🚀 go-pugleaf

In la.general Joseph E. Taranta <nospam_jtaran@ibm.net> wrote:
: J.M. Ivler wrote:
: > You have won. When teachers wear uniforms, students can too. When teachers
: > have to adhear to a "dress code", students will too. If a teacher fails to
: > follow they will be docked pay, and after three occurances, they will be
: > suspended without pay for a week, and the studens will be put in detention
: > for an hour for their first three, and then suspended for a week.
: Yeah... Whatever... Sounds like you have some unresolved issues dealing with
: teachers or other authority figures.

No. I took your reasoning (as flawed as it was) and took it to the next
logical step. A dress code and uniforms are not equal. I have never
indicated in any of my posts tghat I opposed a dress code. I have
indicated that I oppose uniforms unless you can point to the problem that
they are to solve, and demonstrate that they have solved that problem in
the past.

It is the difference between having a law that says the speed limit is
25MPH and having a regulator installed on your car. One is acceptable, the
other is an invasion.

: > MAKE THEM ALL GO TO SCHOOL IN BARE FEET!
: > [the other option is to take their guns away and try them as adults, but
: > why adress the real problem, attack the shoes!]
: Ok, I have no problem trying them as adults. You understand though that this is
: after the damage is done and someone else is dead or maimed for life. The idea is
: to prevent this from happening in the first place.

: Make them go to school bare foot... I see... Is that the way you would  solve the
: problem?  Incidentally; I was not attacking the shoes. I was pointing out that
: sometimes you are dealing with sociopaths that the threat of prison or a 15 year
: stint on death row is not really going to mean much to.

Joseph, Joseph, Joseph. When I went to school (back in the dark ages) I
had the pleasure of growing up on the east coast. The kids I went to
school with included mafiaso kids. These kids were the kids of people who
were in the biggest, baddest gang of their time (and may still be). Most
of their fathers (and maybe even some of their mothers) wore guns as a
daily part of their business... but they didn't bring guns into school.
Some of these kids grew up to go into their fathers business (one, who was
in my english class, was the proud hitman an Itialian resturant murder of
8 members of another family).

There have always been guns, and gangs. The fact is that today we don't
have parents that say "Tommy, don't bring the gun to school" and then
enforce that rule by the will of parental control. Today we have kids
dicatating what they can and will do to their parents.

My draconian solution is to kill the asswipes and sterlize the
incompetant parents so they can't repeat their mistakes. Since society
won't permit that, I propose that we remove any "child" that carries a
weapon on campus from the campus permanantly (in addition, we have them
charged and let the criminal justice system deal with them). Note that
none of these solutions deals with how they dress. I really don't care
what a kid wears, I do care what they do.

: > Sound like they have personal problems. If they start to  kill themselves
: > over grades should we also stop issuing low grades to them so they won't
: > feel inadequate?
: Begs the question. You didn't offer a solution and you are over simplifying a
: complex issue. Pretty much the same way you did with the shoe thing. Guess what..

KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Overly complex solutions have problems of
thier own. Do a root cause analysis of the problem. Determine what it is
that needs to be fixed. The real problem, not some symptom. Then FIX THE
FRIGGIN PROBLEM! IF the state can't fix the problem (and the state can not
fix all problems because doing so would violate our individual rights to
be assholes) then we have to develop ways to deal with the "problem" after
it manifests. In this case the solution lies in the criminal justice
system.

: Those personal problems tend to slop over onto others. They tend to involve
: people who don't have a problem. Just ask the families of the children who were
: shot to death a few weeks ago in the school down south if they thought there was
: a problem in the school. 

No, there was a serious problem at HOME. That home based problem slipped
into the school. Did they not realize that there was a troubled kid in the
system? I don't know, but go back and see what the comments were from his
first, second, third grade teachers. 

: I am not saying that uniforms would have prevented it. But; I am sure
: there were some parents at that school that felt exactly like you
: do before it happened. Now they all have to deal with it.

Nice strawman. Here is a situation, the proposed solution we have been
discussing has nothing to do with it. People think like you now have to
deal with it. Joseph, I expected better. We both know that this had
nothing to do with "uniforms" and that "uniforms" wouldn't have prevented
squat in the killings that took place. As for parents who felt that way
before, there are many who still feel that way. And they don't have to
deal with it, the whole community has to deal with it. They have to wonder
how some "good boys" went so bad. They have to question the ethics and
morality that permitted this to flourish under their eyes, without them
noticing. They have to ask themselves if they were the parents of those
kids, would they be sitting there today wondering what went so wrong...

