|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
 Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 10:46 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
So the city of Detroit has a literacy rate of 53%? That means that, on average, the citizens of Detroit are less literate than the citizens of nations like Pakistan, Yemen, Haiti, Laos, Nigeria, and Sudan (though in fairness to Detroit, Pakistan just barely edges it out). Perhaps it's a bit unfair to compare a single city to an entire nation, but when the city in question is a major city in the wealthiest nation in the world, it's still a completely pathetic situation.
The Michigan State Government seems to think the best answer is to give layoff notices to every teacher in the city, fire an as-of-yet undecided number of them, reduce the compensation of the rest, and then open for-profit charter schools which a study has found on average produce worse results for students than equivalent public schools. In the face of something like that, I don't see what a reasonable person can do except to simply move away from Detroit. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
stilicho25
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
|
| Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 11:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I would move away as well, but I am curious to see if anyone could think of any solutions.
I would put in place a no tax zone for industry, convert the schools into trade skills and apprenticeship programs, and bring in a battalion of nat gaurdsmen for security. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
|
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 1:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I don't know this for a fact but I think the standard for literacy is probably very different in developed countries like the US. Maybe by literate they mean someone who can read at an adult level. In Pakistan or Nigeria literate may mean someone who can write his/her name. I seriously doubt nearly half the population of Detroit can't read, but it seems more likely that they couldn't understand an adult newspaper or read a serious novel. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 1:56 am Post subject: |
|
|
| NovaKart wrote: |
| I don't know this for a fact but I think the standard for literacy is probably very different in developed countries like the US. Maybe by literate they mean someone who can read at an adult level. In Pakistan or Nigeria literate may mean someone who can write his/her name. I seriously doubt nearly half the population of Detroit can't read, but it seems more likely that they couldn't understand an adult newspaper or read a serious novel. |
Sure, it's always hard to know whether any individual literacy statistic is incorrect. That's why I dumped out a number of nations. Sure, maybe Pakistan over-estimated a bit with it's 54% literacy rate. Maybe Nigeria over-estimated it's rate due to using an unreasonably soft standard. But for every country you managed to pull off the list in such a fashion, it would be trivial to drop another embarrassing third-world comparison onto it, and sooner or later the actual point of my comment inevitably reveals itself: it's not a matter of which specific third world nations Detroit is beaten out by that is the problem, but rather that it can be seriously ranked among them at all. Unless you're willing to stand up and literally say every third world nation in the world is lying about its literacy rate, I don't think the course you're pursuing here will go anywhere, because if you can't read a basic novel or newspaper, you're quite frankly not literate. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
|
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 2:29 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm not saying they're lying about their literacy rate. I'm saying that the criteria is probably different. I see a big distinction between not being able to read and write at all vs not being able to understand something written at an adult level. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ELGORDO
Joined: 12 Jul 2009
|
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 4:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
thugreport.com
Any Questions? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
|
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 5:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
As I said in an earlier post. Poor people, of all stripes, commit the overwhelming majority of crime. You don't find too many college educated or skilled workers in prisons. You will find under educated, often single parent head of family, low socio-economic status and abused people who often times abuse drugs themselves. Black, White, Asian, Latino prisoners ALL share that by and large.
K-12, ESPECIALLY early childhood education is the key. Fixing High Schools are great but it does little good because the student spent the K-9 years being under educated, lost most if not all confidence and self esteem to do better scholastically. Get them early and you build on that foundation. The majority of inner city kids that go to college came into HS thinking college. They just didn't decide on a whim.
Have any of you seen the state of elementary schools in the inner city? Huge overcrowded classes, very little in theyway of school supplies. Teachers end up being little more than baby sitters and do very little teaching through no fault of their own.
Cities like Chicago and Philadelphia's schools got so bad the school boards control were removed.
If we are serious about reducing the crime rate, specifically inner city crime rate which is just a buzz word for black crime, it MUST start with education and a serious look at the war on drugs. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
|
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 6:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| kcs0001 wrote: |
The country is broke. Yeah, they can do QE3, but its almost reaching the point of "Killing the goose that laid the golden egg."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/the_racialization_of_deficit_c.html
Robert Weissberg, American Thinker, April 25, 2011
Race is increasingly infusing the current debate over federal spending and the soaring national debt. {snip}
The modern civil rights movement was initially about personal liberty�from attending schools of one�s choosing, to sitting wherever one chose on a bus and being able to vote regardless of skin color, among myriad other liberties. Yes, expanded federal power was vital but intercessions such as affirmative action were, supposedly, only temporary legal steps to guarantee African Americans options heretofore available only to whites.
