Tragic tale of Bush's "toy soldiers" legacy (keep sending them back "in country" until they break, then go buy you some more).
Kids want to go to college, but no money - $20K Army "signing" bonus, + college education - surprise! (aka, gotcha!) - off to battle for 9 months
End result: 5 "broken" people who will be dealing with this collateral damage for the rest of their days; right along with all those who love and care about them.
Due to the depth of subject, I'm guessing this one's 90 minutes. Like you, I'll see this on the 10th.
11-10 POV - Where Soldiers Come From PBS - also Online: November 11 thru December 11, 2011
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I've not verified all the items in this report. A few I know to be true. #15 is a misrepresentation of events (unless there have been two recent cops-students contretemps at Lincoln Memorial).
kid PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOW PUBLIC PRISONS FOR SHORTER PEOPLE - 18 signs mathaba 06-01-11
I also direct your attention to the quite well-edited video below the article. At 6:10 on the video there is a quote by John Taylor Gatto, a leader in the fight for real education reform. Click the pause button and read it over a couple of times. It gets at the heart of the problem. Substitute the term 'human society' in place of 'schooling,' and it just may describe the general state of our species as well. He remains one of the very few doing his damnedest to expose the serpentine truth behind our 'free' educational system.
Bear in mind that 18 signs is from a Libertarian (far Right) POV. While the concern is real, the hidden agenda here is to get guv'mint out of education, especially the Federal government.. One way these folks help that along is to make everything seem much worse than it is, primarily by exaggeration. Even so, many, if not most, of the events here, while described in the-sky-is-falling terms typical of the Ron Paul crowd (doesn't mean they're not signs of the rot suffusing our society), stll limn in stark terms the move to a, so-called, 'zero-tolerance' meme, now ascendent in our lower grades.
From the permissiveness of the 60s and 70s, to the casual heavy-handed tactics of today, the system swings from one extreme to the other. Today, it is is driven by NCLB's stupid, short-sighted and, yes, cruel, treatment - like the President who signed it - of all participants. Throw in parents out of work, families living out of cars, 40% of kids getting free lunches, severe cutbacks among teachers, profiteering charters, privatization fanatics (Jeb), programs deemed unnecessary to a 'balanced' education (you know, the ones that make learning, uh, fun and rewarding), and so on ad nauseum. It all adds up to mountains of stress all around; society tuned tight as an alto snare drum. What do we expect when we set folks to vibrating at such high pitch in a societal vise?
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And the abuse of schoolkids continues unabated. This policy seems to discourage normal expressions of warmth and caring while encouraging alienation. The school spokesperson tries to make the case for their not deciding what is 'good' touching and what is not, so the only answer that came to school officials was to ban all contact. How bathwater-brain-dead is that? Sounds like they wanted to avoid all that heavy lifting (thinking) to treat individual cases on, uh, a case-by-case basis.
kid DUMBTH RUNS AMOK - HUGGING GETS YOU SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL brasschecktv 11-03-11
NjW 439
Nigel Watson freethinker 727.493.1990 skype orbizen2
Blog: ORBizen Memo http://orbizenmemo.blogspot.com/
"There is no greater disaster than greed." – Lao-tzu
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Krishnamurti
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