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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 9:04:13 GMT -5
I may catch some flak for this, but I think government assistance contributes to some of the violance. Before welfare and things of that nature, the poor had to work or starve. If you were busy working three jobs to eat you weren't inclined to engage in violance at the end of the day. But now with people living on government assistance and not having to work, they have more time on their hands. And idle time is the devel's playtime, or somesuch saying. But how does that fit in with the fact that Canada, (which has widespread government assistance) has a much lower crime rate than the USA or Russia? From the Economist: "Russia's current welfare system lavishes many privileges on the not particularly impoverished, while many of the poorest get little or nothing....The main problem with Russia's welfare system—that most of the benefits go to the middle classes rather than the poorest—has been a problem in many middle-income countries, from Eastern Europe to Latin America. But Russia is behind most in reforming." www.economist.com/node/3060477
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 9:23:17 GMT -5
I'm aware of the definition of homogeneous and if you're referring to my post as a slap, it wasn't unless your intention was to use "homogeneous" as a code word for "white." Idioms are often unique to regions and in some regions in the US anyway, there definitely are PC terms that have been substituted to mean the same thing as the old perjoratives. I just wanted to explain that to Weltz in case that use was foreign to her. Go ahead and use "shall" all you want, though... Unless, of course, your post is a jab equating me to the kids who were too dumb to know what shall meant and gave you grief about it. Errr... Welts responded 3 posts before yours. She said "Montreal is NOT a homogenous city." Your explanation that Weltz wouldn't know, infer, or google after she posted that is pretty interesting though.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 9:28:28 GMT -5
I may catch some flak for this, but I think government assistance contributes to some of the violance. Before welfare and things of that nature, the poor had to work or starve. If you were busy working three jobs to eat you weren't inclined to engage in violance at the end of the day. But now with people living on government assistance and not having to work, they have more time on their hands. And idle time is the devel's playtime, or somesuch saying. Govt dependence Begets Govt dependence. Why would you catch flak for saying so? Don't we all see this in our children? That the more you simply give them, the more entitled they become and they get crappy attitudes that they should have even more and more? That is true for any of us.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Jul 29, 2012 9:29:49 GMT -5
Shooby and Phoenix
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 9:40:36 GMT -5
Can anyone give me an example of a country with small government safety nets and low crime?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 10:41:31 GMT -5
I think part of the problem is also the wide-spread media and things like TV. People turn on the TV and see how other people live and I think some people think it is unattainable for them to ever get what they want so they turn to crime.
I still think education is a problem. A big one. When people either don't graduate or graduate without being able to function and be successful in society, then they have limited options. Limited options makes people desperate and do things they might not otherwise do.
I live in a county where child/domestic abuse is some of the highest in the state. The reason is that many of the people here don't work and live on disability or other forms of welfare. This gives them 24/7/365 to try and find things to fill their time with. Alcohol and drugs are the main time filers of choice. This leads to violence. Recently, it was 2 people killed at a party when they made a "rude" comment to a neighbor who was very drunk, went home and got a firearm, came back and killed them both.
DS graduated last year from HS and nearly all of his classmates that didn't go to college are now living locally with their parents. We gave one of them a ride to the store the other day and he now has FIVE children and was going to the store for his lunch - beer... He is 20. Doesn't work, lives on welfare and his parents. Sad for him but very, very sad for those five kids. What will their life be like?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 10:43:26 GMT -5
I don't believe education is a problem. We are overeducated into stupidity. We can run computers but have trouble balancing our checkbooks or understanding the interest on credit cards.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 10:55:50 GMT -5
Do you have any kids who have graduated from HS recently? When I was in school in the 1980s we did things like write reports. The kids of today make a poster. Why? Because the teachers are "too busy" to grade writing papers and the students have an easier time doing cut-and-paste rather than actual writing. I have a son who graduated recently and can barely read/write due to a learning disability. He was not on an IEP, had regular classes in high school, and never once failed a class. How is that even possible? Simple, they assume he isn't going to college and just pass him with a "C" and move on. Graduation rates for HS are very low in the US, and they are worse in the inner cities. The current graduation rate for HS is only 75% in the US. What are all those dropouts doing for a living? www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/high-school-graduation-rate-rises-in-us/2012/03/16/gIQAxZ9rLS_story.html
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 11:02:21 GMT -5
Parents have a responsibility in their child's education as well. The schools cannot do it all. Many parents let their kids stay up all night playing on the computer or Xbox, feed their kids crappy junk food, don't discipline them and do very little to ensure that their children are respectful of authority or come to school prepared to learn. There is only so much the school can do. The teachers INVENT ways to give the kids work to help them boost their grades because many of the kids today simply do nothing and get away with it. And, the teachers hands are tied.
