The kids are a big part of what is wrong with the system for sure. Here is a good example. When I was in high school we didn't have a school uniform, but there was a dress code. If you wore shorts they had to be low enough that they came to within 2 inches of your knees. No tank tops, no spaghetti tops or sleeveless shirts. Now girls dress like strippers and guys have their pants so low their entire asses are hanging out. When I asked a teacher why the school lets them dress that way I was told that they can't stop them. Too many parents complained that this was the style so the school had to give in.

The kids run the schools these days. Hell, my nephew literally failed every class his 8th grade year and the school told my brother that they wouldn't hold him back unless his parents instructed them to. He is my brother's step-son and his mom refused to hold him back so he moved on to high school where he was expelled at the start of his junior year. He failed half his classes his freshman and sophomore, but still allowed to finish up a few homework packets and graduate. He has a diploma in hand and is, honestly, sadly, a functioning illiterate. He reads and writes at about a 5th grade level.

Here my hometown a garbage man makes $75k a year.

They went on strike recently, all city employees did. The city - who is nearly bankrupt - wanted to cut their health benefits by 5%. The went on strike. The city turned around and outsourced all of the city functions. Opps.

This is not true at all. The kids do not run the school.

My kid's school doesn't have a uniform, but it surely has a dress code and it's well enforced. Tank tops, cut off sleeves, and no spaghetti straps. Spaghetti straps aren't even allowed at the dances. My was kid was sent home last year once because her shorts were "too short".

And somewhere along the line if someone's kid reads and writes at the 5th grade level and graduates from high school... This shouldn't be blamed on the teachers. Kids gets report cards sent home, parents should know what level they are reading at, as well as their STAR testing. If at some point in time a kid is below level, the parents need to do something about it. My kid was doing poor in math last year. It's not the teacher's fault - They teacher has twenty-four kids in her class and twenty-three of them are doing fine in math. We were told she was testing well below average in math and she was failing. We started paying more attention, helping her with her homework, making sure assignments were turned in, and this summer we bought her extra study material (books) and put her in tutoring. My kid just missed two weeks of school due to our vacation, took a math test that was covered when she was out on vacation, and got a perfect score.

While I'm ranting... We bitch about how we spend less and less on schools... Have you been to your kid's school recently? The blackboard has been replaced by a dry erase board, but otherwise it's the same - same desks, same books, same pencils, same silly stuff on the walls that we had when we were kids. But there's more - the overhead projector has been replaced with a digital camera that hangs above her desk so students can watch what the teach is doing... The teacher also has a laptop, a classroom computer, and remember that tall cart with the VCR and TV? That's been replaced by a DVD system with a wall mounted flat screen... Seems to me like they have it all now, yet oddly enough we blame everything on the schools and our teachers.

The problem isn't the schools or the teachers. It's the parents.

I was driving past a high school in Torrance a couple days ago. With the wife. At first I thought it was a college/CC or something then I realized it was a high school. Girls were in hot pants, skin tight leggings and boobs hanging out with no bras. I almost had an accident.

Some gonna be some fine talent in a year or two... and in 5-10 years when Sodom and Gomorrah is really in full swing, will be a good place for picking up new models.

No wonder kids are failing and dropping out.

While I don't have kids many of my friends do and most of them have kids that are now in grades between 6th and high school. The grocery store I mostly go to is right next door to the high school. If you go over there at lunch time or after school the place is swarming with kids (as you would expect it to be) and it looks like a shift change at a strip club. A while back I saw a girl wearing white pants that were basically see-through. You could see her orange thong sticking up out the top of them and you could see right through them. She had a shirt on that was basically a short tank top that showed off her belly ring. She wasn't the only one. There is an endless parade of short shorts, skimpy tops, lowrise jeans and various other stripperwear. Maybe it isn't every high school, but this one clearly has no dress code or a very relaxed one.

Add in that a lot of the kids are just little disrespectful pricks. A friend of mine is a cop who has 2 daughters. One just got out of high school a year ago and the other is a sophomore now. Between being a parent and occasionally going to the school on calls he is around the kids a decent amount. Several times he has seen students tell teachers to go to hell and screw themselves. When asked why they take it the teachers just tell them that they choose what battles to fight.

If I told a teacher to go to hell I wouldn't be here typing this because my mom would have killed me and disposed of my body.

