Public School Bans Lunches From Home

[dross]

I'm lost. What metaphor are we using again?

Did you see Primary Colors? Where they were trying to tell Hillary that they needed to prepare for bimbo eruptions? Anyway, hilarious metaphor stuff.


Key:

Wal Mart: Government schools
Target: Charter schools
Making our own goods at home: homeschooling
Not shopping: people without kids

 

[lashicoN]

And the fact that you have to pay those taxes to your local school, even if you don't have kids or home school them.

Sorry, Dross, Fletch seems to be a little slow today , so I explained a tad further.

 

[Fletch]

Sorry, Dross, Fletch seems to be a little slow today , so I explained a tad further.

Sorry, I've got my fingers in too many different pairs of underwear to keep it all straight.

 

[dross]

Sorry, I've got my fingers in too many different pairs of underwear to keep it all straight.

Wait until you have kids...oh...was that a metaphor?

 

[badwolf.usmc]

88GT:
Any implied defensiveness is because it seems i'm being pushed into a position to justify/defend a subject that I have no desire defending. I don't care about compulsory education, neither pro nor anti.

This is not some new power the government is trying to have. The first free school lunch programs came about in the mid 1800s, the National School Lunch Act took place in 1946. In Chicago, the principles of schools have been given authority to make these rules by politicians who were elected by the general public, so in effect the general public has given these principles the authority to make these rules.

If you want to talk about how forcing school lunches is a symptom of government control, then i agree. It is a symptom of government control. However, this power was granted to the government by the people of Chicago and this is what they want. Maybe a few don't want this particular rule, but if they keep their kids in these schools and don't work to get this authority taken away then they accept that their government has the authority to make the rule in the first place. They deserve the consequences of their decisions.

Fletch:
You are taking the metaphor further than it was ever intended to go. My thought is simply this, even if public schools were privatised they would be neither better nor worse than they are now. Parents are the key ingredient in a child's education, parents who are not involved in their child's education now will not be involved in their child's education if the system is privatized.

ArmedProgrammer:
Government & Corporations are organizations made up of people. I trust them the same as I trust the general population. Trust is earned, it is not something that can be expected as the norm nor should it be given away freely. I trust individuals, i don't trust any organization and I would never trust the general population.

 

[ATOMonkey]

I disagree. Children who don't perform in private schools, for whatever reason, simply fail. They are not pushed along to the next level in order to maintain the requisit level of federal and state funding. If they fail often enough, they don't get to come back to school. I almost flunked out of a private school.

Also, a private school won't care about ISTEP testing and won't "dumb down" the cirriculum in order to maintain high test scores so they'll continue to receive funding.

Sink or swim on your own steam.

 

[ArmedProgrammer]

...
My thought is simply this, even if public schools were privatised they would be neither better nor worse than they are now. Parents are the key ingredient in a child's education, parents who are not involved in their child's education now will not be involved in their child's education if the system is privatized.


ArmedProgrammer:
Government & Corporations are organizations made up of people. I trust them the same as I trust the general population. Trust is earned, it is not something that can be expected as the norm nor should it be given away freely. I trust individuals, i don't trust any organization and I would never trust the general population.

I agree that parents are the key. That said, I would submit that the Public schools are not listening to, nor working well with the parents. I submit that the monopoloistic aspect of Public Schools is making this worse. Private schools have every reason to be better at that, due to the fact that people can vote with their feet. I agree that *if the parents aren't involved* private or public will not make as huge of a difference. But if they ARE....

I don't need to TRUST the general population - I'm not asking THEM to teach my kids. I just need to have CONFIDENCE that they will make reasonable choices. Big difference between that kind of CONFIDENCE and TRUST. A school system (Public, Private, whatever) requires my TRUST. It's a higher test.

 

[badwolf.usmc]

ATOMonkey:
I have no experience with private schools, but i would think that they are very competitive and any child who fails to perform is simply dismissed from the school to make room for a child who does succeed. Public schools, on the other hand, are required by law to provide an education to children so they can't simply dismiss a child who does not perform well. Private schools can pick and choose who they want, public schools can not.
I agree that children who fail to perform shouldn't just be pushed to the next grade level, but most children fail because they have parents who are not involved. Only when you make parents accountable for their kids performance will you see real change.

ArmedProgrammer:
My wife is a headstart teacher who works with low income families. This year, out of ~40 different families she services, over half do not attend parent-teacher conferences, and this is after calling each set of parents and scheduling a time that meets the parents demands. Over the years she has done them before work, after work, over her lunch time and once over the weekend. She has gone to people's homes to meet them there. Usually these meetings take place in the classroom and during working hours, but she works around parent's schedules as best as she can.
Every set of parents sign a "contract" to meet certain obligations which include these parent-teacher conferences. She calls every set of parents and sets up the time to meet them.
A good many of them don't show up, they just blow her off. She has made appointments at people's homes after hours to meet them and when she has knocked on the door they refuse to answer. The car is in the driveway, the tv is on and she heard them talking as she walked up to the door and the child exclaimed "My teacher is here!" but the parent told the child to be quite and waited for my wife to leave. There are teachers who are not listening or working with parents, but it is a two way street. I would suggest that there are many more parents who do not listen and work with the teachers than there are teachers who do not listen and work with parents.


A common theme throughout this entire discussion are vouchers for private schools. Some have said that there are no real choices since paying for private school or homeschooling is basically paying for your child's education twice, at least what is what i have inferred.

Why should someone who does not have children pay for someone else's child's education? It would seem that every person who has a child in the education system is being subsidized by someone who does not have a child in the system.

 

[Claddagh]

Little government zombies in training in their monochromatic uniforms eating soylent green...

Warms the cockles of your heart doesn't it?

If they start to get too warm, try rubbing them with a little dry ice. Works every time.

 

[ATOMonkey]

When parents start writing checks to school instead of having the money come out of their pay-check automatically, you'd be amazed at how quickly they'll get involved.

 

[dross]

When parents start writing checks to school instead of having the money come out of their pay-check automatically, you'd be amazed at how quickly they'll get involved.

And based on having been writing checks to my daughter's Montessori preschool, you'll also be surprised at how accommodating and willing to talk, discuss and please they are, all the way from the bus driver up to the principal.

It's amazing how much more customer friendly service providers are when they have to PERSUADE you to give them money rather than receive it by threat of men with guns.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Preschool for our boy was full until we offered to pay the full boat up front in cash and all of a sudden they were able to re-arrange some things and came up with an opening! Amazing how that just happens to work out.

All cynacism aside, they were over staffed for the older chidren and moving one teacher to the lower ages allowed them to accept another 17 kids.

 

[casselmb]

Nanny state-ism at its best. But then again, I would assume they're saving some teacher jobs by imposing this rule. I guess I would probably prefer outlawing bag lunches than cutting teachers and increasing class sizes.