Speaking at the Dallas police memorial, President Obama declared that “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.” Who is this “we” of whom the President speaks? I haven’t flooded my community with guns (they’re all high and dry in a big ass safe). Have you? More importantly, why does the President assume that teenagers in high-crime, low-income areas want computers or books? Or even know how to use them?
High schools in President Obama’s home town, for example, have an inflation-adjusted graduation rate of 66 percent. Assuming Chicago falls in line with national averages, 19 percent of those grads can’t read. Twenty-one percent of the Windy City grads who can read do so below a fifth grade level. These are not the book-deprived youth of which the President speaks. They’re book incapable and book oblivious youth.
As for teenage access to computers, if a teen can’t read, or can’t read above a fifth grade level, what good is a computer? It’s nothing more than a larger, less portable screen upon which they can play video games, engage in social media and watch bigger porn images.
Sorry. Rant over. Question now . . .
Is all this intellectual ignorance (including the President’s) informing the gang-related “gun violence” problem that should be vexing gun control advocates but isn’t because fixating on spree killers and terrorists plays better amongst the anti-gun rights Democratic base?
In other words, how can we expect to curb firearms-related gang violence when urban schools are churning out teenagers without any “advanced” job skills (e.g., reading) or understanding of the way the world outside their ‘hood works? If we fixed our schools or came up with an effective alternative, would “gun violence” decrease?
Failed education system?
It appears that he mis-pronounced failed criminal justice system, which is responsible for the revolving door that keeps unleashing the violent criminals who constitute the vast majority of both the perpetrators and the victims of “gun violence.”
Of course not. By and large it’s a product of a failed black culture throughout the country.
Sadly, that is true. Black culture embraces the concept that they are somehow outsiders and have no chance to succeed. I find this interesting since my black neighbor does very well for himself and works for NASA, so obviously it isn’t as endemic as some Liberals would have us think. Unfortunately, most inner city blacks live in a world where only 35% of black mothers are married or ever were, being a thug rapper is the ideal, killing your own race is common, selling drugs is considered the way to the top and Democrats keep them dependent on welfare generation after generation so that they can have a caged constituency to vote for them in order to perpetuate that welfare check. This is not fair to them or anyone else and really needs to change. Otep Shamaya, of the band Otep, says she would like to abolish the Republican party in order to save America, but really, abolishing the Democratic party would be much better for everyone.
Missing black fathers. Period. End of story.
Liberal icon Daniel Moynihan gave the warning cry in 1976 and got pilloried by the Left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action
When in doubt…consult Prager.
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/black-fathers-matter
Great to watch; Mr Elders is right on the money. Obviously he was referring to deterioration of the black household, but the principles and concepts apply across ALL racial lines.
There is a mis-understanding here. There is no “”failed education system” . The goal of the modern education system has been to create a pool of indoctrinated and malleable collectivists that are dependable supporters of the collectivist statist governmental control system.
Just look at the popularity of Bernie Sanders. The most brutal, bloody and tyrannical form of political control that has been a complete failure every where it’s been tried. Yet a whole group of those public school products are clamoring fervently for more of the same failed policies.
Just look at the communist manifesto. One of the main points was to take control of the public school system, and the communists would control the society through the indoctrinated children.
The other points was to attack marriage and then give those single mothers good benefits, making those mothers subservient and dependable voters for central government power.
And a side benefit of single motherhood was that the generally higher criminality of the children would give the state that much more reason to give up freedom for security, after all, there is the war on drugs we need to fight.
So no, the public school system has been a massive success, for the progressives/statists.
And that is one of the main reasons that we home-school.
“It appears that he mis-pronounced failed criminal justice system, which is responsible . . .”
The first failure happens when far too many black children enter the educational system . . . and then make the decision to underperform and fail. Countless teachers will tell stories about intelligent, potentially talented black students who simply refuse to engage in the learning process or, at best, are content slide through if allowed to expend little effort. The basic problem with these students is their culture. They have internalized beliefs that tell them that individual excellence which places them above their peers is “showing off” or “acting white” with the result that they willfully reject the learning process. To be sure, not all black students behave this way. There are plenty who are excellent students and revel in acquiring and sharing knowledge. But, if you talk to them, they’ll tell you stories of being harassed or bullied by their black peers for being good students, for daring to be “better”. This is not a failing of schools, it’s a failing of the cultural values of the black underclass. Until the black underclass becomes modern and begins to value the learning process, black students will continue to do poorly in schools. Education “experts” talk of finding a magic bullet to solve this problem but, as I’ve pointed out, it really isn’t a school problem: it’s a problem rooted in the culture of the black underclass.
I was briefly associated with a school that threw out grade levels and went with a packet learning system that allowed students to learn at their own speed. Most of the students were black, ‘failures’ from the public school system, yet in the different environment most caught back up to their age level within two years, and then proceeded to surpass it.
Our current system with grade levels in which everyone moves in lockstep as an age group was designed by industrial revolution thinkers who treated young people as parts on a conveyor line. That model clashes with not merely black culture, and changing the model can significantly change the results.
So yes, we have a failed educational system, one designed for the eighteenth century European culture, specifically British culture. It’s past time we stopped treating children as products on an assembly line and explored new ways to let them learn.
Education failure, meaning the system? What if a person is uneducable? To be blunt, how much effort should be applied to a “retard”? Should you try to teach one calculus? Is that fair to them or other who can be taught?
===================
What is the IQ range for mental retardation?
Mental deficiency used to be divided into the following sub-classifications, but these labels began to be abused by the public and are now largely obsolete: Borderline Deficiency (IQ 70-80), Moron (IQ 50-69), Imbecile (IQ 20-49) and Idiot (below 20). Mental deficiency is now generally called mental retardation.
==================
Follow this link to world IQ distribution, and draw your own conclusions:
http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/iq-world-rank-country-smartest-nations/
There is plenty of blame to go around, schools are just part of it. Parents come to mind first. Schools can only churn out what grist is provided by the community.
