Got this e-mail today from a nosy reader:
Please inform readers on the following:
a. How many members of "The State’s" editorial staff have children in elementary and H.S.? Include in that count the publisher and editor-in-chief.
b. How many of those children are in private schools?
c. How many of those children are in public schools?
d. How many of the public schools in which the staff’s children are enrolled are graded "unsatisfactory" by PACT or "No Child Left Behind" standards?Thank you.
John Johnson
Winnsboro
Now why do I get the feeling that this is a challenge of some sort? Anyway, I replied as follows:
I’m the only editor in editorial with a school-age child, and not for long, as she graduates next week. She will be my fifth child to graduate from public schools. Two of my colleagues have children who haven’t started school yet.
The publisher has a teenaged stepson. I don’t know where he goes to school.
We don’t have an editor-in-chief. I’m over editorial; another guy is over the newsroom. Totally separate arrangement.
As for "D," none. Most of my kids graduated before those grades started, but they all went to Brookland-Cayce. So whatever that’s rated.
Why do you ask?
My other four went exclusively to Brookland-Cayce, and graduated from there. Go, Bearcats.
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C’mon Mr. Warthen. You’re a smart guy.
What he’s saying (I’m a psychic, you see) is that The State seems to always be “less than supportive” of the voucher issues which MAY or MAY NOT help our kids escape poorly performing schools. And, the insinuation is that the paper’s opinion writers’ children may not sully the doorways of those very same public schools.
Alas, the point is moot.
Greater indicators of how well a child will do in school, and in life, are what type of home they come from, i.e., poor, single-parent, no father, etc.
Also, if they choose to graduate from HS, and remain childless until they do, or get married.
I could care less if The State’s government school sychopants send their kids to Hammond or Heathwood.
I only care if they champion efforts to deny me the right to abandon Burton Pack or South Kilbourne.
Yeah, I got it, Trajan. I was using that irony thing again. Bad habit.
Who’s stopping you from moving?
Mr. Hurl,
I actually live in a great neighborhood, free of violent crime, while my children attend a Blue Ribbon honoree elementary.
However, I must sympathize with those folks in the areas zoned for S. Kilbourne or BP, who cannot move and are stuck in the failing schools and often trapped in uncaring, poverty-stricken, and government-reliant homes that you idiot liberals continue to champion.
But don’t worry… your moral relativism will catch up with all of us one day. Some of us will just be better prepared to deal with those situations than those who aren’t.
Brad in Boston they do not ask you questions about your kids because everything is taken care of there and their public schools are wonderful and bomb free. In Boston their court has ruled that “The State has an interest in ensuring that the children residing therein receive an education and that they be able to marry other sexes known and unknown according the abilities of each”. Now I thank the Living God that our courts and state legislatures do not have an interest in our children’s education here in South Carolina. Mostly because it would frighten me and waste my money not that they do not waste it now just not as much.
Drive 55 save gas, listen to more books, get down to the low 20s in “beer on the wall” with the carpool on the way in to work
here are some numbers for you
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
these are new
Gosh RTH, what a smug, disdainful and contemptuous thing to say! This kind of idea is exactly what makes you pro-government school nitwits look so ridiculous. That a person must forsake hearth and home and wander like arabs to find a school they like for their kids is just one of the ideas that makes your side a tremendous loser in the eyes of people who have kids and must live this stuff everyday. You want to know at least one reason many average people hate public schools? Because people like you say foolishness like that. What business of it is yours if fellow citizens don’t want to move just to get their kids into a decent school? Keep it up…your attitude will turn peoples’ hearts against you, and the right side will win. Ed
The phony “school choice” bill passed yesterday. While politicians will champion this bill, the details show it is a complete sham. The school choice doesn’t start until 2009. Districts need only open 0.5% of their enrollment and only if they decide they are not at capacity (which rules out many of the best schools in the best districts). I don’t think there is anything in the bill to cover transportation.
What it comes down to is that a freshman entering high school in a failing school this fall has ZERO opportunity to go anywhere else for the next two years and a little chance to do so in his junior year (if he makes it that far without dropping out from being discouraged).
