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Missy

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My 10 year old cousin is currently attending public school in Texas. When he comes back up here, he's getting supplementary lessons.

This is folk music, many great Canadians like Neil Young and Great Big Sea are known for their folk music. One of the best genres ever.

This is Tommy Douglas, the greatest Canadian to ever live, he invented universal health care. You know that H1N1 shot Mommy paid so much to get you? Well me, your cousins Nolan and Brett, uncle Dave and aunt Tannis all got it for free thanks to Mr. Douglas.

This is Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the greatest Prime Minister we ever had, he did some pretty crazy things that could get the job done, don't believe it? Well, just watch him.

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My 10 year old cousin is currently attending public school in Texas. When he comes back up here, he's getting supplementary lessons.

In my opinion, any public school in America is insufficient.

Leave us out of it thank you.

To be fair though. You cannot blame public institutions for failing when they are funded less and less and expected to improve. Reagan's Paradox.

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Don't get me starting on the public vs private education rant. I'm one of few people I'm friends with who came out of public, so my friends are always picking on me for it, in a fun way of course.

Private

- Teach to test. As long as test scores are high, they have succeeded for their clients, aka the students parents.

Public

- Teach to pass. More often then not the public system is more like a production line, moving them on to the next grade which is why so many kids get intellectually left behind.

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I would agree that not enough parents take their kids education as a personal duty as it should be but then again my parents would tell you that their parents never had time to help them with their homework and it was different then. Society viewed education as an almost necessary evil and yet it worked.

This society views education as very important and yet more and more cuts are being made by governments making sure that no one really has a fucking clue what's going on in the system at all. "You have to prepare the students for the world that they are entering." Well, okay. I agree. But where are the resources?

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How can you possibly consider even a partial rehabilitation of McCarthy? The man is a poster boy for moral panic, he's a fucking warning from history. Kids should be learning from the mistakes surrounding McCarthy just as much if not more than the event that lead to World War II, because those mistakes can be made again, in fact they still are.

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I went to public school, my sister went to private. I graduated in the top 10% of my graduating class, my sister barely graduated. Then again, my school is odd since our arts program actually gets funding. This is especially odd since it's a small rural school district and after our choir, probably the biggest student org. is the FFA.

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I think my state is proof that just pumping more and more money into public education doesn't work. We're routinely near the bottom of the pile for the 50 states in terms of test grades and other statistics, and yet we've spent more money on average per student than any other state.

Jack has had the truest post thus far, though. So many parents here in my area are so goddamned apathetic about their kids' education it sickens me. They want to be their child's best friend instead of their parent and so when they fuck up in school and misbehave and get poor grades, the parents take them to Six Flags. Whosajiggawhat?? How does that help the child?

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Don't get me starting on the public vs private education rant. I'm one of few people I'm friends with who came out of public, so my friends are always picking on me for it, in a fun way of course.

Private

- Teach to test. As long as test scores are high, they have succeeded for their clients, aka the students parents.

Public

- Teach to pass. More often then not the public system is more like a production line, moving them on to the next grade which is why so many kids get intellectually left behind.

Both public and private schools practice the "treasure what you measure" style of teaching. And it's sick. And it was like this even before NCLB, but has only become worse.

In my opinion it's more parents than teachers that are failing these kids. If the parents gave a crap, then the kid will give a crap. I know many teachers who will tell you that some parents think of school more as a babysitter than a place to learn.

Yes. And because teachers are now being charged to raise the children of these failing parents, they are overburdened. Teachers are underpaid, schools are understaffed.

I think one of the worst things that happen in many public school districts (in the U.S., at least), is teaching to the middle, the meaty part of the curve. You're advanced? Good for you, have a gold star and be quiet and let the slow kids learn. Though, in the latter half of the 20th century, we saw the big shift toward "every child is a special little snowflake, and we can never ever ever let them think anything less" as well as "if they kid's a slow, disruptive fuck-up, they MUST have a disorder!" Yes, let's subsidize the time wasters.

Meanwhile, honors programs are disappearing because "the middle" is sliding further back, and the voucher system provided to the truly intellectually/physically needy students robs general population schools of much-needed funding.

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Yes. And because teachers are now being charged to raise the children of these failing parents, they are overburdened. Teachers are underpaid, schools are understaffed.

This.