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Post by BeenThere...DoneThat... on Jul 29, 2012 11:41:16 GMT -5
In any case, I don't understand why being more homogeneous would make a country less prone to violence. Is there any scientific rational for that belief? Even in the USA, most violence occurs between known parties. If the majority of violence was between different races, culture or religions, I could get the homogeneous argument, but that isn't the case. In discussions like this, the phrase "homogeneous" is code for "white". After all, nobody's thrown it out there yet, but it's often implied that minorities are the cause of the problems. ...I'd disagree... the first mental image I get when I see/hear that phrase is a street scene in Korea...
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Post by BeenThere...DoneThat... on Jul 29, 2012 11:41:54 GMT -5
Parents have a responsibility in their child's education as well. The schools cannot do it all. Many parents let their kids stay up all night playing on the computer or Xbox, feed their kids crappy junk food, don't discipline them and do very little to ensure that their children are respectful of authority or come to school prepared to learn. There is only so much the school can do. The teachers INVENT ways to give the kids work to help them boost their grades because many of the kids today simply do nothing and get away with it. And, the teachers hands are tied.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Jul 29, 2012 11:52:22 GMT -5
Shooby.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 12:20:19 GMT -5
Of course parents have responsibility for their children's education. So, when you have kids who haven't graduated from HS, and they are breeding, what do you think happens with their children? How do you make sure your kids get a good education when you haven't done that for yourself? How do you help with homework and all that when you didn't finish school yourself?
My late-DH never graduated from HS and wasn't well educated. He wasn't able to help my kids with their homework much past about 5th grade.
I don't think you just your kid in school and that's that. The problem is that if you aren't educated yourself, and work to see that happens with your kids, they just get passed through the system and then you have another generation of uneducated kids.
Just as we have a problem with "generational welfare" we also have a system of "generational ignorance" in our country.
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Post by BeenThere...DoneThat... on Jul 29, 2012 12:25:55 GMT -5
Of course parents have responsibility for their children's education. So, when you have kids who haven't graduated from HS, and they are breeding, what do you think happens with their children? How do you make sure your kids get a good education when you haven't done that for yourself? How do you help with homework and all that when you didn't finish school yourself? My late-DH never graduated from HS and wasn't well educated. He wasn't able to help my kids with their homework much past about 5th grade. I don't think you just your kid in school and that's that. The problem is that if you aren't educated yourself, and work to see that happens with your kids, they just get passed through the system and then you have another generation of uneducated kids. Just as we have a problem with "generational welfare" we also have a system of "generational ignorance" in our country. ...with all due respect... an under-educated parent can still sit their kids' butts are the kitchen table and insist they spend time reading/doing homework... the under-educated parent can still contact a teacher to request instructions on what homework needs completion and review... the under-educated parent can instill a hard work ethic into their kids to promote their efforts to become more educated than the parents... where there's a will, there's a way... ...end rant...
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Jul 29, 2012 12:56:49 GMT -5
"Graduation rates for HS are very low in the US, and they are worse in the inner cities. The current graduation rate for HS is only 75% in the US. What are all those dropouts doing for a living?"
Believe it or not, 75% is a huge improvement over what we had in the 40's to 70's. It wasn't until the late 60's that more than half of the adult population had high school diploma. The rate of high school graduation has been increasing since the 50's.
However, one could argue that the world has changed and we need higher graduation rates.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 13:34:11 GMT -5
Shooby... We're simultaneously over educated and need more? I do agree that parents have responsibilities for education. No doubt.
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Formerly SK
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Post by Formerly SK on Jul 29, 2012 13:37:08 GMT -5
Do you have any kids who have graduated from HS recently? When I was in school in the 1980s we did things like write reports. The kids of today make a poster. Why? Because the teachers are "too busy" to grade writing papers and the students have an easier time doing cut-and-paste rather than actual writing. I have a son who graduated recently and can barely read/write due to a learning disability. He was not on an IEP, had regular classes in high school, and never once failed a class. How is that even possible? Simple, they assume he isn't going to college and just pass him with a "C" and move on. Graduation rates for HS are very low in the US, and they are worse in the inner cities. The current graduation rate for HS is only 75% in the US. What are all those dropouts doing for a living? www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/high-school-graduation-rate-rises-in-us/2012/03/16/gIQAxZ9rLS_story.htmlI'm sorry but you live in a crappy school district. Grade level for end of year Kindy in my school district is a three sentence story with who/what/when/where incorporated. End of year 1st grade expectations is a 10 sentence story with even more detail. I don't know higher grades since my dc are young still, but I doubt it suddenly drops to cut/paste posters. I have a friend whose kids go to a crappy school district. Her dd is in 1st grade (at grade level) and spends the day "helping" the teacher teach letter sounds to the other kids. 75% of the class is well below grade level which means the class will never even get exposed to sentences/concepts of writing like my dc are being exposed to. From volunteering in my dc's schools, I can absolutely tell which kids come from families who help support their educations and which kids don't. Not everyone learns at the same pace, and the slower kids need more help/support to grasp the concepts. Teachers only have so much time to give to individual students. Last year DS spent a solid 60+ minutes every evening doing homework (1st grade). Often it was 90+ minutes. It was VERY hard on the family logistically and me emotionally as we really battled with DS over it. Fortunately we have the resources (married with only one working spouse) so it was possible. But if you have two FT working parents? Or parents who are in denial? Or parents who believe the schools are responsible for teaching? Kids will fail. If you get enough of those kids in a classroom it brings down the rest of the class as the teacher has to focus on remedial stuff. But again, I don't think it is lack of education that causes violence. It doesn't matter how well you learn to read/write if you are getting beat up in the bathrooms every day between classes. Or your prostitute mother doesn't feed you or make you go to bed or get you winter clothes or any of the other zillion things that could hinder getting to school in the morning.
