I’m unsure of your background but I suspect you’ve never lived in/near a deeply impoverished area. Areas that face serious poverty emanate psychological quirks & social ripples, they are rather draining. I’m not making excuses for underachievers, I’m just saying ignoring their reality won’t help the situation.
If you’ve been poor and beat the odds like several people I know, congrats. In this country I believe poverty stems from lack of motivation, my big concern is that low motivation easily turns into a downward spiral. It’s no different than being obese really, which most often starts with low self esteem and eating for comfort. As bad eating habits lead to more & more weight gain the depression worsens…on goes the cycle. I can feel eyes rolling already, “white mans guilt” “bleeding heart” yada yada. To squash that right quick…I personally think the government needs to stop satiating underachievers, “necessity is the mother of all invention”, right?
As I see it, without pain there can be no understanding of pleasure. This is why I asked what others thought the solution may be, there surely must be a way to motivate the un-motivated. Has bitching about the situation, turning our backs on it and/or trying to move away solved it? It’s a tough problem to solve…how do you reduce crime without satiating? If you must satiate, how do you satiate without demotivating?
Whatever the solution something’s gotta give here. Kids continue to be born into poverty and having shitty/depressed parents causes both the innocent kids AND hard working Americans problems. Can we fix people and require testing to reverse the process allowing reproduction? LOL
^ The first step is having the courage to put the blame where it belongs, on shitty parents, instead of blaming the school. Until we can un-PC ourselves long enough to do that any discussions about a solution are a joke.
Buffalo has to feed every kid a free breakfast or they’re too hungry until lunch to learn, but sending these kids to the burbs is going to fix the problems?
+100. This society has become too PC, everyone is equal and everybody is doing a swell job…even if they aren’t. And it’s always someone else’s fault. Gimme a break, your kid is dumb as a brick, you expect the teachers and school to babysit and feed your kid. Be a fucking parent and own up.
I don’t disagree with you guys on the parenting issue and general PC bullshit. If someone else carries/drags you across the finish line YOU didn’t complete the race, you should not get a trophy. I hate the “everyone is a winner” mentality, it doesn’t jive well with a sum 0 society.
There’s a reason why people in these school districts generally work harder, longer, pay more in taxes and pay more for houses. The ones that do this in the city, send their kids to private school.
Just because I like throwing a wrench in the works, and based on a bunch of reading I have been doing lately on business, strategy, society impacts, etc.
What if the motivation isn’t to “smarten up” the inner city kids, but to “dumb down” the suburb/country kids?
Education has been shown to be a driving force in multiple-level class societies; allowing people to move between socioeconomic classes. The way our country has transitioned over the past 40-50 years has seen a major shift in power from general society to a select few people and businesses. During this shift we’ve seen direct and deliberate actions to effect the education system and socioeconomic system of this country.
I pose this question… what’s easier to control, stupid people who can’t/don’t think for themselves, or well educated, informed people?
(Just a personal theory based on research I’ve been doing for my EMBA)
What’s hilarious is people assume the suburbs higher home values and taxes mean they’re spending more on schools and that’s why the results are so much better. Buffalo outspends almost every other district in WNY, including the most affluent ones. They’re #3 in the nation in spending among large districts.
Williamsville is always ranked in the top 3 academically and anyone in WNY would admit is an excellent school district. Must spend more right? Nope, $15933 per student.
Amazing what you can do without the corrupt Buffalo Teachers Federation bitterly clinging to their bullshit old perks like free plastic surgery and parents that actually give a shit.
My daughter was in kindergarten last year and I bet my wife and I spend more time working with her on school work that 90% of any grade parents did in Buffalo last year.
Myself included but everyone loves to offer up their gripes but nobody ever seems to have the solution. Surely the nyspeed braintrust is smarter than this. My solution usually involves deferring to the “This is an unfixable problem and I wont be living in this country for much longer,” but im sure JayS has heard that enough by now…
WHAT (if anything) can possibly fix this self-perpetuating problem???
I was speaking more so promoting education and hard work rather than facilitating laziness and stupidity. I have no problem with income disparity, economies need that to function, but that doesnt mean Joe Blow cant get his ass up and be a solid janitor for $20k a year rather than sit at home and make $25k off of Uncle Sam.
the “what do we do” question is a valid one; but the interesting part that I’m noticing is that there is another demographic (Latino) that ARE motivated and who ARE doing everything they can to “move up the ladder”.
What do we do to motivate the unmotivated, not sure; all my ideas are beyond socially taboo even for me. (Child limits, removing children, forced sterilization, military academy type schools, physical punishments, etc)
I agree with LZ though, the opportunities ARE there if you want them bad enough; none are easy, but nothing in life worth anything is.
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Education is being promoted, only in a fucked up way to increase profits instead of for the betterment of society. See my post above about hidden motivations.
Think dealing drugs and running drugs are easy work? (not funny, actually being serious).
History has shown that in time, classes have worked their way from being considered “societal nuisances” to well adjusted “blended americans.” Italian, Irish, and many other European immigrants… all once generally considered the scum of the social ladder, all faked it or maked it into assimilated american culture, shaking most of their social and cultural stereotypes along the way. Even modern day Caribbean, African and Asian (whole different ballgame there lol) immigrants show that they are willing to put in the effort to learn the language, and take up shitty jobs driving cabs and cleaning kitchens.
Its the ones who are born in the American inner cities that just wont buy into the “I can make it out of here if I work at it.” And like you said, this is the cycle we need to break.