All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Mister Mets]

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma. There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing. Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

It is of course all about funding. Misbehaved students with attention deficits require more support in the classroom, which in turn requires more funding, and potentially higher taxes. I also believe that bright competent students should have the option to fast track through the grades and finish early. Overall though, I find the idea of shuffling all the bad kids into one quagmire classroom where they learn each others bad behaviors repugnant...I would definitely consider that a failure of society if it were allowed to happen.

We're not always going to have strong competent public school teachers surrounded by enough student leaders to help guide the disruptive students.

Education is one profession where someone in their first year would have the same responsibilities as someone in their tenth year, so there are going to be inexperienced teachers.

Disruptive kids and student leaders are not evenly distributed across all schools, or even schools (honors classes tend to separate these types of students.) Parents of strong students are not inclined to want their kids in classrooms with students who regularly misbehave.

As for funding, the United States spends more money per student than most other countries, so the problem isn't levels of spending.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...nd-south-korea

It is a difficult question about how to deal with disruptive students. The most disruptive students would encourage others to do the same, so I don't think you would need to quarantine all of the disruptive students. The awareness that teachers will have that option will incentivize students to have better behavior. The removal of the kids with the most extreme problems will also help those who would easily be swayed by bad influences.

It would also not have to be a standard classroom for disruptive kids. We could have smaller classrooms, where they get more individual attention, to find out how to address medical needs or problems at home.

This can all be abused, although there may be ways to mitigate that, rather than to remove the option completely.

I think it's kinda hard to tell a child that there's consequences to cyberbullying and sexual harassment when you see who the President is and what he's doing. There's obviously a line a child will cross where they are a danger to other students. But extolling the virtues of private schools by saying it's a good thing they can kick out "bad apples" and therefore that's what's wrong with public schools because they can't is just wrong. It smacks of defeatism.

There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive - he could be being abused by his drunken father, and self-medicating with illegal drugs. I think it's a really dangerous path we go down where we give up on the most needy.

If one thinks private schools are a business (which I do - they have profits and losses at the end of each year) then you can't really argue against them not receiving stimulus money that is intended for businesses. Now, it's whether these same schools should be receiving any public money in the beginning which is the real ongoing issue.

Limiting the ability to schools to look out for the interests of all students has its downsides as well.

Why would hanging an effigy by itself be considered a terrorist threat??

It strikes me as a deeply unpleasant thing to do...and obviously I’d expect police to ensure any demonstration is peaceful..but I also think some one would need to do more than that before putting them on FBI watch list, let alone deliberately ruining their lives.

Yeah, it's better to allow repugnant speech than to use the law to go after critics of elected officials in order to ruin their lives and make them pay.

The attitude on this should be the same if we're talking about protesters against a Democratic governor or Donald Trump.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...-effigy-946062

[Kieran_Frost]

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma.

Meh! I always dislike this arguement, it seems to be trying to give them an "out" for their behaviour. And it's insulting to the vast, VAST majority of good students who ALSO suffer those things, but don't behave badly. There is importance in understand why someone is how they are, that doesn't dissolve them of responsibility and blame. It's still a choice.

There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing.

I don't see it as shuffling them out, more delivering the best environment for those that actual want to do well. Why should they suffer because one or two kids aren't being responsible? Why is doing the best for the majority disturbing? Why is protecting THEIR education as well, disturbing?

Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

That's... a lot of ifs. We don't live in utopia, and this formula is impossible to guarantee replication across the country. Plus I don't think we should be requiring the kids to be solving this problem, that's a lot to ask.

I think it's kinda hard to tell a child that there's consequences to cyberbullying and sexual harassment when you see who the President is and what he's doing.

I think we should set the bar higher than what Trump does, personally

There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive - he could be being abused by his drunken father, and self-medicating with illegal drugs. I think it's a really dangerous path we go down where we give up on the most needy.

There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive, that doesn't give them a pass to act how they like with no consequence. Life and actions must have consequences, otherwise someone will never learn discipline.