Also:

This just in! Ann Coulter's a hate-mongering fucktard! Oh yeah, you already knew that, didn't you? Well, this time it happened in Canada!

Edit: Oh yeah, congratulations America on having a government that gives a shit about your health. Unless you are in one of the 14 States suing over HC reform, then you should probably move.

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Note: this is not directed an anyone in particular. I mean no personal offense.

Screw this.

I am fucking sick and tired of everyone telling me that I'm somehow wrong or stupid because I don't want my government to run my healthcare system. It doesn't mean that I don't care about my fellow man; it means that I don't want domestic government imperialism.

Hell, at the moment, I can't afford healthcare for myself. I am one of the people that would technically benefit from this. But, in my opinion, the end doesn't justify the 940-billion-dollar means, especially when we're in the middle of a major recession.

Yeah, I live in one of the 14 states that are suing, and I'm proud of it. It's my right as a citizen of this Democratic Republic to peaceably disagree with the decisions of my government. I've HAD IT with people being hypocrites and telling me how I somehow don't have a right to an opinion just because a bill got passed.

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You know, I have a lot less of an issue with health care than the 970 Billion Dollars we've dumped into Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the health care bill is coming in at nearly the same price, I'd just as soon get us out of there and help our own people.

Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion, I just respectfully disagree.

EDIT: Fucked up my figure. Sentiment remains the same.

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You know, I have a lot less of an issue with health care than the 970 Billion Dollars we've dumped into Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the health care bill is coming in at nearly the same price, I'd just as soon get us out of there and help our own people.

Well, I'm not arguing that point.

(And, really, I'd rather not start an argument right now anyway)

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Personally, I want the government to take care of me when I'm sick. I feel it's my right as an American citizen who pays taxes and contributes to the economy. I will almost always side with business in anything else except the health of it's citizens. There is a reason every other country of note has universal health care. It's the right thing to do.

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I tend to stay out of political arguments because I really think nothing gets settled and that nothing ever will be.

But I could've died last year because I didn't want to pay through the nose to go to the hospital. If it wasn't for this whole place yelling at me, I can't guarantee that I would've gone at all. I can't imagine someone else being in the same position or worse and not thinking the trip to the ER is worth it because of bullshit. I don't care how they fix it, just as long as it gets done.

No one deserves to go through that and it's amazing that it's still an issue this far into the lifespan of the country.

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I'm almost afraid to say anything socioeconomic on this website anymore because I get chewed out by everyone. Apparently, I just want people to die or something along those lines. (As opposed to the real reason I didn't want this health care bill to pass being that I hate our overbearing, arrogant-as-all-hell government slowly taking over every aspect of our lives.) But I'm going to speak my mind anyway.

This bill was rushed and passed WAY too hurriedly. Obama was so worried about his goddamned legacy that he all but forced his party to pass something to save his Presidency (since his approval ratings are heading the way of GWB's). This country is in the middle of a gargantuan recession and the government is just adding hundreds of billions (if not over a trillion dollars) more to an already hideously large deficit. Our generation and our children and grandchildren are going to be paying for this for decades. The government just keep spending money it doesn't have.

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How is taking a year rushing too fast? We all knew it was coming. If Obama gave a shit about his legacy he wouldn't have taken this on during his first year. He did it because it needed to be done. This is part of the change he promised. People are mad about how the bill was passed, but that's how shit gets done in Washington when one party is so mad about losing the last couple elections that they refuse to do anything to help stuff get passed.

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I'm in Australia and we've had a form of universal healthcare (medicare) since the late 70's, but in the past decade we're going down a path of who pays the most gets to the front of the line, and it frightens me.

It's just part of a bigger theoretical debate. If we lived in a perfect world, where everyone helps everyone, free healthcare would work and wouldn't be a burden. But we're all in a system where some pay and some don't, so there will always be a level of unfairness to it. But surely, when it comes to the health and wellbeing of a country's citizens, the government has a duty to ensure everyone is treated (haha, treated) at the same level of priority. Health shouldn't be left to who pays more gets in first, it just shouldn't be.

And honestly, the cost is a cop argument against it. Government spend money on stupid pointless things everyday, at least free healthcare is something that matters. Space travel, war, renaming government bodies, etc, etc can all take a back seat to funding for the sake of free healthcare as far as I'm concerned. Are you saying if we started with a blank slate, a new country and we were assigning expenses, that healthcare shouldn't be at the top of the things that should get funding?

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