Responsible parenting, a healthy family, and traditional values are the most important elements to minimize the number of people (whether child or adult) who commit violent acts — with or without a firearm.
After that, people need options to work or operate businesses in order to provide for themselves. And a prerequisite of work/business is quality education. (A person with little knowledge has little to offer in terms of work or business.)
If anyone really wants to minimize violent crime, ALL violent crime, they should start by rebuilding the family and then make sure it is easy to find work or operate a business.
Pretty much everything else will fall into place after that.
To get our families back, we are going up against the Left’s favorite pet movement other than gun-grabbing: feminism.
One approach that would help: end federal business tax on family businesses, i.e. family owned and family operated (defined as at least half the employees being first cousins of the owner).
Along with that, throw out zoning rules for small businesses (family businesses and any others with less than a dozen employees) and let them operate in residential areas.
Here’s your answer:
http://c3.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/pic_corner_080713_murdock.png
Quite the telling graph, isn’t it?
yes
Jesus Christ!
That’s horrible.
Do not use the Lord’s name in vain (at least add “help us” to the end of that).
The graph shows that we haven’t thrown enough $ at the “problem”, if we really threw it at it, and hard enough, it might go away.
Wow. Can you imagine if people were able to take that money and utilize a school voucher system?!
You’d see public schools stepping up to the plate in having a more vested interest in the kids. As they’d soon learn that they are losing funding to other schools getting kids.
The private schools would have more people going to them, but the students would be better off for it.
“Can you imagine if people were able to take that money and…”
This is the one thing that these people will immediately stand up and fight against you with every fiber or their being. Because this would stop the gravy and force them to work.
I just don’t understand how something so obvious and so necessary – regarding something so very important (our childrens futures) just cannot be made to happen.
My employers don’t just expect results, results are mandatory. I do not get to ride along based on the latest contract, I can be fired at the drop of a hat should I underperform. So why should these people get to do these things?
And mind that they are not just failing to teach these kids, it’s far worse. They are literally brainwashing them to work against what is fundamentally good for our society. They are producing good little socialists who will themselves look for unionized employment, state run healthcare systems, collectivism and votes for the latest criminal pushed forward by the Democrat party.
Look at the story of Joshua Nash;
http://heatst.com/culture-wars/university-student-who-criticized-black-lives-matter-faces-expulsion-death-threats/
This guy made the mistake of trying to openly be gay and conservative at Purdue and said something against party doctrine on his facebook account. The then recieves this letter from school administrator:
“I have recieved a report from a community member regarding alleged comments you made on Facebook. I have shceduled a required Administrative Meeting so that I can get more detailed information. Our meeting will take place in my office…”
This is what school administrators do nowadays? They monitor facebook both actively and by means of their little apparatchik spies, looking for badthink and then lashing out at the person who had essentially, unauthorized opinions? This from a place that calls themselves an institution of higher learning?
This is blatant indoctrination, in fact it’s a whole lot worse and a lot of words I plain don’t want to type.
Agree or disagree with this person, we all are supposed to have freedoms, including the freedom of speech. Independent thought, individuality, dialogue, all the things that the left of a few decades ago demanded and achieved – what ever happened to that? A leftist progressive of a few decades ago would have been proud to stand up and say ‘I may not agree with what you say but I will fight for your freedom to say it!’. All those people have been either shut up, or they are dead apparently.
No guns for you. No vouchers for you. No private health insurance for you. No private property for you. You will do as you are told to by your betters, and you will say thank you, or you will be punished.
And that is now. Before they have taken all the private firearms away from we-the-people.
Look how far these people have come in just a few short decades. What they plan to do to us when we are defenseless I think is a question we do not need to know the answer to.
History tells us exactly what they plan, and history is never wrong.
Too bad the graph doesn’t show employees and expenditures per student; that would be more revealing.
I do recall that the school I mentioned above ran at less than a third the cost per student of public schools, and they estimated that to run such a school with the science lab facilities they had to borrow from the public system would have nearly doubled their costs — but that’s still a far cry from the waste in the public system.
In this case “we” means Democrats. They are the party that has a vested interest in the current criminal, ignorant and government dependent. The whole welfare state was created after all, as the new form of slavery to replace the old system the Dems lost after the Civil War. It’s quite clever actually, but still evil. The Dems want to keep people hopelessly addicted to the state so they will keep voting Dems into positions of power.
As I recall, President Johnson, who passed the War on Poverty bills, was convinced that these laws would “lose the south for the Democratic Party for a generation.” He was, of course, correct, which is why he had to fight his whole party to get these laws, and the Civil Rights Act, passed. His goal was not to create a state of dependency, but to relieve the appalling black poverty endemic to the South caused by generations of racist policies that sought to keep the blacks poor, uneducated, unarmed, and nonvoting. His goals were lofty; the problem is that all that these bills accomplished was to increase the number of people on the poverty rolls. It was not a failure of vision, but a failure of execution; the chosen solution exacerbated instead of relieving the issues of poverty and inner city decay.
“It was not a failure of vision, but a failure of execution; the chosen solution exacerbated instead of relieving the issues of poverty and inner city decay.”
It doesn’t take a village…it takes a family, a schedule and fear of a parent to get a student to the goal line.
Fear of a parent? My God!
That’s child abuse!!!
Arrest that parent!
(sarc)
Spare the rod, etc…
Doesn’t really take the fear of a parent. It takes……an educated parent (Not being in poverty helps too). The biggest predictor of your academic success is the academic success of your parents.
RoninTheDog
Dr. Ben Carson’s mother could not read and she raised her children as a single parent. Education is overrated. Unless you want to be a doctor or scientist or lawyer or engineer…etc. Moral character and dedication to hard work is most important. Laborers with little education can lead happy healthy lives. And be great parents.