[Tami]

Fears of coronavirus second wave prompt flu push at U.S. pharmacies, drugmakers

CVS Health Corp, one of the largest U.S. pharmacies, said it is working to ensure it has vaccine doses available for an anticipated surge in customers seeking shots to protect against seasonal influenza.

Rival chain Rite Aid Corp has ordered 40 percent more vaccine doses to meet the expected demand. Walmart Inc and Walgreens Boots Alliance said they also are expecting more Americans to seek these shots.

Drugmakers are ramping up to meet the demand. Australian vaccine maker CSL Ltd’s Seqirus said demand from customers has increased by 10 percent. British-based GlaxoSmithKline said it is ready to increase manufacturing as needed.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 4,428 adults conducted May 13-19 found that about 60 percent of U.S. adults plan to get the flu vaccine in the fall. Typically fewer than half of Americans get vaccinated. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the vaccine for everyone over age 6 months.

Getting a flu shot does not protect against COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus for which there are no approved vaccines. Public health officials have said vaccination against the flu will be critical to help prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with flu and COVID-19 patients.

[Tami]

If somebody posted a video like this of Trump, they'd get a visit from the Secret Service. This is not ok.

Twitter Link

Trump just posted an insane video on Facebook featuring Joe Biden in a coffin

Twitter Link

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Twitter Link

Predictably, the gutless Republicans in Congress will either look the other way or brush it off as Trump responding to the ads Biden put out about him. Of course, Jack Dorsey won't censure or shut down Trump's account, the Orange Menace is too big and too popular to take that sort of action.

[Malvolio]

Fears of coronavirus second wave prompt flu push at U.S. pharmacies, drugmakers

Yup. Saw this coming. So get ready for a flu shot shortage in the fall.

[Powerboy]

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma. There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing. Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

It is of course all about funding. Misbehaved students with attention deficits require more support in the classroom, which in turn requires more funding, and potentially higher taxes. I also believe that bright competent students should have the option to fast track through the grades and finish early. Overall though, I find the idea of shuffling all the bad kids into one quagmire classroom where they learn each others bad behaviors repugnant...I would definitely consider that a failure of society if it were allowed to happen.

There's no easy or perfect solution that's fair to everybody. The concept of "Upward Bound" tends to separate the serious achievers so they don't have to be held back by the "babysitter bound". There are sometimes special schools for students who are the worst discipline problems to the point they are ejected from normal schools. But that doesn't really solve the problem of the student who is not a particularly high achiever nor a serious problem but is stuck in a system that accepts certain behaviors without any immediate consequence that the student perceives as a consequence.

A friend of mine is a child advocate. Her job is to intercede between the school system and children to get the best possible care for children legally. But even she admits that the amount of dysfunctionality continues to grow. As she puts it, when she and I were in school, a long time ago, no matter what the first five years of a person's life had been like, they would very quickly be conditioned away from that behavior because the school system would never tolerate the level of dysfunctionality that exists now. But, for a long time, the school system has been too afraid to do anything because, in her words, they get their a**es sued off the moment they do anything and she admits it's ironic because she is one of the people doing the suing because it's her job.

It is six of one, half a dozen of the other because there is a much greater awareness of special needs including issues like ADD. Also, the current solution of sticking all the worst kids behaviorally speaking together is kind of like thinking prison will teach people better habits.

A teacher friend of mine said that most people who will do an ordinary job has learned everything they need by the time they are done with the 7th grade. But, with modern medicine and the increased population, we cannot have thirteen year olds out having babies and so on so, in some respects, the very existence of high school has become a means of prolonging childhood.

