I just heard that the Education and Jobs Bill passed, no thanks to most of the republicans. Why is it that it seems to be OK to spend billions and billions on a war that shows no sign of ever ending, but spending money on education is considered wasteful? Guess what, we are already behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to education, and are falling farther behind every year. We are rapidly losing our position in regards to science, technology and business, but somehow spending less money on education makes sense. Really? A general will beg for more money if they feel they are losing. A company will go out and pay millions for a CEO if they think it will improve the company. Our students are doing worse compared to the rest of the world, well then we should cut back on teachers, reduce classroom expenditures, increase class sizes and cut back on the number of days or hours students spend in class. Yeah that should fix it.
Oh, and if you have to pay big paychecks to get the best CEO's, basketball players, lawyers or doctors, what makes you think that a small paycheck will bring in the best teachers?
PS - teachers cannot fix this issue alone. We need parents, students, communities, businesses and government. If we all simply try to pass the buck off on the teachers this problem will never improve. They cannot do it all alone.
There are no quick or easy answers, but education in this country will never improve as long as it's looked at as some sort of wasteful luxury. We cannot write off educating the poor, because it's harder. We can continue to scrimp on education, but we'd better plan on spending more on prisons, and losing our edge over the competition from other nations, because without an educated involved population that's exactly where we are headed.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Gay Marriage
Yeah!
There is at least one judge in California who's not prejudice, but is willing to realize that proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Do we not have any bigger fish to fry? (War, economic collapse, educational failures, etc...) Personally I don't care which adult humans marry which other adult humans. The sanctity of marriage. Please! If you can rationally (without religious dogma) show me how gay marriage will make it difficult for heterosexual marriages to take place, please do.
"The US Bureau of Vital Statistics last estimate (from 2005) puts the divorce rate at: 0.38% per capita* or 0.76% per capita* (corrected).
This "Per Capita" estimate includes non-married people as well however and gives a low number because non-married people do not get divorced / newer studies only offset new marriages against new divorces. The 'real' numbers are a lot higher: 40% to 43% of all marriages end in divorce per the last estimate by the US Census bureau (This estimate has been accepted by statistics as a truer representation than VS records). "
With so many heterosexual marriages failing, what makes marriage so sacred? Originally (and still in many places around the world) marriage was a property agreement between two families, usually created to make connections and increase family wealth. It was nice if you loved your partner, but not necessary. Women in the past and still today been imprisoned or impeded by marriage. The idea of romantic love and marriage is fairly recent western European concept, and often very unrealistic. Today marriage is used to include or deny people access to health care, property and major life decisions. If two people wish to create a legal bond, called marriage, that will create a partnership which allows them to make major life decisions together, it shouldn't matter what gender they are. A religious organization still has the right not to marry them. So once again how about the separation of church and state? The government cannot go into churches to tell them how they should run their lives so what gives religious groups the right to tell everyone in this country how they should live? Do we really want a government like Iran where religion rules all aspects of law?
What are these prop 8 people so afraid of? Are they worried that everyone will then want to become gay, and then no one will have children and the human race will become extinct? I had a friend who had unknowingly married a gay man and when he came out of the closet and asked for a divorce she was very hurt, and today harbors resentments towards gay individuals. The thing is, if this man had not felt the pressure to hide his true nature, they would never have gotten married in the first place. It's time to stop forcing people to deny their true who they are. As long as you are not causing another harm what is the problem?
Let's try to get religion and emotion out of this subject and look at it objectively and rationally.
There is at least one judge in California who's not prejudice, but is willing to realize that proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Do we not have any bigger fish to fry? (War, economic collapse, educational failures, etc...) Personally I don't care which adult humans marry which other adult humans. The sanctity of marriage. Please! If you can rationally (without religious dogma) show me how gay marriage will make it difficult for heterosexual marriages to take place, please do.
"The US Bureau of Vital Statistics last estimate (from 2005) puts the divorce rate at: 0.38% per capita* or 0.76% per capita* (corrected).
This "Per Capita" estimate includes non-married people as well however and gives a low number because non-married people do not get divorced / newer studies only offset new marriages against new divorces. The 'real' numbers are a lot higher: 40% to 43% of all marriages end in divorce per the last estimate by the US Census bureau (This estimate has been accepted by statistics as a truer representation than VS records). "
With so many heterosexual marriages failing, what makes marriage so sacred? Originally (and still in many places around the world) marriage was a property agreement between two families, usually created to make connections and increase family wealth. It was nice if you loved your partner, but not necessary. Women in the past and still today been imprisoned or impeded by marriage. The idea of romantic love and marriage is fairly recent western European concept, and often very unrealistic. Today marriage is used to include or deny people access to health care, property and major life decisions. If two people wish to create a legal bond, called marriage, that will create a partnership which allows them to make major life decisions together, it shouldn't matter what gender they are. A religious organization still has the right not to marry them. So once again how about the separation of church and state? The government cannot go into churches to tell them how they should run their lives so what gives religious groups the right to tell everyone in this country how they should live? Do we really want a government like Iran where religion rules all aspects of law?
What are these prop 8 people so afraid of? Are they worried that everyone will then want to become gay, and then no one will have children and the human race will become extinct? I had a friend who had unknowingly married a gay man and when he came out of the closet and asked for a divorce she was very hurt, and today harbors resentments towards gay individuals. The thing is, if this man had not felt the pressure to hide his true nature, they would never have gotten married in the first place. It's time to stop forcing people to deny their true who they are. As long as you are not causing another harm what is the problem?
Let's try to get religion and emotion out of this subject and look at it objectively and rationally.
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