I'm not saying it is all kids. There are a lot of good kids, but it just seems like there is an overabundance of shit stains these days. . . but maybe it is just where I live.


You are correct that it is the parents problems. . . to a degree.

The problem with my nephew is his mom. She never EVER punishes him. He does what he wants, he says what he wants. He is a disrespectful little shithead and she goes to great ends to make excuses for him. He has been arrested several times and, like I say, failed all his 8th grade classes and eventually got expelled from high school. She refused to hold him back, because, well. . . she never stands up to him. She has done him a terrible disservice by teaching him that there are no consequences for his actions. Not too long ago he got arrested for breaking into a car. Now he is 18 so they held him for 4 days until he could get someone to bail him out. Since this is no longer juvenile he got real punishment. The judge gave him 6 months in jail on a 2 year suspended sentence. Basically if he can go 2 years without getting into trouble the charges will be dropped. If he gets in more trouble he will have to serve his 6 months. I am about 98% sure he will end up serving that 6 months.

So his mom failed him. However, at some point I think the school needs to step and say, "These are our standards. If you can't meet them you don't graduate and move on." That is how it was when I was in 8th grade. My brother failed 2 classes his 8th grade year and he had to go to summer school to make them up or he couldn't graduate and move on. My mom didn't have a say in the matter. When you are unlucky enough to have a shitty parent sometimes the system needs to step in on your behalf, but now the schools get paid based on graduation rates so they just move everyone along and let other people deal with them later.

There is a school in Philly (I think, but it my be Pittsburgh) where everything is digital. Instead of being issued text books the kids are issued laptops. All their books are on the computers. The teachers can drag and drop assignments and every night the school has at least one teacher available online for tutoring. They teach not only the fundamentals, but the teach the kids how to use the computer (if needed) and they have school uniforms. Everything is streamlined and students there do very well. If kids gets out of line the parents are immediately brought in on the discipline and then if the parents don't do anything about the kids are kicked out of the school. I will admit that the school requires kids to apply and interview to come there so, like private schools, they can cherry pick the best students, but I think the school really shows how they can match modern technology with a little old school discipline and come up with something good.

It isn't always how much money you spend, but how you spend that money that counts.

And the problem is?

Kidding aside, sounds like a crappy school and a lack of parental supervision. Oh, I'm not kidding myself; I know my kid will be sneaking out clothes out of the house that I'm not aware of.

Honestly, tonight I went to the local high school for the football game - Friday Night Lights and all of that stuff. The dress code after school hours is relaxed and I did question some of what I saw. But I also think society has changed in a big way. I didn't see anything that was outrageous.

Some kids will always be like that.

I'm was friends with a family that had three boys and one daughter. The parents seem really nice, mother weighs more than I do (and I'm overweight myself), but they don't pay any attention to what their kids are doing. All three boys are not yet legal drinking age and on probation. I'm not sure how a parent can fail to that degree.

We decided about a year go to keep our kid away from their kids.

I've never punished my kid. It's not difficult - teach your kid to be respectful and how to have fun doing it. If your driving and swearing at all of the crappy drivers, well, your kids picks up on that. Instead be calm and point out what the other driver is doing wrong and hope your kid picks up on that also. If my kid ever steps out of line I'm not afraid to raise my voice, although I never ever get angry.

I take it back - i have grounded my kid... for bad grades last year.

And I'm not sure I'm not the perfect parent either.

My kid's school isn't all digital, but there has been some discussion about it at the high school level - which is (gasp!) a year and a half away. However, they do have a computer lab and do a lot on computers.

I think being middle class is the curse that to be bear for whole life.....all problems is first tasted by the middle class people....

As far as dress stuff goes. I don't really care what they wear. I'm sure our parents thought some of the stuff we wore was obscene, but to me it is kind of a symptom of a larger problem, or at least one of many symptoms.

I have friends who rarely punish their kids and when they do it is pretty lightly and yet they have great kids that do well in school, are respectful etc. For me it is about communication. If your kid screws up and you sit them down and explain to them why what they did was wrong and why they shouldn't be doing that, it can go a long ways with them.

