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Exactly. The only assistance Americans are willing to give is food, and many people are not eligible, or don't get enough to cover their full needs. Really. Go and read about the actual real assistance available. It will make you very sad, but hopefully very angry. There are huuuge swathes of the population that get nothing at all, and enormous numbers who only get food assistance. They are not in a situation where they're likely to do all those little things that middle class parents do for our kids, starting with being able to let them live without stress.
And you're vastly underestimating how time consuming bus travel is. It is trivially easy for a relatively short trip to take an hour or more in each direction, add in time in the queue and three hours is probably an underestimate. Here's a fun exercise: your day off is Sunday afternoon. Use google to figure out the nearest food bank to you open on a Sunday afternoon and how long a bus from your house to there and back will take.
I have been a public health nurse. I probably know way more about these issues than you do. Why are you carrying on about food banks? Calculating SNAP benefits is dicey, because families are expected to spend 30% of their income on food in addition to their SNAP allotment. Nevertheless, a family of four can get a maximum SNAP benefit of $649/month. Keep in mind this is in addition to the 30% of their own funds they are expected to spend on food. This, plus free school breakfasts, free school lunches and the WIC money for any family member who is pregnant, up to six months post-partum and/or up to age 5, is a fairly decent amount of food. Most food banks aren't even open on Sundays. I have been supporting a food bank for years, decades really with donations and volunteer work. My daughter has volunteered there as well.
I didn't give any estimate for bus travel, except to say it would be hard to imagine a bus ride of 3 hours. I did as you suggested and the bus trip itself would be 14 minutes, plus the walk to/from the bus stops on a Sunday, less on weekdays because there is a bus that stops within feet of the FB then. In addition, the number of households without a car is under 10%.
ETA: To get there on Wednesday, when they're open till 6, the bus ride is 29 minutes but you get off within a 5 minute walk to the facility (according to the Regional Transit District).
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 12-30-2015 at 08:06 PM..
Having worked in the Michigan public school system for over 10 years, the realized the problem here also lies with the parents. The moral value and decay of the parents has degenerated to "animal," therefore American teachers main focus is discipline problems. These children lack any type of discipline or self control. They also lack respect and proper values. Parents start with daycare to high school are uninvolved in the children's lives until they get in trouble. They work all day jobs and come home and put their children to sleep. Parenthood is not valued and looked upon like a burden and a chain, being tied down. This individualistic society has consumed us. We have degenerated like the Romans and I fear, there is no turning around.
This is the issue. We have a decaying culture. And large swaths of our population place no value on education and are not involved with their children's education.
"Diversity" has nothing to do with it. It is a cultural problem. Just because some of Finland is "diverse" doesn't mean it's diverse in the same way as the US.
To fix our educational problems, we need to change our culture. Finland is not burdened with some of the cultural problems we have -- communities with largely absent fathers, disdain for education, etc.
Unfortunately, government and the education system want us to think that MORE MONEY is the answer. Unfortunately, more money does NOT improve academic achievement. While most reformers (Michelle Rhee, for example) realize that it is critical to remove poor teachers and overthrow the top-heavy bureaucracy, they inevitably are overcome by teacher's unions' campaign contributions to pandering Democrat politicians.
Another part of the problem is how we define success: if you want (almost) everyone to graduate high school, you must lower the standards and deal with high-cost remedial education in college. Now that the working class has been destroyed, we can forget using public education to prepare youngsters for the workforce--maybe now we can throw out the current Progressive brainwashing, and educate young adults to be skeptical about what those in power tell them. A basic understanding of American history, particularly the decline of the American Middle Class over the last 30 years, would go a long way to offset the Big Government Progressive agenda.
Finally, all the best education in the world will not change the fact that there is such a thing as IQ--good ingredients plus a good recipe make a good cake; you simply can't make a Chemist out of someone with an IQ of 80. And the education system in poorer jurisdictions is fighting an uphill battle regarding the average intellect of their students, after many decades of punishing high IQ-families and rewarding low-IQ families via the income tax system. it's a good thing for politicians that IQ scores are "normalized" --even if average IQ has dropped significantly in the population over the last 30 years, the IQ statistics gathered wouldn't show any worrying trends.
Hang on, let me just finnish trying to cut my Nokia phone with these Fiskars scissors.
Fiskars goes back 365 years; Nokia in its current form is almost 50 years old. Both pre-date the overhaul of the Finnish educational system. Since the overhaul, what Finnish men and woman have made notable contributions or have become internationally recognized?
This has been said earlier, but let me condense it into one sentence: They start by having no underclass.
But we could do better. We do very well with our upper class; I'd pit the graduates of New Trier, Sidwell Friends, etc. against the best that Finland has to offer. I'd like to see that model extended to everyone, with accommodations made for those with less than stellar IQs.
Now days, in order to become a regular "K-12 type teacher" in Finland, you have to complete your training at one of only eight prestigious teacher-training universities. These universities are as selective as MIT and Ivy Leagues are in the states, and just as rigorous. Getting into a teacher training program in Finland is as difficult as getting into a highly selective medical school in the US.
I feel our system in America produces more innovative and creative individuals. Rank and file cradle-to-grave educational and welfare systems just churn out mediocrity. The best and the brightest end up leaving such countries to places where there is less government intervention and more free enterprise.
I have been a public health nurse. I probably know way more about these issues than you do. Why are you carrying on about food banks? Calculating SNAP benefits is dicey, because families are expected to spend 30% of their income on food in addition to their SNAP allotment. Nevertheless, a family of four can get a maximum SNAP benefit of $649/month. Keep in mind this is in addition to the 30% of their own funds they are expected to spend on food. This, plus free school breakfasts, free school lunches and the WIC money for any family member who is pregnant, up to six months post-partum and/or up to age 5, is a fairly decent amount of food. Most food banks aren't even open on Sundays. I have been supporting a food bank for years, decades really with donations and volunteer work. My daughter has volunteered there as well.
I didn't give any estimate for bus travel, except to say it would be hard to imagine a bus ride of 3 hours. I did as you suggested and the bus trip itself would be 14 minutes, plus the walk to/from the bus stops on a Sunday, less on weekdays because there is a bus that stops within feet of the FB then. In addition, the number of households without a car is under 10%.
ETA: To get there on Wednesday, when they're open till 6, the bus ride is 29 minutes but you get off within a 5 minute walk to the facility (according to the Regional Transit District).
After I posted this, I remembered another food bank closer to my house, 1.9 miles. According to Google, it takes 14 minutes to get there on the bus, including walk time to /from the bus stops. You could walk and take along a wagon to bring the food back, save the bus fare.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 12-31-2015 at 07:55 AM..
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Exactly. Nokia stock today trading at $7.12---Apple stock is $107.32
