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| NOLA... You are supposing... |
by nelzie |
2003-11-03 06:45:27 |
To continue our talk from the other day...
"If instead of giving poor parents money, you give them free parenting classes and free daycare and many other free resources, you might see improvement. There is no way that things will improve by neglect. Let's face it, middle and high income parents that don't take their responsibilities seriously are their own faults. If you're poor and working two jobs just to make ends meet, your parenting is going to suffer. Now, my solution would be for those people to not have kids they can't afford in the first place, but that doesn't do squat for the ones who are here and need to be dealt with."
You are assuming a few things here that I have an issue with.
One, you are assuming that all financially poor parents actually give a hoot about that children. I am not saying the diametrically opposed view. I am just saying that free parenting courses could be wasted on people that simply won't bother going to them in the first place. (..and won't get anything out of it if the whole thing was court appointed to begin with.)
I have worked with some financially poor people with children that could have cared less about what happened with their children. Some were to busy working towards their next 'fix' to care enough about giving their children the right attention. The State isn't any better, many children will continue to stay with poor parents for most if not all of their lives and it's not that the State doesn't care. It's that the State is ill-equipped to deal with all and every single case of child neglect.
I have also worked with some financially poor parents that gave a hoot about their children. They were poor, they knew it, they didn't hide from it and did everything they could to make sure their children had some values instilled within them. These people might pay attention and even attend 'free' parenting classes, but after attending two or three sessions, they would see that they are already doing what they are supposed to be doing.
It's like this, you are unable teach an adult to care about anything that the adult has little or a lack of desire to care for. Good parenting can be learned, only if the person wishes to learn or if it is instilled in a person from childhood until adulthood.
Two, you are supposing that people would take advantage of the 'free' courses. How would they learn about them? How would you make sure that people would know about them? How would you gauge their effectiveness?
There are people that if you told them that they could poo pure gold they wouldn't do it if there was some hard work involved in the process.
It has been established that I came from a poor upbrining and so did you. I have said that my mother did everything that she could to instill morals and values in me. From your previous statement about how lucky you were to have had the chance to go to a good school you leave one with the assumption that your parents had little to nothing to do with how you turned out. So answer this, did your parents care or not care about you and your schooling? Did your parents attempt to instill some values or morality in you or were they to busy watching television all the time or hitting the crack pipe(insert any other drug here as well)?
You can say yes or no about your parents caring about you. I don't need all the details. I would have to say that if you lived in a house of abuse with uncaring parents that you are a statistical anomaly and I am certain that if you think about it, you will remember one to a handful of students at your 'perfect' schools that failed.
As for the New Orleans schools, that is terrible to hear. I cannot possibly imagine why any parent would let their children attend such a school environment. I know that if my child came home with a bruise or seemed upset about school, I would find out immediately why and I wouldn't rest until things were fixed. I can't imagine that those schools are filled with children whose parents don't give a hoot about them. If one kid had caring parents then something would have been done about those schools.
Now, I don't know your friend and I have never set foot within a New Orleans school to know for sure, perhaps there is some truth, but perhaps there is some fudging going on. I do know that some people like to fabricate stories sometime to either fit into their view of the world or to harvest sympathy for themselves.
I see it often and I could name a few examples, if you wish... but those examples I have will provide nothing to the original vein of this conversation which is my belief that people matter more then the money and that people/parents will make more of a difference in the raising and education of a child then all of the money in the world.
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[ Reply ] |
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I'm not ignoring you; I'm EXTREMELY jammed up | by NOLAWitch | 2003-11-03 07:07:52 |
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I understand... | by nelzie | 2003-11-03 07:13:52 |
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OK, time to dig in and respond. | by NOLAWitch | 2003-11-03 10:41:58 |
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Threaten them with castration | by Patch | 2003-11-03 12:19:03 |
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<sarcasm>Yeah, that would get me lots of votes. | by NOLAWitch | 2003-11-03 12:40:37 |
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It's an upbringing thing... | by nelzie | 2003-11-03 12:39:58 |
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Pie-in-the-sky notwithstanding, I don't see | by NOLAWitch | 2003-11-03 13:11:54 |
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There are no easy answers... | by nelzie | 2003-11-03 13:26:10 |
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Look, we agree on a lot of points. | by NOLAWitch | 2003-11-03 13:54:27 |
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