My brother's soon to be ex-wife, and I'm sure many other parents, don't do that though. Instead of explaining why he are wrong when he screws up, my nephew's mom works hard to come up with excuses for why it isn't her son's fault and that he is really the victim here.

the middle class shouldn't be so worried about the super rich - they've always existed and always will. most normal people don't even dream of being that rich and don't care.

it's the public sector workers getting paid fat paychecks and moreso fat pensions and always asking for more that should piss them off.

small businessman, whether he/she runs a sandwich shop, carpet cleaning, sells insurance, whatever - that person risks his own money to start his business, pays rent, pays for equipment, pays some employees, works his ass off, small business owners typically take NO vacations until years into a small business when it's successful. If that person works their ass off they will make the 70K per year the garbageman makes, the school nurse makes, the teacher makes, guys in trade unions make, middle management types working for the federal and state goverment - teachers put in 3 years of undergraduate school and one year of teachers college, wow what a huge undertaking that is, takes a real genius and so much work to make it through that. the small businessman has to pay for his own retirement - the only upside for the small businessman is the chance his business takes off and he makes $200,000 or $2,000,000 a year. I don't have stats but I bet just as many of those small businessmen go bankrupt as those who make it big.

Somebody posted an article here not that long ago about state employed California beach lifeguards - retiring in their 40's with $800,000 pensions! That's the middle class's tax money funding those pensions.

A good teacher is worth 70K a year or more - 75% of them aren't good teachers, they do the minimum, inspire nobody, make an upper middle class income with job security and have a nice pension waiting for them at retirement.

the basics of our economy are fucked up and you can't blame one party for it, the world has changed and adapting to it is hard - so people lash out at the rich for causing all the problems when the rich are only a small part of it. Stop running out and buying iPhones that are manufactured overseas, stop shopping at Walmart and support the small businesses in your cities, stop buying BMW's and Audis .................. of course the middle class is shrinking - the jobs that have replaced the well paid manufacturing jobs of yesteryear are low paying service jobs.

Regan was in the 80's you moron! The biggest decline of the middle class has occurred since the start of Obama's trickle up poverty economic policies! :disgust

The middle class did not shrink... That's a misnomer. That would imply some people went from middle to wealthy and others went from middle to poor. What actually happened is the number of poor people grew quite a bit, and the people already wealthy became more wealthy.

Growth of poverty is not a shrinking middle class... It's many new poor people and almost zero new wealthy ones...

You are slightly mistaken, number of "High-net-worth individual" (HNWI, $1m+ net worth) almost doubled since 1999... so quite a few people do in fact move from middle class to the upper class... :2 cents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNWI#Capgemini_figures

how can you state that like it's a fact when you post no evidence? i am sure plenty of people have gone from middle class to poor(lost a good job, non-replaced or replaced with a minimum wage job) and plenty of people have gone from middle class to rich(tech industry)

Here's a little math problem for striking teachers .....

There is a profession that relies heavily on property taxes to fund it's overhead. The real estate market is terrible and property values both residential and commercial is falling. So is revenue, where will money for increased budgets come from?

(I have commercial property that currently pays 9.5% of GROSS rental income in property taxes)

.

You are mistaken, learn facts then we can talk.

They get a masters TO GET A RAISE and nothing more.

its uncalled for to call her a whore but he makes a very valid point that this society values the valueless way more than the things that actually keep society running.

Look at the economy and manufacturing industries over the same period.

America became great by being the manufacturing power house for WW2. It rose through the 50s, 60s, 70s then the rest of the world started to catch up.

http://blogs.swa-jkt.com/swa/11246/f...-Markets1.jpeg

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploa...gdp_growth.jpg

India as well.

http://www.economicshelp.org/indian/india-growth.gif

It's those big business Republicans exporting jobs that's too blame.

https://www.google.com/search?num=10....1.ZiYQXox8jZY

Great point!


And another excellent point.

Of course, when the economy slows, even more unemployable dipshits are unemployed.

People who aren't dipshits tend to be ok. People who are bright and hard workers have a tendency to land on their feet very quickly.

Great employees are the last to go. Barely productive Idiots who spend their days complaining, blaming anything and everything for their low station in life, tend to get let go first and stay unemployed longer. We have a whole new generation of lazy assholes who understand nothing but instant gratification and who posess an unreal sense of entitlement that are just like people in this biz who bitch non stop about tubes - as if it's not their fault the world is leaving them behind. Even sadder is that a person can get elected for president by saying absolutely nothing but "hope" and "change" and everyone is stunned that he didn't change the world, turn the economy on a dime and make their house payments for them.

