This guy has it 100% right...

[Harrison]

The question remains: Since the U.S. spends more than any other country on education, why are U.S. students far below where they should be when compared to countries that spend far, far less?

Because American PARENTS suck.

First it's retardlicans taking money away from schools, and now it's the parents. Lol you're quite amusing.

Why not just leave political leanings out of it?

Parents sometimes are pathetic failures.
Schools more often than not are worse failures.
I got the shit end of the stick on both those fronts and I still ended up fine.


How much a teacher gets paid has nothing to do with how good they are as educators.

So there's plenty of blame to spread around, but political leanings aren't really necessary to bring into this one.

[Ginzburgh]

And it's definitely not black and white.

[Tossica]

Continued program cuts and starvation of the system plus bad parenting = crappy education system. I'm not saying there aren't bad teachers out there but obviously there's room for improvement across the board.

[Drem]

It is the schools' fault because they just pay teachers to show up and leave. It's the parents' fault because so many people raise their kids and pamper and smother them and actually get lead around on a leash by their kids, thinking they need to please them and give them everything they didn't have as a kid themselves.

You can see this in the service industry every day.... sometimes a family will come in and the kids will be on point. The parents will tell them to place their order and do everything on their own and it's pretty cool. And if they order bad food their parents say "nope you don't get soda you get milk" and the kid doesn't even complain or cry. It's great

Then you get families that come in and the kid's just in its own world. "I WANT THAT AND THAT AND THAT AND THAT". Kids like this don't have any patience, either, or try to steal money out of the tip cup at the register when no one's looking. Little selfish shitheads that have no sense of reality. I caught someone trying to steal tips the other day. He was about a 9yo. I said "Uh, put it back?" and he was just smiling like it was a joke and only put half back. I actually had to tell him to "put it all back". His mother didn't even care. She just passively told him to put it back and pretended nothing happened. Unbelievable to me

Kids like that are the reason schools suck. Kids like that are bad influences on everyone around them and it starts with bad parenting. It's really easy for a kid like that to get other kids to fuck off their responsibilities. If you think Toss complaining about bad parenting is baseless then you need to get out into the world and actually see what percentage of children are little fuckers that have completely whipped their parents. It's staggering

[numatu]

Bad parenting is a legitimate reason. I just don't understand how education funding correlates with that. And it's clear that more funding, when the U.S. is already the world-leader in education funding, will not solve the problem.

This is why a complete overhaul of the system is necessary. And ideas like the video shouldn't be brushed aside, simply because the person who is advocating it happens to have an (R) next to his name.

[Haylo]

My measly contribution to this thread is mostly directed at Brin. If you're serious about being a teacher, I would focus on special education. More and more kids each year get referred to SPED schools for ADD, ADHD, ODD etc. Base starting salary here with SPED certification is $50k. Once our teachers are hired, if they don't already have their masters we have a partnership with GW that they can join. It's free to get their Masters, they only have to work here for 1 year after they finish. If you have your BA, Masters and SPED certification, you've just jumped up to $70k a year, plus summer pay. The downside is that SPED is a full year program, but you still get 2 weeks for X-Mas, all of the holidays, Wednesdays half day, 1 week for Spring break, 1 week at the beginning of the summer and 1 week at the end. Not a bad deal, plus you can choose to not work the summer.

[Tossica]

Bad parenting is a legitimate reason. I just don't understand how education funding correlates with that. And it's clear that more funding, when the U.S. is already the world-leader in education funding, will not solve the problem.

This is why a complete overhaul of the system is necessary. And ideas like the video shouldn't be brushed aside, simply because the person who is advocating it happens to have an (R) next to his name.

Here's how it correlates. Stupid people have kids and send them to public schools with little or no social skills. Now the already taxed teachers not only have to deal with trying to teach kids that actually want to learn but they also have to play parent to the socially retarded brats that fuck everything up for the rest of the school. A school isn't just the place you go to learn to read and write anymore, they are also expected to teach right from wrong as well which should be the PARENTS job.

