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Not long ago I wanted to give back to the community I live in. Noting that there are a lot of....shall we say.... white trash people here with no concept of the "social graces", I offered to provide tutorship to any young person (uncharacteristic, I know), who was interested in learning how to present themselves in a more refined way. I even offered to do it FREE of charge.
Do you think I got ONE phone call? Nope, not one.
Precious few people, it seems, are interested in bettering themselves.
20yrsinBranson
Maybe your snobbish, upper crust attitude was a deterrent that drove
those stinky "white trash" away.
That scam works for five years now. What do they do when that gig is up?
In a most states they allow "hardship" exceptions up to 30% of the welfare roles. So if you pop out another baby, you will most likely qualify for this exception.
When your "gig" is up on the governments dole.......well, you will live in the poverty you put yourself in......no tears from me.
Who in the world ever said it was "lily White Aryan paradise"? (disturbing choice of words all around, btw).
Let me try to explain this to you: Posters said that the core reason for Detroit's illiteracy rate is because a majority of the popualtion is black. I pointed out, accurately, that in Mississippi, where the majority of the population is white, almost every county has a higher illiteracy rate.
So, moving beyond your obsession with explaining that Mississippi isn't all white people (duh), explain how one draws a correlation to race when as bad or worse statistics exist in poor white communities as well.
There are also predominantly Black counties in Mississippi with a high poverty rate.
Here is a picture of Black poverty in Mississippi.
Functional illiteracy is increasing in many industrialized countries. Some say that is the consequence of TV and other media replacing written media.
If you don't use it, you'll lose it
Interesting. That is happening with some of my Chinese friends who use alternative input methods to write hanzi on computer as opposed to traditionally drawing them by hand. They keep the recognition knowledge but have trouble writing by hand.
That's a recipe for disaster. There was a scam going around a few years ago where functionally illiterate homeowners were talked into refinancing their homes, the terms sucked (and were unsustainable), and they ended up losing their homes.
That is the down side of not learning how to read. It is so easy for most people that it isn't even funny. Just make the sounds the letters make and run your finger past them as you make them.
What school taught those people was that they are stupid and can't read. Unlearning that lesson is very hard to do. We would be far better off junking the public education system. Make it voluntary not mandatory. Then if the kids weren’t being taught anything useful (to the kids and their parents) then they could leave.
It is. I used to tutor adults in English and literacy. All it takes are books, magazines, newspapers and they can be used and donated. In fact we taught English with literacy together, while someone is learning English they can be learning how to read it at the same time - even if they never read in their own language. And at the same time you can teach the informal use of the language and the idioms.
Or the students would bring in something they wanted to learn to read, you sound out the words and the interesting thing is, you don't have to speak their language to help them learn to read and speak English.
So to sit a kid in school for 13 years and to have them not be able to read at the end of it is a criminal waist of public resources. Unless what you want to teach the students in school is something other than how to read and write and do math. What school does teach is how to be compliant and do what you are told. It is very defective at this.
You're living a life that is dependent on the government. EVERYONE is. In fact, companies that are posting record profits are asking the government for subsidies. That's being dependent on the government. Is illiteracy high on the boards of oil companies? Haliburton? Lockheed Martin? etc.
The reason why they "breed generations of illiterate poverty ridden kids" is because poverty is cyclical.
I think that instead of subsidizing big oil or handing out government contracts on inflated terms, we should use that money to try to end the cycle of poverty. That we should see other models and tweak them to fit our unique situation here in the US. I think that when you start encouraging and providing resources to people that they can succeed. However, some people need a little more help than others.
I think that its inhumane to treat the poor as lazy. I think that what is evident on this board is a lack of knowledge and understanding of underlying causes of wealth and poverty. I know I've been blessed, but many others haven't. It's not because my family worked EXTREMELY HARDER than those that were not blessed. It's because of the structure that gave benefits to a certain segment of the population. Unfortunately, those benefits accumulate over time. The sad reality is that those benefits are increasingly leaving the middle class and going to wealthy. Actually the extremely wealthy pulled away from the "normal" wealthy (their incomes rose INCREDIBLY faster than their less wealthy, but still well off, counterparts).
If you don't think it's structural, why is it then that problems in suburban areas (divorce, drug use, etc.) do not produce the same results as problems in poorer areas?
Drug use in college is seen as youthful indiscretion. Drug use by the same demographic in urban areas not in college is not seen in the same light. Our perceptions are based on this framework that poverty is bad and we tend to associate negative feelings to the same behaviors when those behaviors are done by the poor.
We call out single parent moms in urban areas, but are more likely to be sympathetic of the single mom in a McMansion about to be foreclosed.
These attitudes are well exhibited on this forum.
I said this before, the reason a woman has kids with no means of support is because she knows Big Brother is there to step in as Daddy.......it is just a scam. Stop ALL Baby Momma Bennies.....and make it very clear before you implement this policy......and you will see these scams drop to next to nothing.....the goodies are the incentive to get preggers.
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