This thread is not about rich vs poor. This thread is about the end of an empire. The end of a dream. The end of work ethic. The end of sacrifice and dedication. This thread is about a nation founded by people who were hungry for success and worshipped success - where those hungry people were slowly displaced by morbidly obese idiots, esting themselves to desth and who have turned to blsming others rather than striving for and worshipping success.

But hey... Support Obama, blame Reagan, blame Obama, Blame Bush, support Bush, blame Obama etc... The USA will still be a nation in deckihe full of worthless idiots with a growing sense of entitlement and waning work ethic.

we're not in a depression because we can just print more money. yes, oh yes please yes more please thank you Jesus

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/mitt-romneys-definition-of-the-middle-class-is-pretty-weird-in-1-graph/262402/
According to Romney and the Obama tax plan BOTH candidates view middle class as people earning 200-250K per year (yes, I know the median income in the US is closer to 50K)
But according to BOTH candidates, if you make more than 250K you are doing well enough to be considered above the middle class level.
How many people make that amount? Roughly 4% of the country.

Middle class is a bogus term used to manipulate people into ignoring the math.
More people are becoming poor than are becoming wealthy. The numbers aren't close.
Wages and income of people in 95+% of households have stagnated or declined while incomes among the top 1% have skyrocketed.

Whether that's ok or not can be debated. Whether it is because some work harder or just got luckier or both can be debated.
The simple math of what is happening demographically is objective fact. Many more people are getting poorer and a few are getting much much wealthier.

Whether you are OK with that or not is a matter of opinion. Whether it is happening or not... is not an item of data in question.

Some more data for you mutt,

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/...of-all-income/
The middle class is not a group of people that remains static and moves up or down. Most people are getting poorer and a very few are becoming much wealthier. That is not a 'shrinking of the middle class', it is a larger divide between wealthy and poor... and the volume of poor is rapidly outpacing the number of wealthy. As a simple matter of arithmetic, that much is known.

Woj, assuming your numbers are correct (I wouldn't normally cite Wikipedia, but let's take your numbers as a given), when you say 'almost doubled' what you mean is 'went from 6 million to 10.9 million' - a change of 4.9 million people over the last 13 years. Do you really think that the other 287+ million people in the country are doing as well or better over the same period of time? That 5 million new millionaires is 1.6% of the population... By contrast http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm shows you since 2000 three times as many people have fallen into poverty as have become millionaires, with poverty defined as earning less than $11,139 per indivual in annual income.

If your Wikipedia numbers are accurate 4 million people became millionaires while 3x as many fell into poverty. Median income has changed very little over the last 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the middle-income family only earned 11% more in 2010 than they did in 1980, while the richest 5% in America saw their incomes surge 42%. Again, why this happens is debatable... If it is OK or not is debatable... Whether or not it is happening is objective fact and basic arithmetic.

Um, the end of what empire? Did the United States loose something?

Agreed.

An ex shooter I know, in the UK, is now sitting at home moaning about not being able to find a job. While my brother in law and his wife are in the UK working. One Czech the other Polish, along with loads of other fellow county men and women. From out village alone there are people going to the UK to work in manual or low end jobs. Until some form of force is put on those laying around to work, they will continue to find excuses.

Heard today employers are looking very favourably at volunteers to the Olympics and giving them jobs over those who did nothing. Not surprised.

Really people still dont worship success? All the TV shows where they show the wonderful lives of someone with a shit load of cash, someone has to watch them or they wouldnt make them.How does Tony Robbins have a career then?How Kim K or Paris Hilton ? Their only reason for their celebrity was they came from money. Or Donald Trump the man writes books and they are best sellers. Has hit tv shows.
People still worship success,Steve Jobs is treated like a god. US worker productivity is at a all time high.
There is no blame,the middle class is truly getting fucked. And people like yourself buy the talking points.
Not everybody wants to be a millionaire or a small biz owner and thats ok You have to workers for the system to work. They want to work hard make a wage so they can support their families. That's not too much to ask. That's what made america great, a strong middle class. During the great years you speak about CEO pay was 18 to 20 times avg worker pay now its 200x. So its not they cant find hard workers here its they cant make 200x if they hire workers here.
You want to respond to me great but please no name calling. Im talking to you like an adult with respect, I ask the same back.

