Pay Your Children To Go To School
Today is yet another sad day for our public education program, our entitlement mentality in America, and our media. Tom Brokaw, a new member of the White House fellows board, is pushing the idea that paying children to attend school is brilliant.
If I were to take some of the statistics used in Glenn Beck’s latest book “Common Sense” I would see a very stark picture of our education system. Glenn states the following:
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- Only 34.6% of kids in Baltimore city’s public school system received a high school diploma in 2004;
- The Indianapolis public school system handed out diplomas to just 30.5% of students;
- Detroit’s public school system struggled to have 25% of its students qualify for a high school diploma;
- 45.2% of New York City public school kids graduated with a high school diploma.
What about our nation’s capital?
On-time high school graduation rates for the D.C. area are not improving according to an Education Week study released Tuesday.
[In actuality the On-Time High School Graduation Rate is Declining]
Fewer than 50 percent of high school students graduated within four years from D.C.’s public schools in 2006, according to the study. That’s down almost 9 percent from 2005, the Washington Post reported. The figures didn’t include public charter schools.
The true rate wasn’t provided for in the biased NBC article however, it still says a lot if liberal media outlets can’t spin the story to a better statistic of over 50%.
What about our education system as a whole when compared with those of other countries?
In a 2003 study conducted by UNICEF that took the averages from five different international education studies, the researchers ranked the United States No. 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of its educational system.
So excuse me if I’m just a tad skeptical about the latest idea coming out of Washington, D.C.; the incentive to pay children to go to school. A couple months ago we were paying young women to avoid pregnancy and now we are planning on paying children to get an education!
A July 1 “NBC Nightly News” segment detailed a new use of tax payer dollars in one of the worst performing, financially struggling school systems in the country – the Washington, D.C. public school system. They are paying school children with taxpayer funds, part of a social experiment to improve school participation at the middle school level.
“Keeping the exuberant sixth graders of Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson in line on a sunny Friday is a challenge for principal Brian Betts,” former “Nightly News” anchor-turned-correspondent Tom Brokaw explained. “But this is not an assembly, it’s payday. It’s called Capital Gains – paying students for good grades, behavior and attendance, part of the massive restructuring of the D.C. schools by a 38-year-old Korean-American woman, who as chancellor, wants to transform what is by many measures the worst-performing public school system in the U.S.”
Brokaw credited Washington, D.C. Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee for being instrumental in making this program a reality. He explained the Capital Gains program was the invention of a Harvard think tank that came with a $1.35-million price tag for taxpayers.
I am very disappointed that this idea was hatched by Michelle Rhee who, beforehand was doing an excellent job at changing the DC public school system. She has taken tenure away from teachers, fired others, and has increased salaries among other measures I personally agree with. However, this idea that America should pay children for an education is despicable and will only cause worse standards among our graduating youth.
My thought on paying children is very similar to the concept of the children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” When you give the mouse a cookie, he continues to stick around asking for more and more. He got away with the cookie, so why not ask for more goodies and entitlements until the people doling out the cookies and additional perks are broke, tired, and annoyed? This is the enabling concept. If children do not learn maybe we should be looking at the teachers, the parents, or the curriculum! Why should we give incentives for children to just sit in a classroom? What happens when that incentive is gone and a college that admits them does not continue handing out “cookies?” My guess: they will be left with the mentality of a drug addict. Students will now be addicted to money and benefits and will become lazy and complacent if they do not receive their immediate gratification or, in this incident, cash. They will become spoiled and even more uneducated.
What good does paying a child to attend school do, if the curriculum and the teaching is so incredibly horrid? Teachers are not even giving an accurate representation of American history let alone capable of making children smarter via remuneration. What happened to the days when it was fun to go to school? When teachers were interesting and engaging? Where free thought and opinion was allowed and not dissuaded? If we cannot teach our youth and encourage their brains, imagination, dreams, and knowledge to grow – then what good will that really do us in the end?
Meanwhile India, China, Russia, and various other countries are way ahead of us on the learning curve. Their children are engineers, scientists, doctors, and the like. America worries too much about feelings and emotions, and pushing their political agendas on students rather than caring about truth, facts, logic, and wisdom.
I was fortunate to have teachers who believed in free thought and not indoctrination. I was lucky enough to look forward to school, taking electives that fired my synapses, like English Sarcasm 101 (no joke); Graphic Arts, Call of the Wild [an English course where you went camping, dissected poetry/short stories, and studied human nature], etc. I wasn’t stuck in a government mandated curriculum that didn’t engage my brain or hindered my thoughts to the point where I could only think inside a small box. Unfortunately, that same public school that I attended has changed for the worse (and that was since 1999).
As they say when students receive poor grades as a whole – it’s more a sign of the teacher than those being taught. I could say the same regarding graduation and attendance rates – it’s more a sign of the government agenda than those being taught.
Through A Baby’s Tears, God Speaks
After sitting through newscasts leading up to the commencement and watching protesters get arrested who attempted to get onto campus grounds over the weekend and earlier last week, I came to the conclusion that people willingly toss principles aside to jump on a band wagon and in turn become lemmings of a cause or particular individual.
It’s incredibly sad and disheartening that a college that is rooted in Catholic principles could throw away the very tenants on which the school stands. The invitation of the most pro-abortion candidate, who has gone so far as to vote for infanticide, is probably one of the most despicable slaps in the face yet, to the Catholic faith.