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seriousthistime
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Post by seriousthistime on Jul 29, 2012 14:53:54 GMT -5
I grew up in the ghetto. Violence is systemic and cultural. Kids grow up seeing 100s of fights/murders from the age of toddlers. They are not being watched - father is MIA and mom is usually working FT/OT (if honest) or drug dealing (if not). Either way, there isn't any parenting going on. Boys join gangs for identity and protection, and either die or go to jail. Girls grow up and have babies so someone will love them. There aren't any laws there - it is like the West from the 1800s. Reputation is everything and either you are tough or you die. Money from drugs funds all the weaponry. Has anyone seen the documentary, The Interrupters? It's fabulous for explaining the situation. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/I think you've hit the nail on the head. And I do think it's spreading beyond the "poor" areas. I can't say Section 8 is the reason but I can see how it could be. In our town (200,000 people at most) the poor used to be concentrated into one section of town. Now it's creeping into the areas where there are smaller homes that people turned into rentals, and more people from the big cities (Chicago especially) are moving to our town. One bad apple brings more into the neighborhood, and pretty soon the dealers are looking for stash houses to rent in less crime-ridden areas and the crime follows. This is a huge problem. Parents give their kids no encouragement to do learn anything or even behave at school and don't support the school's efforts at all. My teacher friends tell me that parents show up for the Winter Break assembly and the end of year assembly, but not for parent-teacher conferences. Why the assemblies, you ask? Cookies and punch are served.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Jul 29, 2012 15:00:34 GMT -5
Yup, that is why you see no section 8 allowed. I still got calls even with that in the ad.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 15:21:14 GMT -5
If you are 18 and stupid, you might be able to place the blame on the teachers. If you are 40 and stupid, it is because a person chooses to be. I knew some well into life adults who still whine because they weren't "taught enough" in school. Well, fine. Maybe so. But, if you allow yourself to remain that way, there is no one to blame but yourself.
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Post by BeenThere...DoneThat... on Jul 29, 2012 15:26:30 GMT -5
If you are 18 and stupid, you might be able to place the blame on the teachers. If you are 40 and stupid, it is because a person chooses to be. I knew some well into life adults who still whine because they weren't "taught enough" in school. Well, fine. Maybe so. But, if you allow yourself to remain that way, there is no one to blame but yourself.
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Malarky
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Post by Malarky on Jul 29, 2012 16:10:40 GMT -5
Good example of why so many kids burn out and drop out by the time they hit middle school. They are being pushed too hard and too fast. I'll go back and read the rest, but I just need to address this. I was a smart kid. I got two B's my whole school career. Everything else was an A. Graduated in 3 years from high school. By the time I was in middle school, I just wanted out. So in high school I made it happen. So I would have more choices in life. Now we put kids in "school" at 2 or 3 years old. They need to learn their numbers and colors and ABC's. And if they don't, they're labelled. What about being a kid and appreciating the wonder of learning rather than worrying about "benchmarks"? What ever happened to learning to tie your shoes in kindergarten? Are these kids really so much better off? Maybe it's because despite the poverty I grew up in, I really didn't experience "Johnny can't read." I just hate school now. For my kids. for me as a parent. DD did a project in the spring as a HS freshman that I would have been embarrassed to turn in as a 7th grader. So, I'm at both ends of the spectrum. We expect too much of our kids in kindergarten, yet not enough in middle school. At least around here, a lot of core education is missing, as far as I'm concerned. We used to let our kids grow up. Take on more as they could handle it. Then we decided they couldn't handle anything.