Also, it seems to me that teachers today, especially in grade school, are far more genuinely teachers. They understand what they are doing in a way that almost didn't exist when I was that age. Most of the teachers back then didn't even deserve to be called teachers and would probably be fired today for incompetence. I remember in 1st grade, this would have been 1964, a girl being locked in a closet as a punishment. The girl was clearly claustrophobic and absolutely panicking. The teacher would not let her out. When she left the room, a girl went and unlocked the door letting her out and I remember the teacher coming back and demanding we tell her who did it but none of us would. Obviously, today, she'd be fired at the very least and rightly so. I wish I could say that was an isolated incident but it wasn't. So I have to believe things are better today if far from perfect.

[PwrdOn]

Meh! I always dislike this arguement, it seems to be trying to give them an "out" for their behaviour. And it's insulting to the vast, VAST majority of good students who ALSO suffer those things, but don't behave badly. There is importance in understand why someone is how they are, that doesn't dissolve them of responsibility and blame. It's still a choice.


I don't see it as shuffling them out, more delivering the best environment for those that actual want to do well. Why should they suffer because one or two kids aren't being responsible? Why is doing the best for the majority disturbing? Why is protecting THEIR education as well, disturbing?


That's... a lot of ifs. We don't live in utopia, and this formula is impossible to guarantee replication across the country. Plus I don't think we should be requiring the kids to be solving this problem, that's a lot to ask.


I think we should set the bar higher than what Trump does, personally


There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive, that doesn't give them a pass to act how they like with no consequence. Life and actions must have consequences, otherwise someone will never learn discipline.

It's not just a handful of bad eggs that the education system is failing though, there are massive numbers of students who are being completely written off as unlikely to amount to anything at a shockingly young age, and then shuffled off into various underfunded remedial programs so that that they can spend the rest of their lives digging themselves out of a hole that some principal decided they belonged in. And of course the entire process of classifying kids as problematic is overtaken with racial bias, most affluent white kids are hardly enthusiastic learners either, but their behavior is almost always excused and they're given chance after chance and never face any real consequences for what they do. And I would think that by now it'd be common knowledge that all of the strict school discipline of the past just taught kids to bottle up their frustrations, only to unleash this rage as adults in far more destructive ways, there are scant few examples where forcing people to conform actually works.

[The no face guy]

Meh! I always dislike this arguement, it seems to be trying to give them an "out" for their behaviour. And it's insulting to the vast, VAST majority of good students who ALSO suffer those things, but don't behave badly. There is importance in understand why someone is how they are, that doesn't dissolve them of responsibility and blame. It's still a choice.


I don't see it as shuffling them out, more delivering the best environment for those that actual want to do well. Why should they suffer because one or two kids aren't being responsible? Why is doing the best for the majority disturbing? Why is protecting THEIR education as well, disturbing?


That's... a lot of ifs. We don't live in utopia, and this formula is impossible to guarantee replication across the country. Plus I don't think we should be requiring the kids to be solving this problem, that's a lot to ask.


I think we should set the bar higher than what Trump does, personally


There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive, that doesn't give them a pass to act how they like with no consequence. Life and actions must have consequences, otherwise someone will never learn discipline.

The evidence generally points to "bad apples" as students who have some sort of underlining condition, (ADHD, learning disabilities, executive functioning, anxiety) or socio economic status issues (abusive home ect) Children who come from stable 2 parent middle class homes with no underlining condition, do not usually exhibit severe bad behavior, and come to school ready to learn. So there is a certain amount of biological determinism & environmental issues in play.

I guess it depends if you believe in the inclusion model or not. I personally think with support the bad apples behavior will be nullified under a strong community classroom that has natural leaders, but as you stated, once private schools become the norm, the public school system is left holding the bag for all the students they choose not to take. My issue with private schools is that they have the option to take who they want because they are designed for profit, public schools do not because they are designed to serve the general community.

Now if a law was passed forcing private schools to take their share of bad students I wouldn't have a problem with it, and if I felt that the education of regular students was being significantly impacted than I would advocate for a different model, but in Canada, we are doing fine with our current model.

Class size varies across Canada's Provinces, it's not centralized like the UK. In general though, I believe class sizes are capped at 30, with somewhere between 27 or 28 being the norm in public schools, 15 to 20 for private schools is my understanding, but not certain.