“Poverty”? By the time “the po” get done working the system for piles of Fed, state, local (tax free) benefits there are WELL into “middle class” income. And can watch Oprah and Netflix and play Pokeman all day with no sucker job interfering with the fun..
@neiowa–
You’ve never actually had to try to live on those programs, have you? There’s no way to collect enough benefits to make it above the poverty line.
The real effect of the programs is that they’re degrading: the recipient has to deal with condescending bureaucrats repeatedly to keep getting them, and being looked down on by others for needing them. It breeds resentment that discourages trying anything at self-improvement.
Several places have now tried the experiment of doing away with the bureaucracy and all the ridiculous rules and just handing people the money, Contrary to pessimistic prediction, the recipients didn’t squander the money but used it sensibly, and a number in a way that allowed them to rise out of the system. Unfortunately, these haven’t been inner-city experiments, so there’s no data to tell how well or even if it would work there — but I suspect it wouldn’t, because our inner cities have developed a sort of diseased social pattern reminiscent of that of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, a self-feeding system that leads many to crime and resists change imposed from outside.
It’s basic human nature. You incentivize slovenly behavior, illegitimacy, and ignorance and guess what you get more of?
As far as Johnson loosing votes: that’s the perfect cover story isn’t it?
You forgot his other “lofty goal”. He is credited with saying that if we pass this we’ll have n***** vote for a hundred years. Let’s not paint LBJ as anything other than he was, a scumbag politician.
Still playing the Red Team/Blue Team game Owen? Try the Uniparty, or the Money Party. Take your pick. There.Is.No.Difference.
Not so much the reflection of a failed system, as the predictible (and likely intentional) result of a system redesigned to conduct social experimentation and engineering, and to ‘guide’ students toward progressivism.
Anyway, we can’t have a good ole marxist or socialist state without those useful idiots, and you can’t go around educating people willy-nilly and expect to have enough idiots left afterwards.
Fatherless boys almost invariably turn feral. Fix that and within a generation watch as ‘gun violence’ and other societal maladies plummet.
1) Teach boys to keep their rifles slung until preferably they are married, but minimally are adults and are supporting themselves with the capability of supporting a child if need be.
2) Stop making failure comfortable, eliminate any ‘aid’ to teenage mothers.
3) Eliminate the minimum wage so that teens (especially those of color in rough areas) can get that first crummy job and start learning basic discipline.
Thomas Sowell has covered these topics great detail in a half dozen books over the last 30 years or so. The answers are out there.
Absolutely right. This is a family problem first, and a culture problem second.
You get what you pay for, and our government pays people to have babies without families. Could there be a worse investment?
“Fatherless boys almost invariably turn feral.”
Absolutely wrong.
Children – male or female – without good strong parenting and role models almost invariably turn feral.
Single moms, and single dads for that matter, can be exemplary parents and raise outstanding children. But it’s hard work, with two parents, much harder with only one, and that parent needs to commit to what’s best for the child and then execute well.
Not absolutely wrong.
Some women, no matter how well intentioned, now matter how strict, are not able to control teenage males. There came a time when I needed to be literally smacked upside the head by my father to get my attention. Some males are just like that – they need a stronger, older male in their lives to literally smack them down and tell them “No, you don’t get to do that. Period. If you try, I’m going to see to it you learn a hard lesson the hard way.”
For girls, lacking a father in their lives makes them grow up with a warped view of how men should treat women.
Feminist women have been peddling this “You can do everything!” pablum for the last 40 years. Well, guess what? They can’t.
DG: Yes, some young males are like that. But not all, and likely not even most, if my experiences growing up are any indication.
That was my main issue with the original post. Males who grow up without a father don’t have to automatically turn out bad. On the other hand, bad parenting by two parents is worse than good parenting by a single parent.
Parents, schools, CJ system, social welfare/entitlement programs, culture, white guilt are all to blame.
“If we fixed our schools or came up with an effective alternative, would “gun violence” decrease?”
Well, it certainly wouldn’t increase.
The problems of the inner city, of which crime is just one, are cultural, political, and socio-economic. They are so vast that I don’t know where you would realistically begin to fix them, if they are even fixable.
What needs to be done, and which probably cannot be done, is to change the culture of the welfare system. To change the culture of “I am here, you owe me.”
What must change is the mindset that crime is OK, as long as it is against someone who has more than you do. Case in point:
I believe it was during the Ferguson riots a reporter interviewed a woman about a store being looted. She said on-camera, to the effect of, “Well, they needed it.”
Theft is OK, as long as you ‘need’ it.
*Nothing* good comes from that mindset, full stop.
Kevin, there’s a way to begin to fix it, and it involves the education system. Not long ago, a city tried something that used to be common: high school students built houses, thus learning all the skills needed for that enterprise. The houses were sold, and the money funded the program. The school even ran the financial side of things, allowing students to learn how the financial system worked.
Well, it was such a success that long came the plumbers’, electrical, carpenter, and other guilds to sue because they claimed they were losing business, and the courts bowed to the economically powerful and shut down the school’s program. But in the period when it ran, the result was a good number of young people finishing high school confident in skills they’d learned, going on to start their own businesses or step right into existing ones.
So to keep the courts happy, such programs need to be worked out in cooperation with the established guilds and the business community. It might not make a difference for more than, say, ten percent, but ten percent would be a hefty dent in the problem, by giving those ten percent the skills ad confidence to rise out of the “poverty trap” as well as thus providing an example to show others that it can be done.
As a teacher don’t even get me started. Not only can’t Johnny and his cohorts not read math is gone, too. We are also under watch status by the state and Feds because we overly discipline minorities. Granted my school is 75% Hispanic and 15% African American but heaven forbid if a teacher writes a student up. I had to go off on security because they wouldn’t do anything about a male student shoving a small female teacher. Trust me, I got their attention. Final result: principal said it was her word vs. the student. Student was moved out of her room as a concession.
