21–30 of 66 posts
"Virtually every other industrialized nation provides more government aid for their children than America does. " Somehow I knew that would be the main point as soon as I saw the title and the publication. For many, the answer to all problems is government spending.
"Virtually every other industrialized nation provides more government aid for their children than America does. " Somehow I knew that would be the main point as soon as I saw the title and the publication. For many, the answer to all problems is government spending.
Given the increasingly inverse educational outcomes relative to per pupil spending, it really does sound like they've reduced a complex situation down to a single variable that has a rather poor predicative function.
"Last summer, my kids and I spent a month in Greece, where their grandfather lives." Very first sentence of the article. God do I hate this style. Do we always need to start with your own, personal, true-to-you, totally-happened experience this one time? Is it a new thing or it's always been like that and I didn't realize it?
During Covid, when I read that the US required children to wear facemasks from the age of two , it sent a shiver down my spine.
Why does that upset you? Children should be protected against airborne transmittable sickness. Also, we are still in COVID it's not over.
During Covid, when I read that the US required children to wear facemasks from the age of two , it sent a shiver down my spine.
Why does that upset you? Children should be protected against airborne transmittable sickness. Also, we are still in COVID it's not over.
COVID is around, and always will be. And "protecting" causes more harm and weakens the development of the immune system.
All well known and common sense stuff, to those who don't live in fear of merely getting sick.
"Last summer, my kids and I spent a month in Greece, where their grandfather lives." Very first sentence of the article. God do I hate this style. Do we always need to start with your own, personal, true-to-you, totally-happened experience this one time? Is it a new thing or it's always been like that and I didn't realize it?
Is it really so distracting from the larger point? Are you aware of counter evidence, proving Greece is systematically neglecting its children? Keep reading
And maybe the article eventually uses data that goes beyond "my 2 weeks visiting my dad", but then why do I need this idiotic intro? Is it supposed to build some sort of credibility, like "I was there, I saw it, I experienced it, now you have to agree with me"?
Anyway, no I didn't keep reading.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really so distracting from the larger point? Are you aware of counter evidence, proving Greece is systematically neglecting its children? Keep reading
Yes it is distracting. I'm sure Greece, like all other countries in the world except America, treats its children wonderfully, but I don't need to know that the author spent 2 weeks on vacation there, and everybody was so nice to their kids in the bookstore or the library. And maybe the article eventually uses data that goes beyond "my 2 weeks visiting my dad", but then why do I need this idiotic intro? Is it suppose…
Anecdotes aren't bad if they lead into something more substantive. E.g., "My experience with my kids in Greece got me interested in [concept], and here is the data that I collected; my conclusion is that..."
But no, it's usually like: Check out this experience I had or quirky thing I do. Now let's talk about something tangentially related.
It's really a need to vent being displayed most prominently. Maybe covid/social media/WFM/inflation/whatever you want to blame has made people lonely to the point of trying to add water cooler talk into their publications.
Children don’t vote. If they would only get up off their butts and vote, they’d get some representation. Imagine what they could do if they pooled all their lunch money and started a SuperPAC! Then Congress would take notice. Their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do the voting for them. They just want lower taxes.
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Should we compare taxes to slavery, or to rent? If you refuse to pay your rent, you can end up homeless, and then they may indeed take your children away from you. Many places still have anti-vagrancy laws on the books–even if very inconsistently enforced–so if they really want to, they can imprison you for homelessness too.
Even if you own your own home – you bought it (or the land it is built on) from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, and so on. In settler-colonial countries such as the US, Canada or Australia, the chain of title almost always ends in a government land grant. So if the government which claims the right to tax your private property (and its inhabitants) is illegitimate, your own title to that property isn't legitimate either. That government land grant was issued subject to the condition that grantee and occupants pay taxes, and nemo dat quod non habet (the buyer can have no better title than the seller). True freehold doesn't really exist, all freehold titles are really a form of leasehold (transferrable leases), with the sovereign state as the ultimate landlord–and if you don't like it, you can always choose to rent from some other landlord instead, aka emigration.
If you are an indigenous person, you may indeed have a valid argument that your ancestors' ownership of the land long predates the existence of the current government, and hence the taxes it levies are a form of theft from you. But if you aren't indigenous, then that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
So this article goes on for paragraphs blaming republicans and evangelicals and the red scare and slavery. But why do democrats (apparently) hate their children as well? After all, education is 90% funded by states and municipalities. That’s not unique to the US—education is a local issue everywhere from Sweden to Canada to Germany. Why are schools falling apart in Baltimore and Chicago? Why aren’t social services fo…
Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier. Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor. European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the…
That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it.
> Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.
But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money.
It's not just reading scores. Conservatives have greater well-being on various objective measures: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand.... That includes their kids: https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-teenagers-general....
Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country.").
> European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow?
So this article goes on for paragraphs blaming republicans and evangelicals and the red scare and slavery. But why do democrats (apparently) hate their children as well? After all, education is 90% funded by states and municipalities. That’s not unique to the US—education is a local issue everywhere from Sweden to Canada to Germany. Why are schools falling apart in Baltimore and Chicago? Why aren’t social services fo…
Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier. Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor. European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the…
One of the states rayiner cited Idaho as outperforming is Delaware. Idaho does not have a "small fraction" of the population of Delaware, it has almost twice Delware's population
It is also unclear why, above a certain minimum, population in itself should make any significant difference to a jurisdiction's ability to provide a quality education. As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.
Furthermore, Idaho is a lot more diverse than you seem to think it is. Only 80% of the state's population is non-Hispanic white; in K-12 public school enrolments, it is only 73%. [0] Deep red Idaho's schools outperform those of light blue Maine, despite the fact that Idaho has close to 40% more people, and significantly greater ethnic diversity (Maine's population is 92% non-Hispanic white)