[Jack Dracula]

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma. There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing. Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

It is of course all about funding. Misbehaved students with attention deficits require more support in the classroom, which in turn requires more funding, and potentially higher taxes. I also believe that bright competent students should have the option to fast track through the grades and finish early. Overall though, I find the idea of shuffling all the bad kids into one quagmire classroom where they learn each others bad behaviors repugnant...I would definitely consider that a failure of society if it were allowed to happen.

Ultimately, it seems we come back to PwrdOns earlier post about even distribution of funding through all districts to ensure an even playing field. That and possibly a program to identify and serve problem students earlier.
Abandonment shouldn't even be on the table IMO.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

FBI, state investigating in-custody death of man in south Minneapolis

The FBI has joined the investigation into the in-custody death of a man on Minneapolis’ South Side Monday evening, who was seen in a bystander’s video repeatedly telling police he couldn’t breathe as they held him down.

The man, whose identity wasn’t released but who is thought to be in his 40s, died at a nearby hospital a short time after the incident, during which he suffered a medical episode while struggling with officers, police spokesman John Elder said.

Elder did not elaborate on whether the man had any pre-existing medical conditions, but said that he appeared to be under the influence of something. Elder told reporters at a late-night news conference outside City Hall that officers tried to resuscitate the man at the scene, but said he was limited in what he could divulge because the case was being handled by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

It's Eric Garner all over again. Revolting!

[The no face guy]

Ultimately, it seems we come back to PwrdOns earlier post about even distribution of funding through all districts to ensure an even playing field. That and possibly a program to identify and serve problem students earlier.
Abandonment shouldn't even be on the table IMO.

I think part of the problem here is that we have people discussing public/private education from multiple countries lol, (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and each country appears to be in a completely different situation.

In Canada, equal distribution to all districts is a given, we wouldn't think otherwise. The idea that an urban district like Detroit would be given less tax payer funding than a suburban district does not exist, I find that chilling, if that's how you operate down there.

The only reason why a school gets more money in an affluent neighborhood in Canada, is because the parents donate their funds privately, which in my opinion, is there right to do so.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I think part of the problem here is that we have people discussing public/private education from multiple countries lol, (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and each country appears to be in a completely different situation.

In Canada, equal distribution to all districts is a given, we wouldn't think otherwise. The idea that an urban district like Detroit would be given less tax payer funding than a suburban district does not exist, I find that chilling, if that's how you operate down there.

The only reason why a school gets more money in an affluent neighborhood in Canada, is because the parents donate their funds privately, which in my opinion, is there right to do so.

...yeah, that's not the United States at all.

Sigh...

Our schools are funded by local real estate taxes. Because I've had a long day, I will not spell out why that's depressing.

But that's why private schools should not get our tax payer money. That would defund already struggling schools further to enable what's little more than defacto segregation

[PaulBullion]

I've seen arguments that if Trump loses in the next election, he'll run again in 2024.

Nathaniel Rakich of 538 sums it up.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/c...gain-in-2024/]

Basically, he'll have his following, and be younger than Biden, so he won't be seen as too old. He'll also be able to chalk up a loss to historically unusual circumstances, while it would be better for his legacy to have a comeback narrative than a one-termer. It might also delay the inevitable tell-all books.

Jamelle Bouie is also worried.

Jeet Heer of the Nation thinks it can help him complicate any efforts at prosecution.


So, what do you guys think? Is there a strong possibility that Trump would try again? What would the response be? I doubt there are many fans of the idea here (and Trump fans would probably claim he's likely to win in November so it's a moot point) but it's a weirdly plausible scenario.

His bone spurs might have killed him by then. He is not as healthy as Biden by a longshot.

[The Cool Thatguy]

His bone spurs might have killed him by then. He is not as healthy as Biden by a longshot.

If he lost, he might commit suicide so he can dodge any legal responsibility and have his lackeys rage about the 'Deep State'.