I spend a decent amount of time on the streets of Trenton, mowing the grass, picking up trash, talking with neighbors, biking around, harassing squirrels etc.  I manage to collect some interesting stories and meet weirdos (probably because I am one).  Anyway here are two such stories that occured in the past three days:

I have a neighbor that walks his pitbull past my house every couple of days.  He’s a large white man who grew up not liking black people but kept it to himself mostly.  He went to prison and became an evangelical racist.  I think he may be affiliated with a prison group, such as Aryan Nation, but I’m not sure and I don’t really want to ask.  Anyway he walked past the house a proceeded to ask:

“Ready for school to start again?”

I responded, “Yeah, time to fight the good fight once more.”

His reply, “You know they keep taking my money but it seems all the kids end up behind the courthouse or under the ground.”

My reply, “Yeah, we’re undergoing an education crisis.  The kids don’t want to be there and they don’t want to learn what we’re teaching.  It’s unfortunate.”

His reply, “I know why that is.”

My reply, knowing what he thinks the problem is, “It’s systemic.  There’s tons of reasons.  The problem is you can’t just fix one and expect it to go away.  Personally I think compulsory education is stupid and the way we fund the schools is an affront to people who disagree with our schooling methods.”

His reply, “No it’s because…” <racist rant concerning evolution and certain people who “never made it out of africa”.  Also there was something in there about BET>

So hopefully my neighbor got something out of it before he launched into his rehearsed diatribe.  It’s almost as if everyone, even the most screwed up people, can clearly see the problems.  It’s the causes that people disagree about.

OK, second story.  I’m biking home from the post office when I roll up next to a car with a Ron Paul sticker.  I look in the car and yell, “Woo hoo Ron Paul”.  The guy looks me up and down, mind you I need a haircut so bad my hair sticks out of my helmet and I was wearing a T-shirt with a vomiting clown on it, and then proceeds to say, “Yo” and stare straight ahead.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The Union Town Area School District in Pennsylvania is considering the use of tasers in the school district.

Homer [director of security] said the school has tried to be pro-active over the years in terms of security, and his job is to look within and outside of the school to stay ahead of trends in society, citing there was no school security 20 years ago but the ways of the world have made it commonplace.”We have to think of the future,” Homer said, adding that there had been recent incidents outside of the school where police would need Tasers, and it’s possible that similar incidents could make it into the schools.

One has to wonder about the possible reasons for an increase in violence, almost always in government schools. Could it be the terrible war on drugs and other victimless crimes? Could it be a culture of welfare and entitlements? Could it be wage and business regulations? What about inflation? All these things have contributed to breaking up the family unit, or to making the family poorer.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population in the world. Ending the war on drugs and the welfare state would go surely reduce violence in the classroom by returning upbringing rights where they belong: to the parent; putting kids into the institutional environment will undoubtedly drive some of them crazy. And abolishing state schools citizen factories would allow parents to decide how best to educate their children. As usual, the government “solution” (Taser) to a government-created problem (government schooling), ends up being worse than the original “problem,” as determined by politicians (lack of sufficient education in society).

So will TPS (tases per student) be a new stat parents look at when choosing a school?

I think this is another ‘treating the symptom instead of the problem’ scenario.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-07-24-swedenschools_N.htm

Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?

It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.

“I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice,” said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. “You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people.”

Since the change was introduced in 1992 by a center-right government that briefly replaced the long-governing Social Democrats, the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7% of high schoolers and 1% of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17% and 9%.

Before the reform, most families depended on state-run schools following a uniform national curriculum. Now they can turn to the “friskolor,” or “independent schools,” which choose their own teaching methods and staff, and manage their own buildings.

They remain completely government-financed and are not allowed to charge tuition fees. The difference is that their government funding goes to private companies which then try to run the schools more cost-effectively and keep whatever taxpayer money they save.

Bure Equity, listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, is the largest private school operator in Sweden and is expanding rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, net profit for its education portfolio rose 33% to about $3 million.

Such profit-making troubles Swedes who don’t think taxpayers should be enriching corporations.

