You have no way of knowing that.
If the child's behavor is THAT bad, suspend the brat for the sake of the other children's education, and make a parental conference to correct the behavioral problem a condition of letting the child return. But fining the child's parent is carrying Big Brother too far.
You don't understand. Nanny-state advocates, such as Leon, make up the rules for _other_people_. They don't expect -- or intend -- the rules to apply to themselves.
Oh, bullshit, Leon -- you advocate the Nanny State every chance you get. Your insistence on legislating the SawStop is a prime example.
What state is that?
And nobody is saying that there are no good teachers. The trouble is that a few good teachers do not make a good education system. They have to _all_ be good.
It's a funny thing, but most parents agree that education in the US is in trouble but that the school _their_ child attends is one of the few good ones.
|| I'd like to suggest that in the context of purely good intention, || the distinction between "right or wrong" is of considerable || importance. Would you have your state and your schools teach || otherwise? | | Can't teach "right and wrong," as we know. Can teach the concept, | but even there you have to select your analogy carefully. Ten | commandments bad, Supreme Court decisions good, as long as they | support the most vocal faction.
Yuppers. We _can_ teach history - and if we don't dumb it down to the memorization of dates and names, then we can examine significant events and look at their causes and precursors. Perhaps I should have substituted "works" for "good" and "doesn't work" for bad; and perhaps I should have indicated that there's usually some grey area between (but, in my mind, the grey area mostly represents "doesn't work very well.")
Thinking back to my own school days, I dimly remember being invited to decide for myself how well things worked out. I do remember quite clearly my seventh grade history/social studies teacher's positively wolfish grin when I asked why there seemed to be so many paths leading to undesirable consequences - and so few leading to the desirable ones.
| Aren't "rights" about the end rather than the means and | "obligations" about the means to the end? Of course those would | _never_ be the inalienable rights granted by The Creator....
Methinks this pond is muddy enough already. :-)
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA
He'd be referring to me. I don't *think* I'm in your kf...
You've unfortunately had the same frustrating experience arguing with him that I have had on a few occasions. Don't take it personally: he just gets that way when someone demonstrates that he's wrong.
So Government is going to confiscate half a month's wages of a poor single working mother, to punish her for a lack of common courtesy? The teacher's already on salary, so a parental no'show doesn't cost the government anything. And the teacher is probably grading homework while waiting for the parent to show, so he/she doesn't really lose time anyway. If any time was lost, it would be maybe 15 minutes, If a teacher's time is worth $30/hour, that works out to $7.50 worth of lost time, tops. And for that you want the government to take food off the child's table, and clothes off its back?
We are a capitalistic society, where free enterprise and competition are the driving forces for excellence. But there is no competition in the education field. Most parents can't afford to send their children to private school, and lack the time to home-school their children because it tales all their spare time just to put bread on the table. They are forced to send their children to public schools, giving government an effective monopoly on the education of their children. What is needed is not more government power over parents, but more power for parents to have a meaningful choice in the education of their children. What is needed is a way to force public schools to compete for the education dollars.
Taking bread from a child's mouth to punish the parent for a lack of courtesy does not benefit the child.
The fine itself is not reasonable. The whole concept of fining the parent is not reasonable. It's unconscionable for the reasons I stated above.
It doesn't waste the teacher's time. Unless the teacher is badly disorganized, he or she will be using that time to grade papers, or prepare for the next day in class, or forthering his or her own education and self-improvement, or even furthering some personal objective having nothing in particular to do with school. If the teacher is so unproductive as to sit there actually wasting time, he/she is probably unfit to be a teacher in the first place.
This "fine" system doesn't EVER require a parent to meet with a teacher. As described. The parent can avoid a fine by simply refusing to make an appointment with the teacher. The fine kicks in only if the parent makes an appointment then fails to show. And if the parent DOES show, there's nothing to show forcing a parent to attend will change the behavior of either the parent or the child in either way. The "fine" system is nothing more or less than a bullying tactic, giving a teacher the power to force a parent to bend to his or her will.
Assuming there is a need for a parent and teacher to communicate about a child, there are other options, such as:
The teacher could talk to the parent by phone.
The teacher could use e-mail if available, or "snail mail" in any case.
The teacher could make an appointment with the parent to meet face to face at the child's home, or even show up unannounced. If it's the teacher who feels the need to communicate, let the teacher make the effort.
From your support of this "fine" system, you obviously like government involvement more than I do.
But doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing at all. And this "fine" system is the wrong thing.
I think we'd all agree with that last, but if we don't break the cycle, our kids, and their kids, will still be paying to haul someone else's ashes--er, asses--down the road, with both sides bitching, one because it doesn't get enough and the other because it pays too much.