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Formerly SK
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Post by Formerly SK on Jul 29, 2012 16:24:01 GMT -5
You can't argue both sides. We're in a global economy - if we want Kindy to be about tying shoes then how will they compete against the Chinese/Japanese/European kids who are learning multiple languages etc in elementary school? FWIW, I was chatting with DD's Kindy teacher and 21 out of 22 of her students this year surpassed the "too high" year end expectations I just listed. So are they really too high? Or do we romanticize playing in the sandbox and nap time because it is what we did as kids?
My ds has so much homework every night because he has autism. Academics and general focusing are VERY hard for him. Should I give up and not intensively work with him every night because his childhood should theoretically be more fun? Or do I push him because the world is the world and he needs to be able to survive in it as an adult? Unless our country does a 180 and suddenly votes for huge tax increases to more support the disadvantaged (yeah right) I'm going to continue to push him.
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Malarky
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Post by Malarky on Jul 29, 2012 17:06:38 GMT -5
Somehow...
I'm 50. When I was a kid, we were able to learn to tie our shoes by the time we were five. And we put men on the moon and were mostly responsible adults at 18. At least able to live on our own and figure it out. And we held our own in the world as it was.
Fast forward to today. I know the world has changed, but...I can only think of one other person in my RL who really thinks her kids would survive if she died tomorrow.
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jaya3300
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Post by jaya3300 on Jul 29, 2012 19:38:42 GMT -5
If one lived in poverty, one is more likely to:
live in a unsafe neighborhood (crime, drugs, gangs, gun violence) have bad role models have uneducated parents be from a single parent home feel hopeless and expect little out of themselves be expose to violence in the home, outside the home, or both have less income and less opportunities(can't afford tutoring and extra curricular activities) move around alot (little stability) have parent(s) who are super stressed little emotional and educational support at home unavailable parent (parent may be working several jobs to make ends meet)
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jul 29, 2012 19:55:41 GMT -5
I think part of the problem is also the wide-spread media and things like TV. People turn on the TV and see how other people live and I think some people think it is unattainable for them to ever get what they want so they turn to crime. ----------------------- Here's the thing, though. Aside from pharma companies hawking meds, followed by lawyers hawking class action lawsuits for the aforementioned meds, we have the exact same TV shows and media that you do.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 23:46:26 GMT -5
Yes, but do you also have the gang problem that exists in the US?
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jul 30, 2012 1:51:45 GMT -5
Yes, but do you also have the gang problem that exists in the US? We have some, yes, especially in Toronto, but this thread is a attempt to address poverty and violence. Poverty has a tendency to beget gangs which begets violence. (Just as an aside, in my city, the "gangs" responsible for many murders are Mafia "gangs" handling settlement of accounts. Well-dressed men found shot dead in their BMWs and firebombing of Italian cafes. The average citizen has little to fear from them. Well, I never felt endangered by their business.)
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Jul 30, 2012 7:16:37 GMT -5
I just watched a documentary about the infamous housing project called Pruitt -Igoe in St Lous. It was first occupied in 1954 and had 33 11 story apartment buildings, about 3000 apartments. It was initially seen as a huge advancement in the quality of public housing, but it quickly began to become a haven for drugs and violence. It was torn down in the mid 1970's.
The documentary discussed why it went so wrong. One problem was that no able bodied men were allowed to live there - one woman described how her father had to leave the state in order for her mother and their 12 kids to be allowed to move into the project. So you had a lot of kids with no adult males for discipline. Another was that the revenues from the rent were supposed to pay for the upkeep, but the project was built at a time when there was a mass movement of middle class people from downtown St Louis to the suburbs, leaving only the poor people behind (because they didn't own cars). The apartments were meant to be for both poor people and lower middle class working poor people, but anyone who as capable of earning enough money to get out did so ASAP - even before the violence was bad, the projects weren't ideal places to live. You weren't allowed to have TV's, the elevators only stopped every 4 floors, there was no AC and the rooms were small. So in a short period of time the only people living there were the ones that couldn't afford rent anyplace else, and that meant there were no rent revenues to pay for the upkeep, and things got worse. Pipes froze in the winter and sent water cascading through the buildings. Trash incinerators didn't work. Windows got broken and weren't repaired. As people moved out, drug lords moved in and took over whole buildings. Residents could see the police pulling up outside and would throw fire bombs at the police cars, so ultimately the police stopped going there. Finally all they could do was tear them down.
The point from the documentary seemed to be that isolating the very poor in these massive, substandard apartments and then failing to provide security or maintenance was what caused the projects to very quickly fall into violence.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Jul 30, 2012 7:29:17 GMT -5
But nothing was said about a woman who had 12 kids and no way to support them. Or the father that made them and then abandoned them as well. Trouble is when you give someone something, they have no incentive to keep it nice. Like another poster said, someone who is working2-3 jobs to keep food on the table doesn't have time to make more babies or get into trouble. Instead of 16 year olds hanging out on street corners, they can be baby-sitting their siblings while parents work or working themselves to hep out the family.
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