The Social Democrats strongly opposed the change as anti-egalitarian, but when they were re-elected to power in 1994, they found it was so popular that they left it in place, though they imposed a lid on fees.

People like freedom and choice?! Can’t let that stay. Gotta make everyone the same. A good army of serfs to support the oligarchy.

This system of theirs has been talked about for years by the likes of John Stossel but it’s nice to see more agencies pick it up. While it seems to be little more then corporatism it sounds like it creates more competition and therefore a more efficient education system.

As for their last component of the article where they try to show that private schools can’t do everything… it’s a pretty pathetic example. Some kid wants to be a musician. A field which pays little generally because of the large pool of laborers and relative ease of entering. Apparently he can’t find a private school that provides the education so he’s going to attend a public school. So, because he doesn’t want to really take the risk and attend a private school he’s relying on the violence of the state to do what he ‘wants’ to do instead of non-violently doing what he ‘needs’ to do to survive. Great, I hope this kid ends up as a street mime in Paris.

http://www.fortbendnow.com/…

In the face of $4 per gallon gasoline and predictions the price will rise to $7 by the end of summer, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Lake Jackson) is calling on Congress to explore how the weakened value of the dollar may be contributing to the rise in oil prices.

Paul, whose 14th Congressional District of Texas includes part of the Katy area and much of Cinco Ranch, said he wants Congress to hold hearings on the relationship between the falling value of the dollar and the recent rise of oil prices.

As ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Paul sent a letter earlier this week to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services committee, asking for the hearings.

“The price of oil is currently among the most pressing issues to American workers,” Paul said. “Congress should be examining all factors contributing to the high cost of oil, and monetary policy is one of the key factors in the run-up in price.”

Paul’s letter pointed out that the price of oil in dollars has risen 39 percent this year. Oil in Euros has only risen 30 percent, resulting in degraded purchasing power of the dollar of at least 80 cents of the increased price of a gallon of gas.

“Neither the Federal Reserve nor the Treasury Department have been willing to take responsibility for the dollar’s slide over the past several years, while American consumers have been forced to pay continually higher prices for gasoline, heating oil and numerous other imported products upon which Americans depend,” Paul noted in his letter. “American consumers cannot afford to allow continued lax Congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department’s duties as stewards of the dollar, especially since the dollar is a major factor in the skyrocketing price of oil.”

Besides himself, 16 other Members of Congress signed on to the letter, including ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services Spencer Bachus, and Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling.

Hopefully DownsizeDC will get something going on this. If anything this could be an educational tool for those who would be participating. The more congress critters who understand economics, even a little bit, the better.

http://www.freep.com/…

Dr. Connie Calloway, the new superintendent who has spent her first year digging through dirt and incompetence and traditions that don’t make sense, revealed some startling news two weeks ago during an interview:

She confirmed what critics have known for some time, that DPS is not graduating nearly two-thirds of its students.

She confirmed that 22 of the city’s 27 high schools did not make required annual yearly progress — required progress.

She confirmed that DPS has been rife with such incompetence that students did not receive textbooks at the start of the year for 19 years.

She confirmed that the FBI investigation into DPS is not over.

And she confirmed that the district’s budget is about the same as it was eight years ago, even though the number of employees and students has dropped by a third. In 2000, the district spent $1.2 billion to pay 21,203 employees to serve 154,648 students. Last school year, the district spent the same amount of money to pay 15,535 employees and serve 105,000 students. What is being done with the extra money?

After those revelations, parents did not march, teachers did not rally, and Detroit legislators did not hold news conferences to say enough is enough.

But when district officials announced that there might be teacher layoffs to offset a budget deficit that is $400 million counting this year and next, folks jumped up then. The teachers aren’t wrong to protest. The district has so much fat and gristle it can cut plenty before it gets to teachers, including administrators — especially administrators.

As if the teachers don’t deserve to be shit canned? The whole lot of them appears to be pretty useless to me. They make up a super majority of the employees which make up the school system and they have a powerful union. If these people gave a shit about education and the children they are supposed to be serving this situation would not have occured. No privately run school could have ever gotten into this shape.