I’m not Catholic and don’t feel it completely right to get into detail or opine on the matter, however, I can see where Catholics and ardent pro-life advocates would feel heart broken and devastated that a prestigious Catholic school would stoop to this level when they could have avoided the controversy all together. I personally feel that if Obama were more moderate on the issue, which his record shows anything but, we would not be having this outcry.
Prominent Catholic priests (Father Norman Weslin), politicians (Keyes), and abortion figures (Norma McCorvey a.k.a Jane Roe), all came to protest and support life. They protested in a peaceful manner only to be carted away by police throughout the weekend. Over 40 people were arrested and both Father Weslin and Alan Keyes were arrested twice. Those who were incarcerated with Keyes and Father Weslin said it was the best moment of their lives – they were able to hear two of the most principled national figures speak on the issue in the holding cell – when bail was made for the individuals, nobody wanted to leave – they wanted to continue listening…
I spoke with some moderate friends of mine (pro-choice) on Sunday in regards to the speech and all were in agreement, to my chagrin, that Notre Dame was in the wrong, mainly because it professes to be a religious school and acted against its founding principles.
I watched the speech that Obama gave and listened to his words. If I were a graduating senior and that was the speech given at my commencement, although I didn’t pay money for it, I would at least attempt to get a refund for the 45 minutes of my life that were wasted listening to another campaign speech, pontifications about public policy, and the story of Obama’s life. It’s my understanding that commencement speeches are directed at a graduating class, at their future, and what awaits them. Obama’s speech started out in that manner, but quickly turned into his usual hollow rhetoric.
The most poignant and heart wrenching part of his speech came during his discussion of abortion. It was not what Obama said regarding the issue, but rather a baby in the audience crying the moment he began talking about abortion rights – it even made him stumble and pause when he began his talking points. The baby, over everything else in that convocation center, could be heard. It was something that only God could enact; that baby’s cry was the single best argument against abortion.
That moment, of all others, made my otherwise waste of listening to his empty lecture, all the more worth it. Sure there were protesters and hecklers who were thrown out during his speech and who also made him stumble, but there is nothing as mind changing as the most innocent among us.
Obama Budget Dumps Funds for Jailing Illegal Immigrants and Teaching Abstinence
President Obama voted in the Senate to provide additional funding for a program targeted for elimination by his budget that provides states a federal subsidy to offset the costs of jailing illegal immigrants.
Killing the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAPP) would save $400 million, according to Obama’s budget for fiscal 2010 released Thursday. It’s one of the largest non-defense discretionary cuts proposed in the president’s budget.
Think along with me here folks… Each illegal immigrants, studies show, cost Americans roughly $1 million dollars. Democrats are trying to push through a new Amnesty bill for nearly 12 million illegal immigrants. $1M x $12M = More than $400M! The logic of Democrats make absolutely no sense at all. They never plan ahead or measure the possible long-term repercussions of their actions. Obama sees money that can be cut now – so he doesn’t, or can’t, look beyond that. This action will actually cost us more money in the end.
Obama cuts abstinence-only programsout of the budget as well. Many argue that abstinence is not realistic in today’s society, but that has become more the norm due to Hollyweird and others advocating sex on a regular basis. Sex sells and sex is becoming the norm. My personal belief is to teach both and emphasize that the only sure fire way to avoid getting pregnant and contracting an STD is abstinence. What doesn’t make sense to me is the budget cut for this.
The White House wants to get out of the business of telling youngsters “Just Say No to Sex.”
President Obama is putting his own ideological stamp on federal spending in his proposed 2010 budget by cutting cash for abstinence-only sex ed programs.
He’s taken a scalpel to a pair of $100 million George W. Bush-era programs that exclusively preached abstinence. Obama is replacing them with $110 million for comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention.
“It’s about time that evidence-based management – and sanity – return to family planning programs,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan).
Think along with me again. The more young unwed mothers you create, the more welfare recipients you create. The more welfare recipients you create, the more loyal Democrat voters you create.
Thus, Democrat sex-education must always focus on getting teenagers to have more sex, not less.
Another important point to note – see what I bolded above? How is this a tax cut? If he is replacing the PAIR of programs that each equaled $100 million with only one program worth $110 million then it is, but the writing is very vague and misleading here… the question is if he is going to replace both programs with two other programs worth more money than the previous ones…
A picture of what his budget cuts really look like in the scheme of things:
Dumping the say-no-to-sex programs were a tiny fraction of the $17 billion Team Obama trimmed from its $3.4 trillion funding budget request.Overall, New Yorkers say Obama’s budget helps the city – but raised several red flags.
One is Obama’s plan to cut $600 million from the federal terrorism insurance program.
Maybe that’s what New Yorkers should be focusing on – not sex! Wake up!
A Win For Creationism
From Fox News:
Student Wins Suit After Teacher Says Creationism ‘Superstitious Nonsense’
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” during a classroom lecture.
U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett.
Farnan sued in U.S. District Court in 2007, alleging that Corbett violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by making repeated comments in class that were hostile to Christian beliefs.
The lawsuit cited more than 20 statements made by Corbett during one day of class, all of which were recorded by Farnan, to support allegations of a broader teaching method that “favors irreligion over religion” and made Christian students feel uncomfortable.
During the course of the litigation, the judge found that most of the statements cited in the court papers did not violate the First Amendment because they did not refer directly to religion or were appropriate in the context of the classroom lecture.
But Selna ruled Friday that one comment, where Corbett referred to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense,” did violate Farnan’s constitutional rights.
Finally, a win for a Christian; we actually do have rights! It works both ways, and for once, it worked in favor for those of us who believe. I hope this sends a message that Christians are not going to lie down and take it any more.
