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Paying children for good grades can be called "The Pimp My Grades Program" The Democratic Party would then come up with an anocrym something like "PIMPGRA" ?
brian a. hayes,
You might be on to something. Goldman Sachs should not only be censured by congress, it should be the subject of a major investigation by congress.
I say to myself, "Yea, that'll happen..."
Campaign finance reform NOW!
Barack Obama wants to keep control of the post election movement that was to a large extent responsible for his election. If the Obama campaign got your email address during the campaign, you know how often you receive emails from the Obama machine.
I just checked my email to see how many emails I've received this month. I've received three emails from them this month, including one that came in during the show.
when my son was in 5th grade or 6th, (he was in special program for bright kids and classes were actually doubled up but 2 teachers also) they had a project where they had 2 countries, 2 monetary systems, passports, and they had to make up a business to earn money. they had to learn exchange rates, etc. they had a blast! what a learning opportunity!
to me the greatest christian minister was dr. king. why beause he was a man of action for social justice.
moonbat666,
Thanks for your kind words.
I'm not saying that parental involvement is NOT important, but I do believe, with Thom, that so much of what's wrong today can be attributed to the falling standard of living that the middle class has experienced for the last 30 years. That affects SO many things, including the ability of parents to have the time to be as involved as they should be (for one example.)
You can't attribute the problems of our educational system to one cause. Therefore, there isn't one cure. That tends to be true for most, maybe all, major social problems. Our whole society needs a makeover.
DRichards,
I'm sure that if you look at the history of marijuana in this country you'll find a variety of forces involved in making it illegal for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons were financial. ProgressiveMews is right in naming Dupont as playing a major role. Andrew Mellon and the Mellon Bank played a big roll as did William Randolph Hearst. They all had financial motivations.
It's probably the case that public and political support for criminalizing marijuana and hemp was whipped up as a cover for the financial motivations of the economic elites.
Couldn't we do a kind of voucher system, where a voucher is allocated for every child, and then the child's parents could decide whether they want to pay the voucher to a private school, or use it to pay the child directly for getting good grades? Each semester, the child would get 100% for all A's and a percentage determined by gpa for lower grades. After a couple of generations, we would know which system works better, without having to argue about it. It is called science. You propose a theory and then test it to see if it is correct.
There are many human needs that could be used to incentivize good grades in school. Money is good as long as it is given in conjunction with tickets to art museums, movies, gift certificate to bookstores, gift certificates to extra curricular programs like martial arts, skateboarding classes--basically the incentives don't necessarily have to be money. Instead, the incentives could be created after actually getting to know the kid and figuring out what would most benefit them-- what their dreams and hopes and favorite things in life are and creating gift certificates to work for that reach into those particular interests.
The incentive program could be very creative and do tons of great things while subtly encouraging even more learning. You could incentivize with classes on making your own solar-powered skateboard, or backpack, or ipod for example.
Gift certificates to music stores might be wonderful or for getting a guitar. Perhaps a kid really wants a guitar. SO why not set up a point system with a guitar as a goal.
Or each school could have a store where tokens could be used that have only really cool learning products and extra curricular equipment that enriches their lives.
You could have classes where kids learn to make their own healthy snacks to bring to school and share with friends.
http://www.portlandia.etsy.com
(I have pretty notecards for sale and would love to sell you some!)
http://www.portlandlivingweird.com
links to Dem Senators not yet on board for a public option.
RE: a secret society of Christian crazies ???
well...if there isn't it sure feels like it.
DRichards:
It's my understanding that it was made illegal was because hemp was going to overrun the paper companies, and if I remember correctly it was Dupont that was one of the companies which lobbied HARD to make it illegal in order to eliminate their competition.
should goldman sach be censured by congress for the raising of gas prices?
Kids don't mind playing video games for points, which have no intrinsic value. Imagine instead of actually giving kids small amounts of money for grades in school, giving them an imaginary income for grades and translating that into how easily they could buy necessities (home, car, etc.) and how much they'd have left over to buy luxuries--such as video games, music etc. Treat each semester as a new play of the game.
I don't know if it is true or not, but I remember reading (somewhere) that the reason that marijuana was/is illegal is because it was a black man's drug (originally in the 30's). It kind of makes since when you look at the jail time for "crack" cocaine versus the more expensive cocaine.
i feel that teachers musthave total respect for the student and have the strenght to show them by their actions. teachers must realize their great respondsability they have.
Quark- There will always be special needs children. I certainly am aware of this, but it's pretty obvious that most children are distracted by too many things. With some parental involvement their children would have a much greater chance to learn. I commend you and wish you the very best.
THX! got it! and apprecitate!
TFF:
It was controlmarijuana.org - which redirects to :
http://www.mppcalifornia.org/home/
Kai Wen
I don't think you're right about radio and TV stations unable to refuse carrying political ads. But first, I want to point out that whatever rules may apply to during electoral campaigns might not apply at other times.
Here's a brief explanation of the rules that was published online as guidance to radio stations.
http://radiomagonline.com/fcc/review_political_broadcasting/
All candidates for federal offices are entitled to reasonable access on commercial broadcast stations. That is, commercial radio stations must sell time within certain limits to candidates for president, vice president and the U.S. Congress. Candidates for state and local office have no similar right to reasonable access and stations can refuse to sell time for such races. If, however, a station sells ads to one candidate for a particular office, the equal opportunities rule requires that the station, on request, sell ads to all other qualified candidates for that office. Individuals other than candidates or their committees are generally not entitled to access. Stations are free to accept or reject issue ads as they see fit.
I'd also question your faith in "progressive stations". Most of the hosts might have hated having ads supporting Prop 8 aired on their stations, but management might be more interested in the $$$ and the supporters of Prop 8 seemed to have a lot more than its opponents.
I won't go into a lot of detail, but my local station has made several moves that indicate that progressive radio is just another format to them. It used to be a sports talk station, now it's progressive talk station.
Like I said, I won't go into a lot of detail, but I could write a short book about it.
Thom,
Thank you for the Matt Taibbi interview.
Matt,
Thank your work and speaking about it. The discussion about Goldman-Sachs was interesting and informative.
help did anyone get the site name for that marijuana commercial? rats- did not get to write it down and googling it has been in vain in the amount of time I have
moonbat666,
When I attempted to home school my son (for a number of critical reasons), I spent a great deal of time working with him to try to help him learn. (I always had been very involved in his education and was an active and almost daily volunteer at his school and in his classroom.) His difficulties needed far more that parent involvement. Had I the ability, I would have enrolled my son in the ADD-aware Hunter School that Thom and Louise started. Unfortunately, that was long before such help was available.
Yes, parent involvement is very important, but it's too easy to use it as an all-encompassing rhetorical panacea for problems with education.
"Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs"
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/04/taibbi-nyse-ends-transparency-to-...
Once Sachs was exposed, the New york Stock Exchange covered their ass!
I'd like to point to a caller in regard to the quality of public schools, that new schools--with the infrastructure to support up-to-date learning tools--were most often built in suburbs or neighborhoods where whites fled, while minorities and the low-income remained in old, and aging, schools in the cities. Although the amount of money per student may be comparable, this doesn't take into account how much of that money is used for maintenance of old, decaying buildings, to say nothing of the kind of learning atmosphere they provide.