I teach seniors and it disgusts me how many show up after 11 yrs of schooling with zero basic skills. Even our AP students are not up to par. Our (many) valedictorians struggle in college.
On a side note, I ran into a former student at the gun range. All I could think was “wow, he’s not a prohibited person.” He apologized for being a rotten student. I just had to laugh.
Would be nice if you could concentrate on teaching instead of dictates from the Federal government.
I appreciate the work you do, or attempt to do. Seriously, I do, I imagine it is extremely frustrating, more than challenging, and occasionally quite rewarding.
I’ve worked as an SRO the past seven months. I’ve seen that the issue isn’t the system, it’s crappy parenting. The parents don’t give a crap how their kids do in school, and the kids don’t either. Teachers try and try to teach the kids, but the ones that don’t listen don’t listen.
The opportunities are there. Vocational training is available at the tech centers in my county. These not only teach the students valuable vocational skills, but they can get certifications and at the end of the year the schools bring in local companies who host real job interviews and will hire students right out of high school into their company making a decent living. The opportunities are there, but a lot of kids the system is supposedly “failing” don’t take advantage of it. Why? They don’t give a crap, that’s why.
If you’re black the schools will do everything they can to push you through so you don’t become a statistic. There was a 20 year old senior at my school last year.
I don’t buy the “failing educational system.” Kids get out of it what they put in. Personal accountability is out the window. So no, Obama, the system is not to blame. What is to blame are the individuals who perpetuate the violence.
A lot of what you say is true. One of my wife’s good friends is a middle school teacher and she was telling us how surprised we’d be knowing how many times she’s had to call a parent due to behavioral issues in class, and the parent’s response goes along the line of, no not my kid, my kid wouldn’t do that or absolute apathy and zero action on the parent’s part. So many parent’s will take their 12 y/o brat’s word over that of an adult.
Regarding vocational schools, I think there is a mindset out there now that academic success and therefore life success is dictated by whether or not one goes to college. How often have we heard the Left claim that every student deserves to go to college? Not every student deserves to go to college and we don’t need a country full of college graduates. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a decent millwright for the company I work for…we are short on skilled tradesmen. Of course this doesn’t do much if one is not willing to put in the time and effort to earn a decent living.
I agree that we place too high an emphasis on college degrees. Unless that degree is in a “real” field of study, it’s useless. Business Administration, Engineering, degrees along those lines will help you get a good job. A degree in Feminist Studies is a minor in “You want fries with that?”
I was a Maintenance Supervisor in a manufacturing plant. We had the hardest time finding good qualified workers. Very few people go to vocational training anymore. Very few community colleges and such in the local area (Greater Atlanta) offer that training. Our technicians worked complex machinery and systems, starting out at the highest pay rates for hourly employees in the entire plant. Starting wages of $25 per hour. Electronics and Instruments technicians started higher.
We need more kids with aptitude steered into VoTec so we have the workforce to revitalize our industrial might.
100% agree. I recruit and work in HR for a large manufacturer and so many of the people that come through just do not have the skill set that we need, especially maintenance mechanics. It’s a shame too because so many of the old-timers are retiring and there is a dearth of good young candidates to take their place.
All too many come out of school and expect to make a ton of money with no experience or training. Schools and parents need to do a better job of identifying when teens just may not be college material for whatever the reason is and steer that kid more towards tech/trade schools. I don’t have any kids, but if I had a 16-18 y/o right now and they weren’t gung ho about college but seemed to have an interest in any type of vocational trade, I would absolutely steer them towards that path. Community colleges that are doing away with voc. training are doing their areas a disservice. How are these people with a 2 year degree (not in a trade/tech field) are going to be able to compete with those kids with 4 year degrees? One CC in our area, the only trade they offered was learning how to weld…
I am a 29 year old electrician/instrument tech and am currently working in a manufacturing facility. My skill set is in high demand. I make very good money and have a ton of options as far as employment goes. I have no college degree. I have no student loan debt. I worked nights in an electric motor manufacturing facility on a production line and went to electronics school during the day on the company dime when I was 18 and 19 years old. I bid into a maintenance apprenticeship and completed it. It really wasn’t that difficult. all one has to do is look and there are opportunities. Save your money kids, learn a trade. You will retire much sooner
A symptom of this is something that happened in my sister’s career. She started out as a teacher, but couldn’t stay happy under the public school system despite how much she loved to teach, so she became an engineer.
The company she first worked for was having to try to find qualified employees from two or three states away, which got little results. I think it was her third year there when she pulled off a small miracle in quality control and came to the attention of management. When an executive discovered she’d been a teacher, he asked how she’d like to teach again — and the result was that she ended up running a classroom in a conference room at the plant, teaching the skills people would need to be employees. The company paid their transportation costs and provided meals, and when they were certified they could step right into jobs at the plant where they’d done some hands-on learning — and after six months with the company, they got a bonus for sticking there.
Before she left that company she did the work to get the program taken over by a local community college, and several companies were participating in it last I knew; the companies paid the tuition for the students as loans, and forgave the loans in increments for those who got hired.
And that points to another flaw in our educational system: there are a fair number of people who can’t bring themselves to focus on learning math or chemistry or whatever when it’s effectively theoretical knowledge, but when they are being trained in actual jobs that require those subjects, the subject matter comes alive because it’s relevant. Those people don’t belong in a classroom after the first six or eight years, but in on-the-job training with classroom backup.
Ah, college.
Clinton and Bush both screwed us over by their emphasis on college: as a result, enrollment in vocational and technical schools plummeted. So we now face a shortage of people to fill such jobs, along with the support positions for those jobs, to the tune of two or three million. That’s two or three million people without jobs because they were pressured to go down the college track, which means two or three million who are not serving as examples to younger people of how one can get ahead.
From that aspect, it isn’t just a failed educational system, it’s the wrong educational system, and it isn’t just those millions hurting because of it, it’s our whole economy.
