Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat

It's the parents, and the people that run the schools that are the problem - not the amount of money that is thrown at the schools.
Absolutely True:thumbsup:

My wife grew up in a level of poverty that few inner city Americans can imagine. The schools she went to would make any American school look luxurious. Yet she managed to go to one of the top universities in China and is now very well respected here in the U.S. as one of the top minds in her field. Ok, I will admit that she is one of those brainiac types. But her situation was pretty much the same as for 99% of all the other educated Chinese that now fill our high-tech industries. Poverty and poorly funded schools didn't hold them back either. Why, because Chinese, Asians in general, place an extremely high value on knowldge itself.

The big problem is that people here no longer value the knowledge that education brings. They want their kids to get good grades, to graduate high school, and to get a diploma but they don't seem to care whether or not those things are earned or not.

The big debate about hs exit exams are a perfect example. You hear the argument about how it's every kid's right to get a high school diploma. That's bullshit!. It's every kid's right to have the opportunity to earna hs diploma. Not have one handed to them on a silver platter.

The diploma is a representation of a person possessing a specific amount of knowledge. If you can't demonstrate that you posses this knowledge you shouldn't get the diploma. Does not graduating hold the kid back in life? Probably. Is it bad for their self-esteem? Most likely. Well, to damn bad. If we start just handing these out to every kid who's managed to spend 12 years in school, regardless of how much they've learned, where do we stop? Why don't we just carry it on to college diplomas? Graduate degrees? I don't know about you, but I'd hate to get the heart surgeon who only got his degree because it would have been bad for his self esteem if he didn't.

Bottom line, we can put all the money in the world into schools and it isn't going to help until parents start teaching kids that knowledge itself is what is important. Not a little piece of fancy paper.