Slow and steady does not win the race in this case.
Also, politicians and educrats successfully blocked all attempts to add a $2500 voucher amendment that was targeted only at the poorest families in the worst schools. Can’t take the chance that it might work…
This is completely off topic, but I ask out of genuine curiosity (and no desire whatsoever to offend): what exactly does the term “Living God” mean?
Claudia, He is the great “I AM” ~ not was, not will be, but God lives in an infathomable and eternal ‘now’ ~ reigning in the hearts and meeting the deepest needs of those who accept Him on His terms and serve Him. That He is a Living God makes what has been recorded in His word over four millenia as fresh as todays’ edition of The State newspaper.
Thou oh Christ are all I want,
more than all in Thee I find.
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, heal the sick and lead the blind.
Just and Holy is Thy Name,
I am all unrighteousness.
Vile and full of sin I am,
Thou art full of truth and Grace.
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
grace to cover all my sin.
Let the healing streams abound,
make me, keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
freely let me take of Thee.
Spring Thou up within my heart,
rise to all eternity.
Charles Wesley
Oh yes…and this:
Other refuge have I none,
hangs my helpless soul on Thee.
Leave oh leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me.
All my trust in Thee is staid,
all my help from Thee I bring,
cover my defenseless head with
the shadow of Thy wing.
Claudia, you asked a good question. He wants to tell you all about Himself. Keep asking. Ed
Heh, I waited until the entire peanut gallery could chime in on their imaginary indictment of my simple question.
First, I was struck by the tone and implications of Mr. Trajan’s question: “I only care if they champion efforts to deny me the right to abandon Burton Pack or South Kilbourne.”
Mr. Trajan, a rock-ribbed, self-sufficient conservative, I’m sure, writes as if the “gubmint” is forcing his kids to attend those schools. I just pointed out that almost everyone can choose where they live (and, therefore, which public schools their kids attend).
Not only can most people decide where they want to live, they can work within the school and district to improve the schools.
Even people who have to live in gubmint subsidized housing have a choice about which area they want to live in.
Since Mr. Trajan was so concerned about his “right to abandon” two schools, I assumed that he actually had a direct stake in the argument.
My bad. Actually, Mr. Trajan apparently was arguing for the right of other people in gubmint assisted housing to “abandon” schools.
I’m sure that this is just one of Mr. Trajan’s concerns for the poor. For instance, I bet that he’s pushing for a higher minimum wage, a community transportation system, and subsidized daycare for single mothers. Maybe he’s even got time to help organize unions so that workers can negotiate living wages from employers.
We’ve had numerous long threads on here about why some schools are better than others. The key/base indicator for quality schools is household income. Improve the economic well-being of households and the schools will follow.
I’d like to see every public school offering quality education. Abandoning public schools is simply the recipe for disaster.
If Mr. Trajan is concerned about improving public schools in general then he should work to raise the median income level. If Mr. Trajan is concerned particularly about the kids attending South Kilbourne and Burton Pack then he should volunteer or be a district activist.
Disdainful, contemptuous and cynical; Hurl you’re all about people choosing things unless they happen to want to choose something you don’t like. Pretty typical for a liberal I’d say. I don’t speak for him, but I suspect that Mr. Trajan has kids in public school and that he’s much less interested in raising median income levels and becoming an activist than he is ensuring that his kids get a good education. He like any good parent probably realizes that his kids get essentially one shot at a good education because they’re only young once, and your suggestions of ridiculous liberal platitudes really don’t cut it. Sadly, that you’re tone deaf enough and have enough gall to make ridiculous comments like your last post to people who have kids in hellholes like South Kilbourne really points out pretty clearly why pro-school choice forces are turning the tide in this state. As I said, keep it up…your kind of arguing strengthens the other side. Ed
Hurl’s point is right on the money, unfortunately the Rightwingers on this discussion, as always, refuse to see it and simply throw the “liberal” flag like that is an argument.