And the sense of betrayal of being urged down what is now obviously the wrong track certainly doesn’t contribute to people being calm and neighborly.
Nah. The old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
Likewise, you can lead a thug to knowledge, but you can’t make him think.
And there is the issue. The inner city glorified violence and abhors “sounding white.” Sounding white just means being educated. Free government handouts has only exacerbated the issue. we need to cut them off to give them a reason to behave more disciplined.
Ohhhh….I want to use that thought!
You can’t fix people in schools. What we need to fix is families.
Your not going to fix families….recall the million man march that wasn’t, nothing been done since. In fact our government spends 212 billion dollars annually on welfare and 80 billion on incarceration.
That and give power back to the parents and teachers to discipline idiot kids in school and at home.
Teachers aren’t supposed to be backup parents. But they certainly should be allowed to put a disruptive child in their place if need be for the sake of the rest.
The day parents were allowed to walk all over teachers and kids were allowed to circumvent parental discipline, our education system and parenting lost about 80% of it’s effectiveness.
Ask yourself this question: when you were growing up, when you had a fight or disagreement with another student, maybe were teased, bullied, or were the one teasing or bullying, would it have even been a serious consideration that you would find a gun to “settle” the score or get even? Why?
Then ask yourself, would the adults (parents, teachers, principals, etc) stood by and do nothing when a kid would act up in any way, from talking back to teacher or parent to potential law breaking?
Since the Obama DOJ neutered government school discipline, there isn’t much the schools can do to help.
“would it have even been a serious consideration that you would find a gun to “settle” the score or get even? Why?”
It was for me, because I was facing down a group of thugs who were escalating the situation over a period of time and I felt that my life was at stake. Suffice it to say that once I made my intentions perfectly clear, the threats ended with no further incidents.
“… the Obama DOJ…”?
Don’t blame Obama, or rather don’t single him out. This has been going on and getting worse steadily under Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford…. maybe even under Nixon.
I believe the answer is embedded in the interviews of the people involved in the shootings.
Example.
“He axed him wheres he was goin and den da ocifer said ta put he’s hands up n he didn have a chance for da cap had heem on da grown n he all like I didnt do it n shit n dey didn give him chance to splain himself……”
Don’t get me wrong, illiteracy is a terrible thing but anyone can teach themselves to read and advance, seems most give up and believe if someone else doesn’t push them to better themselves then why should they do anything to better themselves.
Laziness and blame on others. That’s the problem.
The Internet (or rather the belief we should and have to listen to everyone’s opinions) and Political Correctness have systematically socially retarded both adults and children alike.
No one can say what they actually think, or describe people, things and situations accurately. It has destroyed clear and concise communicate and we’re left with walking on eggshells to tiptoe around everyone’s feelings rather than addressing the hard facts and reality. It’s become difficult and nearly impossible to solve what should be simple problems because we feel we need to make everyone happy instead of doing the right thing.
I respectfully disagree. The internet has made it quite easy to see/hear/read the non-politically-correct opinions of just about anyone on just about anything. Even if you grow up in Berkley CA, Austin TX, or Madison WI, I find it hard to believe you’d ONLY hear politically correct speech. Only BELIEVE politically correct speech, maybe…
Here we go. Stop being suckered into using collectivist created terms. Commies hammer away with the construct of .. ” gun violence ” as a means to an end …… ( disarmament .) This is easily provable , as we never hear a peep about , knife violence , fist violence , 2 x 4 violence …ect. It’s called … CRIME !! *** Any other term is politically correct , Leftist , double – think B. S.
The problem with schools are they cannot be changed because or a centralized Dogma starting with the useless Dept of Education, funded for an Ideal but represent stupidity at its best!
the Justice system which favors the Politicians and the rich and Famous more so than its own real people
the Democratic party who wish to keep voters on their rolls (giving them Money, Food and housing ) so they lack incentive to accomplish anything except make babies!
This setting President who violates the law but politicians are afraid to censure him or impeach him because he is a Half-breed and doing so upsets the apple cart for the spineless!
This president could have been a big boost to his Community instead he chose the Muslim Doctrine of destroying the Infidel, by inciting riots, illegally allowing people across the border, and making unconstitutional rulings directing the Democratic Parties black ops unit to help incite riots and killings of policemen, Fast and Furious, how the lives of white men in Benghazi were ignored for politics! directing Holder to sacrifice himself for Obama’s protection, and Loretta Lynch who should be impeached for covering up Hillery!
‘Is “Gun Violence” A Reflection of Our Failed Education System?’
No. First, there is no such thing as ‘gun violence’. Guns are not violent, they are just tools. People are violent and some violent people choose to use guns to commit violence. The violence would occur with or without the guns. Second, no, the violence isn’t the fault of our crappy educational system. It’s the fault of the breakdown of the nuclear family. The crappy educational system is in itself a system of that breakdown. Why are we depending on the government to educate our children in the first place? Shouldn’t the primary responsibility for raising children be the parents’? Leave children to raise themselves and this is what you get (most of the time).
There is also the gang problem in Chicago that indoctrinates the youth and enslaves adults into a destructive lifestyle.
It’s a mindset and cultural problem that precedes the education problem.
Poor values and lack of moral compass.
Failure of the family… What kids get out of the educational system, are what the parents put into it.
There are also many systems (education and police) that should be results driven and not financially driven.
So many have lots of money coming in that is mishandled and the results are never held to any standard or accountability.
One of my closer friends through (public) high school was in the national honors society, got some ridiculous 1400-1500 on his SAT’s and plenty of scholarships. Definitely smart and well educated chose to sell crack and run with local gang members for a number of reasons. Money and trampy women for a start. He carried several illegally procured firearms during his years as a crack dealer.
He went to college and now works in the admissions office at a historically black university helping to guide the youth.