I don't know what the break-step is, nor, as far as I can tell, does anyone else, but if government is to intervene, it has to be consistent, and reasonable--both of which seem to be problems for ANY government after a program is in place for more than a year or so. Reliability, doing it the same way each time, is probably a lot more important than reasonableness in the long run, but I still don't believe legislating morality, or common sense, ever works for any period of time without draconian enforcement. And one thing needs to be certain: the programs, however they are developed, absolutely must be under local control. We've got far too many current and past examples of Federal programs going places other than where they were originally aimed.
Besides, if (if--you like that one?) someone in government is going to steal from me, I'd as soon it was the guy up the road, so we keep the money in the community.
As I said in another post, doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing at all. And this "fine" system is the wrong thing.
Leon claims to be a conservative, I think. I am a liberal. Sort of.
I want the government out of my life, and the lives of everyone else, as much as is realistically possible in today's world. I do NOT want to see any increase in government power, unless said increase is vital to survival of the U.S. as a nation. We are at a point where a 50% decrease in Federal power would be an excellent idea, immediately followed by a 25% decrease in state power.
One difference is that you can change your religion about as easily as you can change your hat. But you can't change your government, except by revolution, or renouncing your citizenship, both pretty drastic measures.
This "fine" system doesn't do that. All it does is take bread from the mouth of a child because a parent was discourteous to a teacher. And that's wrong.
Well, this "fine" system will do nothing to relieve you of that burden.
I wonder what would have been the result if you had made an appointment with the parent, who faild to show and was fined $500 as a result? Would the fine have straightened out this problem child? Or would it have bred more resentment in him, leading to even worse consequences?
Connecticut. For some reason, I thought you lived here.
All public school teachers are required to start an approved Master's program within 5 years, and complete it within 8, at their own expense. Private and parochial schools are exempt and often have lower requirements and lower pay.
I believe a master's degree right off the bat cancels the second bachelor's, but I'm not positive.
I can't find anything about either requirement in the regulations. There is a requirement for additional coursework, but I find nothing that requires a second degree. In any case the UCONN program results in both Bachelors and Masters degrees in one go along with subject specialization.
Further, your timing doesn't really coincide with the duration of any of the certificates.
The complete text of the regulations can be found at .
Sigh...
Do you know any public school teachers? Will any of them talk to you?
Ask them to explain it to you slowly. The minimum requirements lead to two bachelors or a masters.
I don't teach pigs to sing, and I'm not interested in having minor details picked to death, so I'm really not interested in playing.
And uphill difficult, to boot ....
The parent (one, and female) was usually in the next room. What a sociopath thinks of others was probably best indicated by one of the arrests having been for stealing the wedding ring from this nearly blind and diabetically disabled woman.
Nature of the sociopath that he has no consideration beyond his immediate desires. Or "rights" if you prefer.
Yes, many of our children are eligible for free or reduced breakfasts and lunches. We also receive additional State/Federal funds for part time in-classroom support over other schools in our district among other things.
Is this fair that one school receives additional State and Federal support? One thing I know is that it is common practice for the parent volunteer groups of each school to host two fundraisers during the school year. The funds go to technology purchases, playground equipment, field trips, assemblies, etc. I was made aware that a neighboring elementary school in our district commonly raises $25,000 at one of their events. Their neighborhood is comprised of McMansions and those families can apparently afford to sponsor/donate large sums of money to their kids. Our school, like I mentioned, is in a low income neighborhood in which we parents were lucky to top $13,000 for our "big" fund raiser this year. Given that the parent funds augment the school budget from the district, I ask again, is it fair that one school receives more State and Federal funds than another?
I agree absolutely that poor families are just as capable of supporting their child's education as higher income families are theirs. I don't mean financial, but by being participatory in the process and acting the role of the at-home teacher support. When parents are involved on a regular basis their kids can't help but succeed.
My point was that in this example, a system of punishing the parent for not meeting with the teacher would not have benefitted the student.
To do nothing in fear of "worse consequences" is a cowards attitude, a non-starter for solving any problem, and a good way to guarantee their continuance.
Your "point" is actually blunt supposition/opinion, to which you are certainly entitled, but which provably has no basis whatsoever in fact.
What we _do_ know as FACT: The current system, which does nothing to hold an irresponsible parent accountable, is not working.
What we now have: An attempt at addressing the problem, distasteful as it may be, that may or may not work, but inarguably putting "accountability" precisely where it belongs, on the irresponsible parent.
A novel concept, that has both conservatives and liberals in an uproar and in bed together, and, observably, a little too much for knee-jerks on either side.
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