in and of themselves. They amount to the "lowest common denominator". The tests don't distinguish between high achievers, low achievers, and failures. Instead, everyone is tutored toward that LCD.
And, finally, parts of that "common core" are political goals, rather than educational goals. The "left" or "liberal" agenda is being pursued through the schools in this country. At the same time, the schools are intentionally being "dumbed down" by the global economy crowd. They don't WANT high achievers graduating, who might disrupt their global economy goals.
It's a very complicated thing - you could spend months researching it.
Bottom line, it's a mess.
Have you read Abraham Lincoln's biography? How about Thomas Edison? History is replete with examples of outstanding people who suffered hardships due to their station in life. If those two examples aren't good enough for you, then nothing will convince you.
You will please note, that I have made absolutely no justification for the banks exploiting kids who want an education. There is no justification for impoverishing college kids for life. Actually - that situation helps to justify my position. Education is overvalued, and over priced today. The economy does not support the prices being put on education. It's an insane situation.
Most of those kids can get an equivalent, and maybe a better education, if they just say screw it, and hit the books on their own. That scrap of parchment with a college seal on it is simply not worth the asking price.
How about we go back to something called "Vo-Tech"? There is a rather large percentage of students who just don't give a damn about higher education. Many of those students want hands-on experience in the trades - auto mechanics, computer repair, industrial maintenance, construction. We aren't all cut out to be brainiacs. Give those kids the education that they are INTERESTED in, give them the training that they DESIRE. And, cut them loose when they are ready to earn a living.
We also have a a percentage of people who cannot and will not EVER actually earn a high school diploma. Forget about "No Child Left Behind". Stop the nonsense with Common Core, or "Lowest Common Denominator". Flush those people out of the school system, and let them either fend for themselves, or subsist on the dole.
In effect, I want to change the structure of the education system. Stop teaching down to those who aren't interested. Reinstate the differences between vocational education, and academic education. And, when we have done so, then we begin raising the standards.
For as long as I have been alive, a high school diploma has meant little. It is merely a formality, a slip of paper with which one can open the lobby doors at a business, so that he can fill out an application.
A high school diploma should MEAN something. It should represent a considerable effort on the part of the student. It should be something he is proud of, not something that he had to get out of the way before he could begin a career - or before he could begin getting a real education.
Worse, that diploma has been further cheapened by the GED program. Employers today advertise for high school grads, or GED equivalents. Every dead beat loser in the country now gets a GED in prison, if he doesn't already have one.
Bottom line in my post was that throwing good money after bad isn't going to improve the situation.
I say that we return the school administration to the local communities, and get the feds out of the schools. The feds have usurped local authority time and time again, always through the immoral and unscrupulous use of money - and at every turn, they have screwed things up.