A lot of time is wasted by “experts” and politicians trying to find a simple solution to an extremely complex problem. Or at least trying to find a broadly accepted scapegoat.
I give him credit for being a good orator. Unfortunately, the problems with our infrastructures cannot be solved with sound bites.
Education is just one part of the problem. Obama conveniently used it as a scapegoat.
We’re wrestling with mental health issues – cost is probably the biggest factor. It was easier when we could just throw them all into the looney bin and forget about them…That really didn’t work either. We need to create ways to realistically deal with unstable people.
Why do I have the feeling any well adjusted mature person on the planet that is 35+ years old is that way because they got their ass beat as a kid for doing stupid things.
Compare that to all the self entitled, everyone is a winner, adult-children that are below 30 years old now coasting around with poor work ethic and a sense “society owes me because I’m awesome”.
We developed a fantasy for our children where you can be whatever you want without any realistic boundaries or checks and balances. And we’re surprised it turned out this way?
I believe we call that a result.
Education is not destiny. Having good moral PARENTS(plural) is big. It’s not everything but a dad in the home helps a lot. Home school if you can. It’s not Leave it to Beaver land anymore. And if your “culture” calls the po-leece raciss,demeans black folks who speak proper english as “trying to be white” and hates achieving students(also bein’ white) then it’s all hopeless anyway. I do disagree a bit with the computer analogy. Modern computers are not hard to operate. Plenty of third world poorly edumacated hacker criminals are stealing,scamming and being really slick criminals…
Bottom line, the Government is the problem. Period. 90% of what the social welfare spending does is eliminate responsibility. Probably 90% of everything else Government does is also eliminating responsibility (or at least minimizing it). When a person … almost any person … can survive and thrive with no effort on their part to learn, to manage, to try, to grow, to succeed … we are lessened.
And, IMHO, the Government cannot fix this issue. Sure, it can create the problem – as it has done. Either through good intentions gone wrong, ignorance, or design. All it can do in furtherance of turning it around is to set the proper conditions. There are plenty of things that can be done. Here are three (no particular order nor even weighted for importance), just three. Almost anyone can come up with three?! What are yours?
1. Eliminate Food Stamps for all except those who really cannot take care of themselves.
2. School system control, policies, and funding is moved to the district level. No governmental entity higher than the state may make any policies affecting education.
3. Eliminate 90% of the crimes on the books and increase penalties for violent crimes against persons.
Everyone should stipulate that each proposal will have particulars to be worked out!
People forget that socialism has already been tried in the US – before we were even a country – and it failed. It failed big.
People who have studied the history of the founding of the US know that the Plymouth Colony was saved by the Indians from starvation – because they started out socialist, and far too many men sat on the butts, doing nothing, and not building buildings, clearing cropland, etc. The first winter, the colonists nearly starved.
After that, the rule became “Those who don’t work, don’t eat.”
That should be the rule today. If someone is able to work and they don’t work, then they don’t eat. They should also get no housing assistance, medical attention or any other public welfare if they’re able-bodied.
If people need jobs and can’t find them, then we can re-institute some of the ideas of the Depression and have roving public projects with lots of warm bodies. There’s plenty of graffiti that needs removed from buildings and walls, there’s plenty of inner city clean-up that needs done. Put people to work, eight hours a day, five days a week, and give them their rations at the end of each day. They can take it back to their camp of tents to consume it.
If they don’t want to work, then they don’t get rations.
I would say that the issue of urban violence is actually a nexus of numerous issues of which the school system is certainly one but only one.
First, I think it’s important to note that violence in generally has dropped drastically since 1993, so the chicken-littles of the world need not be listened to.
Secondly, yes. The school system has a lot of problems. It turns out poorly educated drones. As has been noted by Joseph Sobran “In 100 years we’ve gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college”. This is most certainly true. While others argue against this quote, I’ve seen it with my own eyes and I’m not talking about Black students, I’m talking suburban white kids who get into a good university and still can’t write a basic simple sentence in English 101. When there are problems with education, our government’s answer to things is to lower expectations and standards. We now have people who argue, actually publicly argue that pre-algebra is too hard for middle school students. Well it wasn’t too hard for students even 15 years ago, so what’s changed? Not to mention the fact that you’re screwing the kids. If you follow the sort of math curriculum I did in high school pre-algebra not being offered until your freshman year severely limits how much math you can hope to study. Pre Algebra –> Algebra 1–> Geometry—>Algebra II becomes the maximum you can attain. Gone will be the opportunities for advanced students to take Trigonometry or Calculus which are the launch pad for science based college programs.
So yeah, there’s a problem with the school system. However, a lot of the kids who end up shooting each other or involved in gangs drop out of high school which is in and of itself a problem.
This all intersects with family, cultural and socio-economic issues too. The welfare state encourages single motherhood and is structured in a way that getting off welfare is to take a huge “pay” cut in the short term. Children growing up in such circumstances are easily swayed by the guy with a nice car and “sneaker money” and are then pulled into a culture where violence is glorified and violent actions are taken, as GangStarr would say “Just to get a rep”. When you’re 16 and you can make $1000 a day slinging drugs or $8/hour at McD’s, Mom works two jobs and can’t make ends meet and you’ve got some younger siblings that are going hungry slinging drugs isn’t a choice at all. A $15/hour minimum wage will have little to no effect on such a problem. That’s $120/8 hour shift before taxes when you can make more than 8 times that much in a day on the corner and pay no taxes.
It’s a complicated issue. Fixing the school system needs to be done for numerous reasons, and surely doing so won’t have a negative impact on violence levels but I don’t expect it would have a major positive impact either.
The single biggest problem with the public school system is that the majority of the teachers come from the lower half of the SAT distribution. My wife went to a teaching program as a second career. She was shocked at how little the teaching candidates knew – especially of math. Everyone else in her class, including the instructor, (all female) described themselves as being “scared of math.”
My wife hit the ceiling.
Many of those who cannot do become teachers.