With time, however, relatively cheap government edicts were replaced by expensive entitlements. Expanding the Great Society�s anti-poverty programs became a way of life. Opening up the housing market evolved from anti-discrimination laws to the right to government-supplied decent housing, and if that option was unobtainable, government would subsidize private housing or mandate (and guarantee) below-market home mortgages. Laws banning racial discrimination in employment were similarly supplanted by government jobs to soak up black unemployment (blacks now comprise one out of every five non-postal federal employees). Head Start replaced the local babysitter and mandated integration became oversize bureaucracies to assure equal outcomes. In cities with sizable black populations, e.g., Detroit or Newark, municipal jobs became life-savers. Washington has also repeatedly extended unemployment benefits, a benefit that disproportionately helps blacks given their higher levels of joblessness. In a nutshell, for many African Americans �civil rights� has come to mean government generosity, a generosity increasingly financed by borrowing.
The obvious problem is sustainability, as debt replaced tax revenue. {snip} Unfortunately, this fiscal predicament is now being perceived as an attack on African American civil rights. {snip}
This is hardly a fringe view. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) website similarly affirms that the quest to escape crushing debt is an anti-black subterfuge. As one CBC member put it,� It is important that everyone understands that in their proposed 2012 budget, Republicans are diverting money from programs needed by the poor, seniors and people with disabilities to corporations and the wealthy in our country.� It is further argued that attempts to reverse ObamaCare means denying health care to many who are now, finally, on the verge of obtaining decent health care. In fact, in 2011 the CBC offered its own budget in the House that reversed some of President Obama�s cuts but it was soundly rejected by a 3 to 1 margin. It predictably called for spending increases for education, job training and other programs to help the poor, to be paid for by upping taxes on the wealthy. The NAACP has recently deplored America�s �under-funding� of education though educational spending has dramatically increased with little to show for these extra billions (and many cities with largely black school populations are among the nation�s best funded schools). {snip}.
Endless borrowing to finance a steady stream of government benefits may seem quite reasonable for many African Americans, particularly those with limited education. It is hardly surprising that after a few years of enjoying a benefit it grows into an unalienable right. Nearly half of all Americans do not pay federal taxes so subsidized housing, food stamps, Head Start and all the rest are �free� {snip}. {snip} African Americans also seem particularly prone to debt, running up larger credit card debts than whites (often double) of comparable incomes (see, for example, here). {snip} Poorly educated citizens in general may also be befuddled with terms like �billion� and �trillion,� let alone the international consequences of excessive indebtedness, so all the dire warnings are just too abstract.
{snip} For many Americans helping African Americans entails a moral obligation that exists independently of fiscal prudence. Further add the difficulty generating private sector employment for many African Americans (trying to boost private sector employment via empowerment zones has proven futile). Most clearly, linking fiscal cutbacks to an �attack� on African American civil rights automatically mobilizes a sizable congressional block of anti-cutback votes (including white legislators dependent on black voters). Resistance will hold even if budgetary hawks like Paul Ryan (R.-WI) can demonstrate that these �civil rights� programs are often wasteful, ineffectual and equally applicable to whites. {snip}
Less obvious, but perhaps of greater importance (though still unspeakable) is the possible link between government cutbacks and domestic violence. Recall that many of today�s programs helping blacks were a response to 1960s urban violence, and they have succeeded. Cutting ethanol subsidies to Iowa farmers is a mere inconvenience compared to firing thousands of black teacher assistants who have few non-government job options. Significant cutbacks here will bring �cold turkey� on a grand scale and expressions like �long hot summer� may soon return.
In the final analysis, the only practical solution may be sustaining government programs that disproportionately assist blacks, regardless of value or costs. {snip} |
I'm not sure how blacks being a large percentage of city, state or federal workforece constitutes some form of handout.
Many of America's largest cities have a very large black population, some majority black, so its logical that those cities would have a large percentage of black workers in their city governments.
