Anyone who would take the time to dig up all those quotes clearly has issues. And people who feel the need to chop up posts and respond line by line are nearly always abnormally argumentative.
That took all of two minutes. Was not very hard.
Your post are constantly full of anger, and you like to call people out when they are not even focused on you, and obviously watch a lot of Fox news.
The reason why I go line by line, is so that I can make sure I don't fall into the trap that you seem to enjoy. If I just pick one line that is wrong, and disregard the things that are said that are right or even a good way to look at it even if there is still room to disagree.
I am not just going to wuss out and say your whole post is wrong, by pointing to one line of a well thought out post, because the rest actually may have good points.
That being said let me briefly educate you on the reality of education.
I know several teachers with a lot of experience teaching in the City of Detroit. All of them came to realize that they are fighting a losing battle. Here is why.
In Plato's Republic he explained that the first thing required for a society to function is law and order. Without law and order education is impossible. I own a business in Detroit and I can tell you from experience (as would everyone else in the City) that the bad influences so outweigh anything good that can be accomplished with education. In fact, most teachers report that the bad influence in the child's home makes education of the child nearly impossible. Liberals have ran most inner Cities for years and they have been absolute failures. What is needed before we can even discuss education is to clean up the streets and create an orderly environment necessary for the piece of mind that is a necessary prerequisite of education.
I take it you live up around Sterling heights-Troy-Birmingham area. That is just a guess though.
Detroit is a complete mess no question, you are right the social issues there far outweigh anything good that can go on in the short term as a whole. I am sure you did not mean everyone, because there are always good kids and families, but I do know what you mean.
You say liberals, but that is not the real issue with Detroit. You have to go back to WW2. You have the middle class coming home from the war, and moving out of the cities to the suburbs, the big three were booming and everyone was doing well.
But you start to have a lot of vacant homes from this, and in the south you had a lot of poor black people that wanted out, so when Detroit started to get desperate with its vacancies they started to advertise in the south, and Ford was always known for not discriminating on hiring. So we had a huge influx of poor families replacing the middle class that was leaving.
Right there is the trend that destroyed Detroit. It had little to do with race, but everything to do with economics.
You replaced people with education, stored wealth, family ties to the areas, stability, with people that had nothing, just starting out. People that did not have any education, any stored wealth, any family ties that did not just show up to the area. How can that possibly work for the best? These people had nothing. So if you think about it they were what 20? in 1950, that would mean that they would be 80 now, so the oldest generations now. That means that their kids had very very little to work with, and they did not value education (because they were able to work without it in Detroit) so their kids did not either. So down to today's children. They are the first ones that the trend is really starting to change. People today now are starting to wake up to the fact that the only way in America to change you social level is to 1. Get educated, 2. Get lucky (or 3. Lose everything).
The tax base never recovered, and only got worse after the riots, further down in the 80's when the big three started to move out, and on. Nothing has ever really been replaced in Detroit. So the taxes drop (meaning that everything goes to crap) and desperation rises (drugs, crime, low education), and that turns into worse and worse situations for everyone there.
The only way to improve Detroit is to increase the standard of living, no amount of 'cleaning' will help out there. It is hard to do but unless it happens Detroit is screwed.
Hanimmal, I know you think you have it all figured out but trust me, as someone who has been where you are intellectually and has gone light years further, you need to learn to be more humble about your opinions. The concept that education is the answer is fairly juvenile on the scale of intellectual development.
I don't think I have it ALL figured out, but I am very well educated on the issues and constantly study up on them and am willing to see both sides. Something that your infinite knowledge has seemed to disregard.
You say it is juvenile(I love how you try to sound all high and mighty now, nice touch) but you are wrong. What is the number one investment that a person can make? It is their education. You want to see some charts?
In millions
Now we can see how education improves wealth. I am sure you can agree with that.
But how does Detroit stack up? First lets look at the trends in detroit:
Educational achievement in Detroit:
Now population rates of Detroit:
Population Growth 2007 Population Population Change Since 1990 Population Change Since 2000
Detroit, MI---------------838,521----------------- -18%------------------------------------ -12%
Michigan -----------------10,147,507------------------ 9% --------------------------------------2%
United States ---------305,316,813------------------ 23%------------------------------------- 8%
So people are leaving, who? The people that can afford to, the ones with education.
So instead of those people sticking it out in Detroit, they leave and the city does not get the benefit from them.
And I don't just mean taxes to help offset the people that don't have much. I mean the benefit of having parents in schools that are educated and helping out the children, the homelife of those children being nurturing and the benefits of those kids friends that come over and can see how a good family operates and has something to wish to achieve.
Success leads to more success. That is one of the biggest things about our society.
So even though those people are not staying in Detroit, you are saying that they are not helping society? You think that they are not paying taxes to the Fed if they move to the suburbs? We had all benefitted from them working through and persevering in Detroit getting the education that we help provide. And now they are doing their part, but just not in the city of Detroit. Because they don't have to, and there is not much opportunity there (as you should know).
If you want to fix Detroit, going after crime (which is a symptom) is like giving a cough drop to someone that has lung cancer.
The best way to fix Detroit is to get a workforce there that is educated and ready to go, only then can we start to get businesses back into Michigan, because (You remember Google a few years ago, where did they go?) without a educated workforce they will not be willing to come. How can you run a business without anyone there to work in it.
And with those tax dollars you can start to rebuild the crumbling parts of the city (or take it down). That will help clean up some of the crack dens. And with more jobs more people will be willing to move into the city, that brings up the standard of living even further. The people that don't have any education will be able to get service jobs (resturaunts, grocery store (also non-existent in Detroit), retail) so they will be more affluent and happier, schools would become safer due to parents having the understanding to care about their child's education, on and on.
It is not a fast answer, but it is the only way to deal with the cancer, and not the symptoms.
And this is with me believing that the current way we operate the schools is antiquated. We need to completely revamp the educational system, from not having 3 months off every year, to shorter days, to a much longer classes (like 2.5 hours so that they don't have to break the flow and can answer the questions, and have the kids do the work there with the teacher). On and on, not just going with something because it is the same as it has always been.
Something though to you personally. I don't think that I know everything, not even close. I try to be very humble in life and when I post. At times I do get snarky, but that is due to the constant attacks I get from people like yourself that fall back on the old standard insults. I always try to use actual sources for my information, and the strong economic and work backround that I have had in the responses that I make. But I am always willing to try to understand the people that I disagree with and try to learn from them.
You may know who Steve Fraiser is. He is from Hazel Park and won the Olympic Gold medal in '84 in wrestling. I actually had the benefit to get to train with him off and on over my career. One thing that he told me really affected me greatly. He told me to always listen to what people were saying, no matter who they were. If he was at a tourny and a 7 year old kid would come up and tell him that he was doing something wrong, he would listen, because maybe it was that 1 time out of a thousand that it was something that he could learn from. It doesn't matter if he won the gold, and this kid had only be wrestling for a year, he might have some input.
The moral is to always be willing and open to new ideas. That no matter how well versed you think you are, someone with far less knowledge can get you to look at it in a new way so that you can constantly improve. If you think you are so far above someone and refuse to actually listen you may miss out on something important. You should be open to changing your ideas, and not just attack anything that is counter your view.
SHENANIGANS Mr. Bar Brady!!