You make a statement about Reagan starting a problem and you don't even know when he was president and you tell me to learn facts before I talk?!? Jesus what a pompous fucking liberal idiot! :1orglaugh

Really? The first time I voted was for Reagan for his second term. Lol

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde...ddle_class.gif

So which is it? Are you an idiot that doesn't know when Reagan was president or an idiot that can't read a chart that starts to decline in 1970? :helpme

All teachers have a masters degrees??? Don't think so lol. Teachers are extremely over paid (at least in canada). Where else can you make 80k a year, work 6 hrs a day, have 10 weeks holidays, retire with 80% of your income.

Actually teachers work alot more than that. Papers get graded by themselves?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...xYGS_blog.html
A new report from Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called Primary Sources: America?s Teachers on the Teaching Profession, finally quantifies just how hard teachers work: 10 hours and 40 minutes a day on average. That?s a 53-hour work week!

These numbers are indicative of teachers? dedication to the profession and their willingness to go above and beyond to meet students? needs. It never was, and certainly isn?t now, a bell-to-bell job.

The 7.5 hours in the classroom are just the starting point. On average, teachers are at school an additional 90 minutes beyond the school day for mentoring, providing after-school help for students, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Teachers then spend another 95 minutes at home grading, preparing classroom activities, and doing other job-related tasks. The workday is even longer for teachers who advise extracurricular clubs and coach sports ?11 hours and 20 minutes, on average. As one Kentucky teacher surveyed put it, ?Our work is never done. We take grading home, stay late, answer phone calls constantly, and lay awake thinking about how to change things to meet student needs.?

Oh right because teachers SAY they work that amount of hours. So it must be true! Point still stands. They make 80k plus a year , get 10 if not more weeks holidays and retire with a pension most would dream of. I can maybe name one teacher that had an influence on my life, most we worthless wanks. Those who can do! Those who can't, teach! Any idiot can be a teacher. What's the difference between a teacher and a baby sitter? Oh that's right the over paid salary paid by tax payers.

Exactly! There were so many worthless piece of shit teachers at my school and only pretended to teach when administrators came in for evaluations and one actually gave me the grade book once to do her grades and said "Just do As and Bs".. :disgust (We ended up getting her fired for something else, though..)

But there were about 3 that taught me so much about programming, robotics, 3d and SEO, so there's that. But those teachers were the smart quiet ones that never got rewarded for going the extra mile.. :(

When I was in high school in the 1970's I always applied to be a "teachers assistant" in my classes.
Guess what I did?

I graded the papers. And so did all the other teachers assistants during the different class periods. :)

Not saying that teachers don't stay after school an hour or two. They do.

My high school started at 8:30 a.m. I'm sure the teachers were there by 7 a.m. for that.
It let out each day at 2:15 p.m. I'm sure they stayed over an hour maybe two.

So if they were there in the teachers lounge having coffee at 7, then went to their classroom and got set up to go for first period...and let's say went home at 4 p.m.
How is that harder than any "normal" job?

Most people have to be on the road by 6:30 a.m. or so to get to work on time through traffic. Most of them don't get home until 6:30 p.m. or later according to traffic.

Teaching is a good profession. But the teachers unions should simply be illegal. All public sector unions should be.

This is a direct quote from the biggest liberal Democrat President of ALL times...Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."

All this anti-teacher sentiment- am I right to assume public education should be abolished?

Only those who can afford private schools should be taught?

Empires end most often with a shift in values, causing economic decline. Namely, that people are united behind growth and success (be it through conquest or other means) and once they are fat and happy, once the hunger and thirst for more is quenched and there is nothing left to fight for, their values change.

Patriotic or not, you have to admit that all empires die. The USA no longer has an identity. It's not the place to go live the "American Dream" that it once was. There are no values that unite people. There is no collective hunger for success. There is just a bunch of ADD assholes tweeting about their cats bowel movements, bitching about the 1% as they blame McDonalds for making them fat.

The middle class is in decline (and the nation) because values are in decline. That's just my opinion.

No, unions should be abolished and assholes that don't want their job because every time their contract is up for renewal, its decided that everything is "unfair" should be replaced with people that do want their jobs.

ANYONE who manages employees and/or owns a business knows that more and more money NEVER makes for happier employees. People need to be fairly compensated of course, people who aren't happy... need to be replaced with people who want to be there.

Are you retarded? Serious question. Where did anyone say public school should be abolished? teachers are over paid for what they do, understand???