Although some states have a majority white population, the capital or seat of government are often times in cities with large black populations as well as state offices in other cities within that state, so again, it stands to reason that blacks would constitute large parts of the state employees.
Washington DC is 55% black. The federal government hires locally, so it seems only logical that the federal workforce has a high percentage of black workers.
Is it any surprise that a great many city and county workers in Miami are latino? They compromise the largest segment. In many cities its now latino workers that are the growing members of the government workforce which is no surprise as it reflects their percentage of the population. A century ago it was Irish which reflected the massive immigration from that country to cities such as NYC, Chicago and Boston.
Furthermore, despite laws against racial discrimination in hiring, in the '60s and'70s, it can't change people's minds. At least not initially. It was often times the government that followed the new hiring laws. Makes sense since it was the government's own laws. They were hiring minorities when the private sector wasn't. Not as a form of welfare but simply following the laws. It was the private sector that came late. It was the unions that intitially fought gender and race inclusion.
No person wants to see cuts in their industry or company. Was it an attack on white working class male workers when Detroit and other heavy indusries moved jobs overseas in the '70s to the '90s?
Its also interesting that social welfare is almost aways mentioned WITHOUT mentioning corporate welfare which costs more than social welfare. http://www.eriposte.com/economy/tax/corporate_welfare.htm
Spending for corporate welfare programs outweighs
spending for low-income programs by more than
three to one: $167 billion to $51.7 billion
I'm not saying we shouldn't reduce social welfare. Even though welfare reform by the Clinton administration in the '90s reduced social welfare significantly at the time, but the FACT is that corporate welfare costs more but rarely gets the headlines and social welfare is often cited seemingy to induce race and socio-economic animosity between Americans. Especially at election time.
Finally, one last thing about goverment jobs. Before blacks had these jobs why wasn't it viewed as some sort of job welfare to the european immigrants who held these jobs prior? When did it become a form of welfare when the demographics of these jobs changed? Washington DC has ALWAYS had federal jobs because its the seat of power. For decades many of these jobs (along with city and state jobs) were used as payment for political support to many peoples. Mayors, governors and Presidents have always handed out government jobs to friends and supporters. However, today its welfare on a different level.
Interestig. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
|
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 8:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| ELGORDO wrote: |
thugreport.com
Any Questions? |
yeah, how about "context" and "scope" and just "general logic"
quite the Aryan aren't we? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
|
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 9:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| ELGORDO wrote: |
thugreport.com
Any Questions? |
What's your point? Why post it? You must have a reason. Please enlighten us. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kcs0001
Joined: 24 Jul 2005
|
| Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:08 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Go figure, if this had been reversed, it would be in your face national news for weeks. The Duke Lacrosse guys guys got plenty of coverage...
Must jus be dey kultcha
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/may/18/10/attorney-for-wfu-basketball-players-implicated-in--ar-1044241/
Attorney for WFU basketball players implicated in sexual assault allegations says players are devastated
By MICHAEL HEWLETT
Former Wake Forest University basketball players Gary Clark and Jeff Teague are reeling from the resurfacing of a 2009 sexual assault allegation that they thought was resolved when no criminal charges were filed, their attorney said Wednesday.
"It's just devastating to them, especially having gone through this two years ago and having been open and honest about it," said Mike Grace, a Winston-Salem attorney representing the two players. Clark says the sexual encounter was consensual.
Grace also said the student who accused Clark of forcing her to perform oral sex in a hotel bathroom had sex hours earlier in another hotel bathroom with a male cheerleader within earshot of other students, then talked about it afterward.
The student's attorney on Wednesday called Grace's statements a "gutter-level smear campaign" that is a typical defense strategy of blaming the victim in a sexual assault.
The student, who is appearing on NBC's "Today" show this morning, told police in Miami that Clark sexually assaulted her while Teague stood outside the hotel bathroom in the early morning of March 21, 2009, after the team lost during the NCAA Tournament there. The student says Wake Forest told her it would deal with the players but did not take any disciplinary action against them, according to an organization working to reduce violence involving athletes.
The Winston-Salem Journal does not publish the names of alleged victims of sexual assault unless they agree to be identified.
Grace said Wednesday that the student exercised poor judgment in her actions, including her sexual encounter with the male cheerleader three to four hours before the incident with Clark and Teague.
The student was a member of the pep band traveling with the basketball team.