This is unsurprising because of the way teachers are trained.
It literally works like this: say you apply to OSU (Ohio) and are rejected, well the “School of Education” attached to OSU has lower standards and will admit you, so they take the list of rejected students, look for the ones who qualify for the SoE and then solicit them to join. The next year the terrible student tells everyone that they’re going to OSU (not an outright lie but a distortion) and heads off to “college”.
That’s who generally becomes a public school teacher. They have a degree in education rather than a BS or BA in something useful. They’re useless twats but they get the teaching jobs because the states have bowed to the union and required either a degree in education or a certificate in it.
This has been going on for a long time. When my father was a freshman he declared a major in chemistry. He was given a “mentor” who was a senior, in this case a female. When he was a junior he saw her back on campus and asked her why she had returned. She had a BS in chemistry and was forced to teach physics because “You’re a scientist right? What’s the difference?” was the school’s attitude. So she was back to take a bunch of physics classes to insure she was really competent to teach it. This was in the 1960’s. It’s gotten worse since them. My biology teacher in high school just read the book to us. He had no business teaching bio, he had a BA in English.
It is a myth that a 15 year old can go out and make $1000 a day selling drugs. It is true that he can sell $1000 a day or more but the profits go to the gang leaders. If a 15 year old were doing that on his own he would quickly be a dead 15 year old. The kid selling the drugs and bearing most of the risk is probably not making any more money that working at MacDac’s.
There is empirical proof of that. One chapter of Freakonomics looks at a study of street level dealers and they make about the same as burger flippers.
I also call BS on the book vs. Glock claim. My teen could name several times more places in a city of 80,000 where he could buy a book or computer than a Glock. Then again he is white, has a high gpa and is going to engineering school.
And therein lies the faux Libertarian fallacy on why drug legalization reduces crime in the ghetto.
Faux Libertarians consider humans as little more than rational economic calculating machines so if a 15-year-old is out on the street corner peddling drugs it must be because it pays more than flipping burgers. Faux Libertarians don’t understand what rationality in choice means. It is simply if A > B and B > C than we automatically know that A > C. A, B, C can be objectively irrational choices but as long as they ordered the choice is rational. The 15-year-old corner drug dealer isn’t making a choice based on dollars earned. He preference function can be summed up by the Dire Straits classic “Money for ‘nuttin and chicks are free.” The value earned doesn’t come from drugs sales per se; it comes from the thug life. Michael Brown is typical teenage drug thug. If he was rolling in money, he would have had any need to knock off the local convenience store and beat up the clerk for a couple of cheap cigars.
What is more concerning to me is the fact that the President of the US is so out of touch with the citizens. Books? Does he really truly think our your people living in impoverished areas are looking for a book? He can’t be that ignorant can he? Take a moment and look on facebook at our youth in these high crimes areas, do they seem to be looking for books? I have been saying for years that the decline of our youth because of poor family values (or lack thereof) will eventually bring our great nation to it’s knees. How long before someone that can do something about this actually does something about it? Gun violence is the symptom, lack of family is the root problem.
Some really good comments in this thread.
Defective by design. Read Gatto’s books on the subject (Underground History of American Education ect.)
All it takes to fix it is school vouchers.
What is the consequence for dropping out of school? Get an EBT card. Keep on eating, sleeping, fucking, fighting, robbing.
What if you had to hold down a job just to eat and have a roof over your head. What is the consequence of losing a job. You go hungry and get evicted.
Along comes the Government. “We’re here to help you”.
Public housing and food stamps. Don’t need no education. Don’t need to keep my nose clean for work because if I lose my job, I get more benefits.
The war on poverty is a bust. My eyes were open to this scam years ago when I saw a video of Bobby Kennedy going into a Southern home of a poor black family where children were supposedly starving. The cameras remained outside. Never saw a starving child in the U.S. Have you? Only a couple cases of neglect but that is criminal. As far as families being so poor that children starve death, never seen a documented case and even if there were, plenty of charities are available.
Let’s fight poverty by requiring people behave in order to keep a job. Let humans be humans and stop treating them like zoo animals. Do not feed the animals! Turn them loose and they will survive. Humans are smart that way.
Peggy Noonan, who worked as a speech writer for Reagan (Her most famous speech was the “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc”), told the story of a lunch with officials of a small African nation.
She asked one of them if there was anything notable they noticed here in America. One of them answered her: “Your poor are fat.”
With a look of amazement on his face….
I’d say that yes there is a correlation between education levels and gun violence. But not a direct one. The larger correlation with gun violence is that of income. Urban centers with low income families and poor social structures result in the largest amounts of gun violence in our country. Why is obvious. It’s not a racial problem, its an income problem.
Compounding this problem is that of cultural identity within minority communities. Calling someone who has fought their way out of a failed system and assimilated into the middle class an “Uncle Tom”, for instance, is a negative reinforcement for other minorities. Having prominent leaders of the minority communities reinforce negative stereotypical behavior or “race bait” also compounds the issue.
Higher crime in these areas scare off quality teachers, and typically teachers make less money in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Low property taxes means less money for the schools to buy supplies and equipment, further widening the gap.
In the end, kids in these communities are screwed before they ever step foot in a classroom.
Aside from volunteer work and charitable contributions there isn’t much people of the gun can do to break this cycle in disadvantaged communities.
NOTHING will change until leaders within these communities realize their Democrat overloards have done nothing but lock them into a singular way of life. Reliance upon the government has failed these communities and will continue to fail them.
The problem with education, public and private, is that we got rid of the track system. The dumb kids would graduate and go to trade school or pick up menial jobs, the geniuses went to college, and the average kids went either way depending on grades and motivation. We weren’t frighteningly strict like France and Germany, where the state decides what you can and can’t do by the time you’re in the 5th fvcking grade. A dumb kid in America could easily buckle down and, with improved scores, earn him/herself a better education with the average kids, keyword EARN. Somewhere in the past few decades, educational Darwinism via the track system was seen as “unfair” and “intolerant.” Now there’s this obnoxious belief that putting dumb/lazy kids in the same room as smart ones will somehow produce better grades. I’d sooner believe in rainbow-farting, winged unicorns.