We all know deep down what the “voucher” system is about, and it’s certainly not about choice. Vouchers are simply about rich white suburbanites pissed off about paying taxes that go to schools where there are few, if any rich white suburbanite students.
And the real tragedy here is that those same people advocating the diverting of tax money from the public schools can’t see how much more expensive it is to society to abandon any school or school system. Hurl is right. We should be striving to make every school all it can be rather than providing incentives to abandon those most in need.
And instead of blaming the “system” and abandoning schools, why don’t you Rightwingers preach the responsibility of parents for taking a more active role in their children’s education? Because when it comes right down to it, those kids whose parents care, succeed. Those whose parents blame the system and throw up their hands, don’t. It doesn’t matter what school you go to. The education is there for the taking if the parents care.
I’m not throwing any flag…I am pointing out very directly that Hurl is in love with the idea that people can choose where to live. She simply loves for people to choose to volunteer to work in hellhole schools, and implies that if they DON’T choose to so volunteer, then they ought to shut up. As if THAT is some sort of arguement. Oh yes, she, and you Syd, love choice as long as it’s choosing something you happen to like and endorse. But let people choose to do what’s best for their kids by sending them elsewhere and have the temerity to actually believe that they might actually use their money to do it and not send it to a state hellhole, and suddenly you hate choice. Actually, I AM throwing a flag, but it’s not the liberal flag…it’s the BS flag. Ed
ed, I’ve been trying to think of something suitably smug, disdainful, contemptuous and cynical.
I’ve never stated nor implied that people who don’t attempt to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem should shut up. However, it does sound reasonable since you brought it up.
Do you dispute that people CAN choose to live in the attendance zone of whatever public school that they choose?
Mr. Trajan probably chose his home exactly because the neighborhood was “relatively crime free.” In a perfect world, that would describe every neighborhood. In a perfect world, no school would be a “hellhole.”
We don’t live in a perfect world but we do live in a system that allows us to elect representative school boards which in turn decide policy matters for our local schools. If you decline to participate in this basic American democratic process then you complaints will lack credibility.
I’ve never advocated preventing people from using their money to send their children to whatever private school will admit them.
Here’s the basic fact that you don’t seem to grasp: when you pay taxes, the dollars cease belonging to you individually and then belong to the gubmint, i.e.”we the people.”
Allocating tax funds to schools not under fairly strict, if not direct, governmental control has been judged in the past to be a bad– if not implicitly unconstitutional– idea.
You may think that you can direct public education dollars better. (Heck, I’m sure that I could direct our defense spending better than G. Dub.) We both have the option to run for the appropriate office and try to convince the voters that we’re right.
Claudia, I don’t know if you are still following this thread, but I just noticed your question above, and I would just comment that, according to Scripture, the expression “Living God” (a fairly common one in the Bible) usually denotes the true God in contrast to idols made by man. The former is God in reality, the other consists of human attempts to make him into our own image, in other words, how we would like for him to be. This would include, I think, attempts to rewrite Scripture the way we think it should be written— Thomas Jefferson’s New Testament would be an example (he cut out the portions about miracles), but we all have a tendency to shut out things we don’t want to hear, which amounts to the same thing).
Forgive me for preaching, but if I may say so, I think that one of the most insidious forms of idolatry is the modern Western one, in which God becomes our “clan god,” whose job it is to bless our particular political vision as the one sent from heaven. (Personally, I have real difficulty singing some of our patriotic songs in church for that very reason—or even having an American flag in the sanctuary, which many congregations still do. After all, most churches have some internationals who worship there—are they also to think that God is “American”?)
For those who might seem to think that God is the God of capitalism, I would just point out that much of the vision for the people of God in the Old and New Testament is “socialist” in nature (for example, God evidently intended property to be redistributed back to the original owner every fifty years—He does not support the accumulation of wealth for a few at the expense of many others). It would be good for us all to recognize that, like Jefferson’s preference for common sense philosophy, we tend to only hear what we want to hear, and to make God fit our pre-conceived notions. That is not very smart.