Too much is asked of the schools and teachers and too few resources are provided to them to get the job done.

You keep saying we spend the most money in the world, well yeah, a large portion of the funds available are being used to teach kids morals and social skills and keep them from killing their fellow students.

[Ginzburgh]

So I should or shouldn't encourage my daughter to watch Evil Dead and Seven Samuri before the age of 5?

[Tossica]

So I should or shouldn't encourage my daughter to watch Evil Dead and Seven Samuri before the age of 5?

I'd reenact them using puppets first and see how she reacts.

[Ginzburgh]

My dad made me watch A Clockwork Orange when I was a toddler and it's probably my first memory.

[Tossica]

My dad made me watch A Clockwork Orange when I was a toddler and it's probably my first memory.

My folks took me to Night of the Living Dead at the drive in when I was almost too young to remember, Alien, The Shining, The Omen, Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc all seen at the theater with my parents and I turned out just fine!

[Drem]

my first rated R experience was around age 5 or 6 i guess. an episode of tales from the crypt where some old rich guy in a wheelchair had a demon cat that ended up crawling into his mouth (by fishooking his cheeks to fit) and moving around inside his body. then it went to another episode where some guy was getting executed but the firing squad didn't quite kill him and he writhed around in miserable agony reminiscing about his life at the bottom of some cliff surrounded by a pile of dead people

i wish i would've just seen a clockwork orange or seven samurai. trust me

[ClakarEQ]

What's funny about today, both of those incidents could get your Dad's ass in jail. It would only take one comment to a teacher or some other authority figure and Dad could be fucked, ala mental abuse.

[Tuggan]

What's funny about today, both of those incidents could get your Dad's ass in jail. It would only take one comment to a teacher or some other authority figure and Dad could be fucked, ala mental abuse.

ahh.. no. we're not quite that far gone yet.

[Ginzburgh]

Yeah, legally a kid can watch an R rated movie as long as it's with a parent. I worked at the movie theater when I was a kid and movie geeks who wore shit like Eraserhead t-shirts and wallet chains that almost hit the floor would bring their toddlers to see fucked up shit and we'd sell them the tickets.

And then there were parents who would buy the tickets for a group of underagers and the box office chick would remind the parent they had to be in the theater with the kids during the movie and the parent would get snippy and say "yeah i know i know just gimmie the tickets". Then we'd watch the parent give the tickets to the kids and walk out the back door. And then I'd wait about a half hour after the movie started and kick them all out. They'd ask to go into another theater and I'd say, "oh sorry, looks like you have tickets to see this movie" and they'd say, "but you just kicked us out of that movie" and i'd say, "yeah, too bad your mom lied to us".

That is like heroin for a movie theater usher and it happened at least once every two weeks.

One time it escalated into a parent starting a fist fight with my manager, who got fired because he kicked the shit out of this guy in the middle of the theater lobby and it took four guys in power ranger costumes to pull him off. One of the most unforgettable things I have ever witnessed. Mostly because my manager really beat the shit out of this guy bad. But the power rangers intervening was definitely the icing on the cake.

[Drem]

lol

[brinstar]

this one time at a mexican fast food joint in hastings (Amigo's for anyone who's ever been to nebraska) there was a fight breaking out

thirty seconds later, i shit you not, this big buff-looking cop slams the door open, points at the two fighters, and yells "HEY"

at that instant, the song "bad boys bad boys, whatcha gonna do? whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" started playing on the radio in the dining room

[Harrison]

I would have died.

It's like the first time I started to hang out with a circle of friends again after taking a 3 month hiatus from them, I walked in and "Back In Black" started to play.

I made it my official theme song.

[brinstar]

ya it was frickin classic, but i gotta say it doesn't quite measure up to seeing power rangers break up a fight in a theatre lobby haha

[Ginzburgh]

It was surreal enough to watch even knowing that they were just theater employees in power ranger costumes, I imagine it was 100 times as surreal for a 10 year old patron going to see the power rangers movie that day.