Yet another strange cultural trend is that absolutely everyone has to go to college, which is bull because when everyone gets to succeed at the same thing, it’s not longer uniquely marketable or even valuable in the work force. Not only have standards been dropping for both curricula and admissions, but nobody is told “You’re too stupid to go” anymore. There’s an entire tier of “colleges and universities” designed for all the dumb kids to attend so they can feel special with their worthless gender studies degrees like everyone else. And guess what, parents, they’re just as expensive as Harvard.
I recently met a friend of a friend who is a young welder. He makes more money than all his friends with liberal arts degrees, and yet this stigma follows him around because he “didn’t go to college.” It’s ridiculous. Not everyone deserves a $250,000+ annual salary and air-conditioned office, and America was never entirely a nation of Don Drapers (not a diss, I love me some Mad Men). There are a bunch of other factors, but it boils down to this: Everybody wants somebody else to do the heavy lifting, and when they actually do it themselves, they want to be paid like a king for putting in minimal effort.
It all comes down to failed liberal policies. Welfare which destroyed the poor minority family, allowing the NEA to dictate education policy, war on cops, etc…
While liberals did great things on civil rights (liberals, not Democrats) their later policies were a disaster. And the people they hurt most were the ones they claimed to be helping.
I think crime is a consequence of our prosperity. We have a ton of people who have enough money and free time to seek our recreational activities and an escape from the stress of working at the pace we work (to achieve said prosperity). A lot of the recreational contraband and illegal market activities are defined as “illegal” by moralists. So you have a giant pile of people and money on the demand-side of recreational contraband and illegal market activities. Naturally the supply side will rise up to meet the demand. Since the supply side of an illegal market does not have access to society’s non-violent conflict resolution systems, contracts are enforced through violence, transgressions are punished through violence, competition turns violent. Violent force needed to protect money and illegal goods. Violent force is required to protect the illegal market participants from law enforcement, etc.
So unless the demand side of illegal markets diminishes entirely, or the markets are made legal so they can compete and operate non-violently through contracts and courts and use banks and stuff like that, there will be blood.
Bingo!
History shows that when Prohibition ended, violent crime dropped by 90%. Estimates are today that if the modern version, the misnamed “War on Drugs”, were ended, violent crime would drop by 80%.
Most of our violent crime is government-induced.
If you’re asking the question in regards to violence in the black community then the answer is yes and no. There has been a war on education for the past 100 years, the dumber the serfs, the easier it is to control them and the less they expect from their lives. With regards to African Americans and education, the teachers unions mafia have pretty much destroyed urban schools but education isn’t 100% of the problem, Black culture doesn’t value education and actually looks down on other blacks who sound “white” or “act white”. I don’t know why acting or speaking intelligently is consider “white”, I’ve known more stupid white people than I care to remember. Maybe Black culture should reframe being educated as acting “asian” so they don’t create a negative association. Also, the amount of single parent black families is higher than its ever been. When you have these 3 variables applying their force on black youths it becomes a natural recipe for violence. A lot of liberals think that if you fix the poverty issue you will fix everything, the past 20-30 years have shown that’s a failed experiment much like a doctor treating the symptom.
If an education system is designed to stifle creative and independent thought, destroy logic and critical thinking, and indoctrinate children to the ruling classss needs, the education system is a smashing success.
“We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.”
That actually might be true in some urban environments.
Some of those kids and parents probably do not know want a book is or what it is used for.
We have a Scientific Socialist Soviet School system for proper Marxist indoctrination of the Proles.
Schools are a horrible place to send your children. Teachers are completely disconnected, traditional families where two parents raise children in a loving, nurturing environment are rapidly becoming the exception rather than the rule, kids are so obsessed with social media and becoming sexually active by the age of 11, and no one is anything more than a number are all factors destroying American society. When mayors tell the police to allow rioters to pillage and loot (Baltimore) and the POTUS uses every tragedy as an opportunity to push his personal gun control agenda, then we are seeing the last days and it isn’t going to be pretty.
“We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.”
I’m not sure to whom the word “We” refers; but, this word isn’t essential to the analysis of the assertion. Which is easiest; easier or easy for a teenager to get his hands on? Glock > computer > book? Book > Computer > Glock? Even this ranking issue isn’t essential. Rather, the essential aspect of the assertion is that “communities” are “flooded” – we might say saturated – with guns. Is this assertion essentially accurate? Do most teenagers – at least those who want a gun – able to obtain one without undue effort?
Could we agree with the President that there are relatively few teenagers in America who strongly desire a gun but don’t have one for want of availability or affordability? This question is one that deserves careful study; but let’s assume for the moment that the President is correct.
Now, then, what – if anything – could be done about this situation? Can we un-invent guns? Can we un-invent the tooling to make guns? Can we un-invent smuggling? Or, are these genies already out-of-the-bottle? If Prohibition of guns is as unrealistic as Prohibition of alcohol or pot has proven to be, then what remains to be done?
If supply can’t be controlled effectively, how about controlling demand? Enforce laws prohibiting under-age possession. Laws prohibiting felon-in-posession. Abandon plea-bargaining; probation; parole and light sentencing for illegal possession.
Are we willing to enforce laws that would reduce demand for illegal weapons possession? I didn’t think so. OK, so then, What specifically, Mr. President, is it that you are actually proposing be done? If you can’t control the supply and won’t control the demand, then what policy options are left to discuss?
Maybe if our shitty education system wasn’t designed to drain you of every damn penny. $600 for a high quality pistol, or functioning rifle, $60,000+ for a lousy education. 100x the cost just to shoot yourself in the foot.
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