: Well; to begin with, your reference to Charles Darwin's "Origin of the Species"
: dealt (mostly) with natures ability to adapt and reproduce successfully solely
: from a biological standpoint. My guess would be that you have never read it.

I am truly an uneducated lout. But, in this case you guessed wrong. If you
like I can also quote Freud (both father and daughter), Ericson, Skinner,
et al. Proving that I have spent time in our hallowed halls of higher
education by being overeducated in psychology, sociology and other
persuits of liberal arts education doesn't mean squat in this discussion.

: The reality of it is that not all parents are good parents and if your kids are
: in public schools, you and your kids have to deal with it whether we like it or
: not.

Same was true in my day. We had bullies and assholes. So what.

: Your kid is involved in it just by attending. Try to remember also that school is
: a collective and a community endeavor. Order has to be maintained and in some
: instances that means uniforms.

No, it means suspension, expulsion and active disipline. It means calling
parents into school, and when they say "I can't control my kid" having a
person from the "state" there to offer to put the kid into a "foster"
situation. To take the kid away. If a parent can't control their kid, then
maybe they ought not be a friggin parent!

: > You wnt to give your rights up to the state, that's your choice. That's
: > your reality. They will have to fight like hell to take any of mine away.
: The fact that you are sending your children to a public school means that you are
: depending on "the state" to educate your child.

No, I'm not "depending" on them. I pay for it. For instance the same
houses across the street from one another cost $40,000 differnce because
one is in the Los Alamitos School District and one is in the Cypress
School District. Same houses, built by the same builder, the same year.
Why? Because the LosAl School District is rated #6 in CA and Cypress
doesn't show up in the top 100. How do I know that? I *chose* to buy in
LosAl. I PAID for a better school district. I don't depend on the state...
I paid the state and I do every year in higher property taxes.

: > My daughter "belongs" to my family. She doesn't "belong" to anyone else.
: > She is not school property. She is not state property. She is my
: > responsibility. She is not on even ground. She is the best of the best.
: Your daughter is also part of a community (like it or not) as are you. Sometimes
: in a society we do things for the greater good. We post 25 mph speed limits where
: children are be playing. We build parks. We expect people not to litter or drive
: under the influence etc... 

The greater good has to be proven. We don't put speed limiters on peoples
cars so they can't drive more than 25MPH. We create a rule and post it.
Then we enforce the rule through random application of the rule. Since you
don't know when a cop will be waiting to pull you over, you make the
assumption that the cop is always there to enforce the rule. There is no
reason why you can't do 50MPH, and you might even get away with it, but
there is a price to pay if you get caught.

We don't builod a park becuase we think that building it will get rid of a
symptom. We build parks because the community expresses a desire to have
one. Because it is wanted. And, in some cases we don't build parks for
those same reasons.

: Sometimes we are asked to have our children to wear
: uniforms in school when we think that it will elicit  good behavior and
: citizenship. 

PROVE THIS. Prove that this is an outcome. Show me where this is so. YOU
CAN'T. That's the bottom line. There is no proff of any of this
supposition. Uniforms don't do this. A bad kid in a uniform is still a bad
kid. Clothes don't make character. 

: If we thought that the school or "the state" was not acting in our childrens best
: interests or did not solicit our input we would have them in a private school in
: about a nano-second. Unfortunately many parents can not afford this and should
: use whatever resources are available to them. That should and often does include
: a dress code or the evil uniforms.

Dress code == acceptable
Uniforms == unacceptable

Why do you insist on putting these two very different concepts together?


: From your tone, I would guess you (and yours) are pretty good candidates for home
: schooling. You should rush right out and look into it. See, that way "the state"
: will be out of the loop and no one will be trampling on your "right" to attire.

No. I paid to live in a school district that believes in disipline. I paid
to live in a school district that never left the three R's for all those
fancy "empowering the student" crap programs. I paid to live in a school
district where they recognize and reward success. I paid to live in a
school district where the teachers get paid what they are worth, so they
stay and educate the kids instead of babysitting them.

: One last thing...
: Let me ask you something. When you were writing your rebuttal, was any real
: thought put into it  at the time? Because it seemed like a collection of random
: ante dotes and clich�s that really didn't go anywhere.

Like I said Joseph, I'm an "uneducated lout" and you are right. Your
mixing of apples and oranges and calling them fruits is so much better an
argument than my "life experience". Your strawman is just a work of art,
and a true testiment to your fine honed Usenet skills. I obviously live to
type random incoherant cliches into the computer. In fact, you have
figured me out... I'm not real at all, I'm a bot.