Education Funding, why so low? Educational Crisis in US

It can vary, but are you really arguing it's that subjective? You don't think most parents can go with a self-sufficient law-abiding citizen as a start?
You really think seeing celebrities and how society values them affects how many people view success?

 

By rubric, I'm talking about detailed set of standards for grading that would fit everyone. That doesn't exist. To be clear, I don't need a rubric set by society. All I can do is offer as much opportunity and guidance as possible. My child has to do the rest.

Thing is, many parents don't do their part. You seem to want to absolve them of that because they don't receive any tangible benefit from doing it and there is no universal set of values in place. They shouldn't need a tangible benefit. You do your best for your child because that's a parent's job. You set your own values for your family. If you don't understand that stuff, you aren't doing it right.

 

Yes. Yes I do. In part because I’m not sure what “law-abiding” means anymore.

The POTUS has been accused of breaking dozens of laws. Hilary Clinton is apparently a lawbreaker with few peers. Cops shoot unarmed people, don’t break the law. And so on and so on. Look at TV. Antiheroes abound. Don’t we root for Walter White? Aren’t we rooting for Tiger Woods, who’s spent a good 20 years being a fairly awful person in everyday life?

Yes, I think more and more adults see a world where goodness hardly matters. Better to be cool and rich than good.

 

So if cops are wrong it means we don't know what is wrong anymore? I don't watch Breaking Bad, think that's where Walter White is from. Not sure I'd say Tiger Woods
has spent a good 20 years being a fairly awful person in everyday life. Most people would say the POTUS is not very good person, same for Hilary.

 

Your argument here is based on two pieces of anecdotal evidence, and the example of a "good" result is Donald Trump. Seriously.

 

Define "do their part." Did Fred Trump do his part?

Look: It goes without saying that some parents don't try very hard. The ones who lack education and resources and support systems can especially struggle. This has always been true and will remain so.

I'm more interested in the conversation that surrounds the messages American society sends to parents. Because I can the make the argument that the parents who raised, say, all of the investors who crashed the market in 2008 didn't do their part. Couldn't I?

I mean - why do people post shit about their kids' successes on FB? Because they need the validation of it. They need the likes; if self-knowledge was enough, why say anything? Because, over time, culture has told parents it is not enough, that there's a very good chance no one will know how good or great your kid is unless you market them - be it for friends or for sports teams or colleges -and if no one knows, then it is not real. And it's increasingly not real because people increasingly don't have internal standards.

Hell, in the golden age of "well-raised kids" parents almost certainly intervened less on behalf of their kids. "Raising" a kid involved roofs, clothes and food. You played all day outside. You went to school and did how you did. Maybe your "range" of opportunities wasn't as vast but, within the narrow scope of a given community, you had a role. The community had a broad set of values, people generally embraced those.

When you write the words "you set your own values for your family," you are, unwittingly, suggesting something scary for parents. Now they're responsible for their own values? Good luck there. Truth is, we don't come up with that stuff on our own. We look to already-established values.

And I'm saying, increasingly, those values not of a community, but of a free market, where children are a product that needs to be bought by the world at large, and success is determined by who and what buys them.

 

I don't think Donald Trump is a good man, and I don't think his father raised a good son.

And yet, he's president. Leader of the free world. And his opponent was roundly criticized as a crook in her own right.

So America, over four years, couldn't think of anyone better - as sheer human beings - than those two to put up for the highest office.

I mean, hey, I didn't like Reagan, but he wasn't a bad man. And Jimmy Carter certainly wasn't.

Look where we are now.

The larger argument is that it's convenient to blame all the poor "inner city" parents who don't help their kids. They are hardly America's problem. In a cockeyed way, their apathy is actually a moral service to America. We have to learn grace for kids with "shitty" parents. We view them through the lens of compassion, not competition. As I've argued before, the foibles of America's underclass may draw our derision, but they actually bring us closer to humility. Imagine an America where every parent did support their kids.

We'd rip each others' throats out.

 

No, it's pretty obvious the cops are wrong. And, yet, they're often judged to be following the law. They're not only abiding by the law, they're enforcing it when they execute someone at point blank range.

 

I don't know. Standards for right and wrong and goodness go back past civilization itself.

The struggle over them - and the teaching of them - is the whole of human history.

It was ever thus.

 

Nothing I said works against the idea of supporting kids who don't get the support they need from their parents and I think I actually resent that you suggested otherwise. If you noticed, I've also been posting in favor of the welfare programs that provide food and other support for students whose parents aren't properly caring for them.

I'm not saying we don't help those kids. I'm saying we don't give their parents a free pass for their failures. And yes, choosing not to be engaged in your child's education is a failure. Giving up on helping your child is a failure. Not providing for your child is a failure.

Imagine an America in which all parents support their children? Yes, please.

 

What about Joe Kennedy Sr and some of his offspring?

 

Perfectly fair query. Although I think JFK had a kind of integrity and fidelity to the responsibilities of governance that I appreciated.