"It doesn't mean she's promiscuous," Grace said. "It just means she made poor judgments."
The student's attorney, John Clune, said Grace is using a common legal tactic of attacking the victim. The student doesn't want to deal with the specifics of what happened to her and is more focused on the school's response to her allegation, Clune said.
"That kind of gutter-level victim smear campaign is one she will never engage in," Clune said of his client. "This story is about universities' poor handling of campus rape and how young women speaking out can bring change."
Clune also represented the 19-year-old Colorado woman who accused Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault in a resort near Vail in 2003. The woman agreed to dismissal of the charges and later settled a lawsuit against Bryant.
Grace said Clark and Teague thought the allegations were behind them after being cleared by the Miami Police Department and an internal Wake Forest judicial hearing.
Clark finished his senior season with the Wake Forest basketball team this spring and graduated with a degree in mathematics, Grace said. Teague now plays for the Atlanta Hawks in the National Basketball Association.
"This publicity will eventually die down, but it will leave a stain," Grace said.
Nathan Hatch, the president of Wake Forest, and Ron Wellman, the athletics director, issued statements Tuesday saying they take allegations of sexual assault seriously but are prohibited by federal law from commenting on the student's case. Through a spokesman, they declined to comment further Wednesday.
The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes is helping the student. Kathy Redmond, the founder, said she wouldn't comment specifically on the student's case until after the "Today" show segment airs.
But Redmond has told WGHP/Fox 8 that the student delayed filing charges because she was told that Wake Forest officials would take care of it and discipline the players. When that didn't happen, the student filed a complaint in Miami, she said.
According to a police report, Miami prosecutor Laura Adams decided not to file criminal charges because there wasn't any physical evidence, the student didn't file a report until two months after the incident and there were no corroborating witnesses.
Grace said the student approached Clark and Teague in the hallway of the hotel where students were staying. They had a conversation about sex, and she went willingly with Clark to his hotel room when asked, Grace said.
They went into the bathroom, where the student performed oral sex on Clark, while his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend were in the hotel room, Grace said. Teague remained outside in the hallway, Grace said.
The student consumed several alcoholic drinks, though she told investigators she was not intoxicated, Grace said. She was 21 at the time, according to the Miami police report. Teague, who was 20, and Clark, who was 19, had not been drinking, Grace said.
Grace said the student made the decision to go to Clark's room.
"It's clear to me she wasn't forced," he said. "She walked two to three flights of stairs. Those are the kinds of things she should have exercised better judgment in, if that's what she didn't want to do." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
soupsandwich
Joined: 20 May 2011
|
| Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I find it amazing when one looks at modern day American black culture and how it has really formred into something way off from what Martin Luther King, was hoping for........sad...he was a great man.
soupsandwich |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
|
| Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 9:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| kcs0001 wrote: |
Go figure, if this had been reversed, it would be in your face national news for weeks. The Duke Lacrosse guys guys got plenty of coverage...
Must jus be dey kultcha
|
I can only assume your point is unequal media coverage of similar events. If so, I agree about a bias in the media. However, media bias can be attributed a whole lot of things. Politics. Gender bias. Tons of things. I'm not sure many people would say overall American media coverage is 'fair and balanced' to borrow Fox News's mantra.
Crime reporting bias based on race seems to be at the top of the list or perhaps the only item on the list for you and others. May I ask why? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
|
| Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 9:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| soupsandwich wrote: |
I find it amazing when one looks at modern day American black culture and how it has really formred into something way off from what Martin Luther King, was hoping for........sad...he was a great man.
soupsandwich |
I would assume that MLK would have been greatly disappointed in those that did not take advantage of the many opportunities in America today but modern day American blacks are/were heads of America's biggest companies (TimeWarner, Merrill Lynch), been joint chief of staff and even President. There are plenty of successes.
Also, I don't think there is one 'black culture'. There are 40 million blacks in America, from all socio-economic backgrounds, and culturally as well. I would suggest a black guy from Philadelphia, Pa is as different from a black guy in Philadephia, Ms in the same manner as a white guy from both cities. We have this monolithic view of 'black culture' which I think isn't so, just like there is no monolithic Italian American, Irish American, Gay, Jewish or Latino culture as well. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
|
| Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 9:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| kcs0001 wrote: |
Must jus be dey kultcha
|
noting for posterity. racist bullsh@! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
